In spite of an economy hit hard by recession, it seems open source companies can expect year-over-year increase in revenue of open source related software and services, according to a new survey by Open Solution Alliance (OSA).

 

The OSA'S OS Market Survey is the first annual survey conducted by OSA of its members and other open source software and services companies. OSA officials said that 46 companies participated in this survey.

 

The affordable price tag (News - Alert) of open source is motivating customers to adopt open source services and software, said 78 percent of respondents. Considering the affordability factor, OSA observes that this turn towards open source in a down economy is not surprising.

 

The survey finds that a majority of the respondents are serious about collaboration with other companies. A higher percentage of respondents, 97 percent, said that they have active partnerships with other open source software and services companies.

 

“We knew that collaboration was important to open source companies, but this statistic was surprising,” commented Dominic Sartorio, senior director of product management for SpikeSource and president at the Open Solutions Alliance.

 

In addition, the survey also notes that a whopping majority, almost 85 percent, sell open source products or services that run on Microsoft (News - Alert) Windows or otherwise interoperate with Microsoft products.

 

"Microsoft is an important partner to numerous open source companies and will continue to be more so moving forward,” said Anthony Gold (News - Alert), vice president and general manager for the Open Source Business at Unisys and an OSA board member.

 

He also said that enterprises need to maximize their IT resources and many realize that a hybrid Microsoft-open source environment can be the best option for their requirements.

 

Seventy-two percent of respondents said they believe that software as a service (SaaS (News - Alert)) is an important part of their business strategy, while 56 percent of the respondents felt that their customers were concerned about interoperability between open source applications.

 

Additionally, the survey reports that a higher percentage of the respondents said that their customers were concerned about interoperability between open source and proprietary solutions.