Most enterprises encounter problems with open source software
Univa’s 2013 Free and Open Source Software report finds that Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is prominent within businesses today with 76% using it internally. However, 75% of those users experience problems utilizing FOSS in mission-critical departments.
Although businesses are relying on unsupported FOSS solutions today, 64% say they would pay for supported software to solve their issues.
A lack of enterprise-grade support is the largest problem FOSS users have experienced in their company with 27% of respondents raising it as their top concern. Other troublesome issues include usability (24%), maintenance (20%), crashes (19%), bugs (18%), downtime (16%), loss of productivity (16%) and interoperability (16%).
FOSS’ importance today means that 64% are willing to pay for better quality, with the following listed as reasons to do so:
- Stability (25%)
- Enterprise-grade support (22%)
- Ease of use (20%)
- Extra functionality (18%)
- Bug reports/fixes (15%)
- Integrated solution (13%)
- Product upgrades (13%)
- Predictable lifecycles (13%)
The demand for stability and enterprise-grade support suggests that the comfort of reliability is the number one factor that leads to investments beyond Open Source solutions.
“We have always said that users are willing to pay for quality when it comes to Open Source software, and the results of the survey have confirmed as such,” said Gary Tyreman, Univa CEO. “A large number of organizations use Open Source Grid Engine as a key ingredient in product development, but as the company grows they can’t afford to rely on unsupported Open Source Grid Engine. That is when they can turn to us for peace of mind, scalability and reliability provided by our team and proven Univa Grid Engine.”
The key product development departments of a business where most mission-critical software resides – engineering and R&D – rely most heavily on FOSS (32%). These trump executive (5%), legal (1%), finance (6%), sales (8%), HR (3%) and marketing (6%) combined. One in ten businesses uses FOSS across the board in every department, indicating how important FOSS is depended upon as the backbone of a company.