Atos Origin Predicts Open Source Landscape

Rob writes "IT services provider Atos Origin has predicted a forthcoming change in the software landscape based on the results of a survey it has carried out in conjunction with the UK's National Computing Centre. The survey, which was compiled through over 140 web-based questionnaires completed by senior UK IT professionals in May and June, indicated that over 60% believe open source will either increase its presence in certain business areas or be a fundamental component in core IT systems, while 73% expect open source to develop within their organizations' IT strategy over the next five years."

Comments

Surprise

[kevin_conaway]

Yes users, the time has come. The IT landscape is shifting directions. Fortunately, its shifting in the direction that we provide services for. Come on over to our website, see what we're offering.

I'm always a little skeptical of companies that fund surveys whose results jive with their business offerings.

From the article...

[tcopeland]

There were also a number of technologies that respondents were well aware of, but which most would not consider deploying, with OpenOffice, PostgreSQL, JBoss, Thunderbird, Mambo, Zope, Exim, and Sleepycat, falling into this category.

That seems odd... I wouldn't expect PostgreSQL to fall into that category, especially with all the EnterpriseDB stuff going on.

Apropos of nothing, if you need to get Jabber to log to a PostgreSQL database, look yonder.

Deploying opensource but what about adding to OSS

[jurt1235]

I think the research misses some points:
How do these companies think they will add the OSS community?
How do they think they will be supported? (Yes, lame question, I know how OSS support model works, but still, a company manager thinks in terms of support contracts)

80 people being interested in OSS is a trend?

[Anonymous Coward]

seems like a pretty shoddy way to survey to me.

Why am I not surprised?

[rolfwind]

Frankly I'm surprised it didn't happen earlier and bigger.

Too bad most custom solutions aren't Open Source. At least open source to the company that uses it. How many companies have at least some custom solution to one problem or another, implemented even in dos, that could be greatly expanded in capability if it simply could be built upon or ported to a more capable platform or what not.

How often can closed-source one-size-fits-all solutions be the be-all and end-all of your needs?

Not to mention that closed-source solutions, by there very nature tend to be more inflexible and what's more - organizations grow to depend on them (and their proprietory file formats) more than they should like.

Then why is it that ...

[alucinor]

I currently work for a company that's being employed by Atos to supply the NHS with a J2EE solution. So what I want to know is why if the UK is so keen on open source, are we having to use nothing but AIX backend servers and Win32 web and app servers?

Because the NHS, like several other areas in UK government IT, are standardizing on Microsoft technologies (yeah, the AIX is IBM, but it's still closed as hell). That means thousands of hospitals and clinics (and other government entities) are locking themselves into Windows for another 10+ years right now!

Re:Then why is it that ...

[alucinor]

Right, I wasn't saying that the problem was Atos, just that the UK government is emphasizing closed source, despite what this study may say. Perhaps the study applies to just private UK business. In that case, I applaud the private sector, but I really pity the British government for locking themselves in to an offshore corporation (especially one like Microsoft) for years to come.

Well, they knighted Sir William, after all.

They're asking the wrong people...

[Peyna]

They need to ask the people that will make the actual decision whether or not to implement these things. A lot of times it comes down to a financial or otherwise decision made by someone outside the IT Department. Those are the people that will decide whether or not such a migration takes place. The IT dept will be the ones that have to figure out how to implement it, but chances are they're not the ones making the decision.

Blinders

[MrCopilot]

Only 4% of those questioned expected their use of open source software to reduce over the next five years, while 19% were unsure at this stage of the potential influence of open source on their company's IT strategy.

So 23% interviewed/surveyed worked in Redmond?

Seriously, you'd have to be still using only a typewriter, to not see the increase of open source in day to day business. (Although, most home users would be suprised at how many aplliances in their homes already run open source software, so why not biz users too.)

Bad Naming

[jalefkowit]

"Atos Origin" sounds less like an IT consultancy and more like an Everquest character.

