Zenoss, the corporate sponsor of the cloud-based networking and management project Zenoss Core, has released the results of its 2010 Open Source Systems Management Survey.
The survey was based on almost 1000 completed surveys gathered at the USENIX Large Installation System Administration conference and within the Zenoss Core open source community. Pooling data from 2006 to 2009, the survey tracks the changing adoption and usage patterns for open source software in enterprise organizations.
The survey’s findings:
- 98% of respondents indicated they used open source software in some form, and on a scale of 1 to 10, rated their satisfaction between 7 and 8.
- 71% of 2009 respondents indicated that open source was easier than proprietary software to deploy, up from 48% in 2008, 38% in 2007, and 26% in 2006.
- Between 2008 and 2009, the percentage of respondents giving financial constraint as their reason for adopting open source software doubled.
- 76% of sysadmins indicate they prefer to use open source whenever possible.
- The number one reason for not choosing open source was a lack of support, following by poor documentation. But 46% of respondents said there was no reason not to choose open source.
- More than half the respondents said that they were using some form of cloud technology, either for applications, for storage or for other services,
- The top IT management priorities and plans for future open source adoption were monitoring, configuration management, patching and provisioning, and security.
“What’s telling about this survey is that flexibility, followed by lower costs, is the main driver for open source systems management adoption today,” says Zenoss VP of Community Mark Hinkle, noting that most companies have recognized open source’s collaborative and agile traits.
