Why is Open Source Important to Enterprise IT Leaders?

A recent global survey demonstrates the importance of open source tools and technologies to IT professionals and their organizations. In Foundry’s MarketPulse Survey for SUSE, 2022, more than 600 IT professionals from enterprises around the world shared their experience and opinions on cloud native technology and open source.  The results? Sixty-three percent of those surveyed said it was highly important for their organizations to choose open source tools and technologies. That number increased to 68% for respondents at Director level or above. So, what is open source and why is it so vital for IT leaders? 

What is Open Source?

Open source refers to open source software (OSS), a platform or program in which the source code is open to be accessed, enhanced or modified by anyone over the internet. It’s a cornerstone for IT collaboration and innovation as programmers can use pre-existing code to develop, improve and innovate – always learning and improving from what has been done before. Conversely, a closed or proprietary system requires license and maintenance fees and is harder to modify or customize, restricting innovation or improvement from users. 

Why is Open Source so important to IT Leaders?

 Open source provides organizations with a greater level of flexibility and freedom to develop their own projects – responding to organizational needs or customer demands. It supports innovation in their teams and the organization as a whole while also improving talent acquisition and retention of those who are looking for the opportunity to work on cutting-edge projects.

Open Source and Cloud Native technologies

This same survey reveals additional insights as to why open source is so important to IT leaders: Open source provides a bedrock for most cloud native infrastructure.  The survey found that all respondents were either using or trialing cloud native technologies, with 70% looking to increase investment in the next 12 months. Cloud native technology improved collaboration, application portability, deployment efficiency and developer productivity for nine out of ten organizations. The same proportion of respondents reported a reduction in development resource need, downtime during updates and time to detect errors.  

 Further benefits experienced by enterprise organizations include improved data security (48%), improved flexibility to meet customer demands (46%), improved cost efficiency (44%) and improved scalability (41%). An incredible 49% of those who had fully adopted cloud native technology across their infrastructure also reported increased innovation or new revenue as a result.  

Learn more:

With reported benefits like these, it’s easy to see why open source has become so important to IT leaders. Find out more about the insights from this survey in our e-Book, Leveraging the Benefits of Cloud Technology. Read it here.