The Alfresco open source barometer is a survey, conducted throughout 2007, using opt-in data provided by 35,000 Alfresco community members with the aim of providing a global survey of trends in the use of open source software in the enterprise.

Alfresco community members were asked about their preferences in operating systems, application servers, databases, browsers and portals to capture the latest information about how companies evaluate and deploy open source and proprietary software stacks around Alfresco’s enterprise content management system.

The Alfresco ECM suite sits on top of this stack and offers a unique insight into mixed stack usage in modern global 5000 organizations and government.

Survey data collected during July to December 2007 included new questions about which office suite and virtualization products community members used, what their content management requirements were and what environments they trialed Alfresco in.

“Alfresco’s open source barometer addresses questions of how open source is used, who the leading vendors are and differences from evaluation to deployment, by geography and the trends overtime. Our goal is to provide a leading indicator of enterprise open source adoption trends, examining how and where open source is used in the Global 5000 enterprise stack.”
Dr Ian Howells, CMO, Alfresco Software Inc.

Users surveyed provided unprecedented levels of detailed information on their software infrastructure, a reflection of the vibrancy of the Alfresco community. This information helps Alfresco to prioritize platform and stack combinations for the benefit of the larger community.

Among the highlights revealed by the open source barometer were:

Operating system: “Users evaluate on a Windows laptop and deploy on Linux” – 41% of evaluations were on Windows, dropping to 26% for deployments, whereas 51% of deployments were on Linux.
Linux: “Ubuntu and Red Hat pull away, SUSE remains flat by comparison in the US” – Ubuntu 24%, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 21%.
Windows: “Users stick with XP and 2003, Vista lags at 2%” – XP 63%, Windows 2003 28%.
Databases: “Sun still shines on MySQL” – MySQL 60%, Oracle 14%, MS SQL Server 13%.
Application servers: “Tomcat dominates with largest market share in study” - Tomcat 70%, JBoss Application Server 18%.
Office suite: “When it comes to content it comes from Microsoft Office. However, users in Germany and France are twice as likely to use OpenOffice than in the US or UK” – Microsoft Office 66%, OpenOffice 24%.
Browsers and portals: “For content and mashups browsers preferred” – Browsers 59%, Portal 41%.
Virtualization: “If it is virtual it is VMware” – VMware 61%, Microsoft Virtual Server 16%.
ECM usage: “Users want a SharePoint alternative for document management, web content management and increasingly collaboration that runs on Windows, Linux, MySQL or VMware” – The top three content management and collaboration requirements were - document management 67%, web content management 43%, collaboration 34%.
Clear leader: “Open Source creates a clear leader at each level in the stack.” – Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), MySQL, JBoss, Tomcat.
Long tail: “Open source has a geographic long tail, reflecting global demand fulfillment” – survey participants come from 200 countries – US 24%, EMEA 50% and ROW 26%
Geography: “A project’s roots can turn the world up-side down” – Worldwide RHEL usage is double SUSE. In Germany, use of SUSE is 4 times that of RHEL.
Mixed stack: “Users don’t want to be tied and require flexibility to change over time.”

The community will be surveyed on a biannual basis to deliver updates to the open source barometer, with the aim of providing a leading indicator on enterprise open source adoption trends.

More Information:

Read regular barometer survey updates posted on Ian Howell's blog
Visit the Alfresco Open Source Barometer page on Facebook
Join the Alfresco Content Community