Once, long before the reign of Lord Xanthar, during the Great Peace of the Radrocks, there arose a mystic wizard of the West. His name was Atos Origin, and to the amazement of the common folk of the realm, he predicted the open source landscape to come...

Not even close

[mgkimsal2]

It'll finally be up to par with MS.

WHOAH. I take it you don't use MS SQL Server (or possibly even the MSDE)?

I'm qualifying this by saying that I've been primarily a LAMP developer for going on 9 years. MySQL is great for many things, and no, I'm not even going to be condescending and say just "small" projects. I've seen it used on very large projects, and it does fine.

However, it will not be 'on par' with MS SQL. I dare say MySQL5 won't even be 'on par' with MS SQL Server 2000, which is, what, 5 or 6 years old now?. The difference is, imo, mostly in the support tools around the product.

Something as simply as the index tuning wizard in MSSQL - there are no equivalent tools in the MySQL world (yet?). 'EXPLAIN' doesn't come close, and i f you haven't used MS SQL, you won't know what I mean. If you *have* used it, and still claim that MySQL5 will be 'on par' with MS SQL, you're not living in the real world.

Statements like these are what cause non MySQL users to dismiss MySQL supporters claims.

Clarifying it by saying "for some (or many) uses MySQL5 may be a good alternative to MS SQL" might be acceptable. Claiming equal status is just wrong.

You actually need to read the article

[panurge]

Because the content is interesting and a lot more quantitative than the submitter indicates. The meat includes:

Of that 73%, 4% expect open source to dominate and be widespread throughout the organization, with the rest expecting the influence of open source software to be limited to core areas, with 41% of those identifying individual business areas as growth opportunities, 17% expecting it to be a fundamental component of core IT systems, and 11% expecting it to be a niche option in non-core IT functions

This is hardly a ringing endorsement. Even more insteresting is the list further down of predicted successful and unsuccessful technologies. As might be expected, the things actually doing well - Apache, MySQL, are visible and expected to continue to be so. Open Office is clearly seen as a failure. Surprisingly, to my mind, so is Thunderbird. And so is JBoss, while Tomcat seems to be better regarded.

There is no ammunition here at all for MS-bashers, and the scenario it paints is a bit gloomy. If in 5 years time everybody is still supporting Office - which, regardless of whether it is the MS version or the OO version is, to my mind, still a truly terrible way to meet the day to day needs of most ordinary office workers - we will surely have learnt nothing and done nothing to meet the real needs of business.

It would be nice to think that this particular survey will go the way of all preductions of the future and be wrong, but actually it seems to point to a growing IT trend - inertia. It makes little difference whether it's computers or SUVs, the answer to all problems is to do more of the same. Perhaps slightly lower fuel consumption immediately offset by dragging around some new feature. 17 inch wheels/monitors? Next year we'll have 19 inch wheels/monitors! And in a nod to the environment, perhaps in 5 years time 5% will be recyclable/OSS. Meanwhile, can anyone explain to me, clearly and convincingly, exactly how the average joe office worker's life benefits from the capabilities of Excel in 2005 versus Lotus 123 in, say, 1990, excluding Y2000 fixes, speed and memory?

.NET is on the rise, but Functional Programming...

[MarkEst1973]

Functional Programming is -- for me -- on the rise too. I predict a rise in FP in general.

That said, ASP.NET is growing too. I work for a government consulting company in Northern VA. Most people here only know .NET. The biggest propronents are, naturally, the client-server VB-SQLServer guys who were dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Now that they must create web apps, they think ASP.NET and all its ungodly web controls are the cow's milk (or the kitten's mittens, if you prefer).

Their rationale? Well, besides coming from MS, many of our projects are hosted on a government network. If you use their boxes, you must use what they installed. That is, Cold Fusion 5 (a monstrosity if I ever saw one) and now .NET.

If your project does not require one of their servers (that is, you install your own server or the project springs for new hardware), you can install whatever you like. I have a java app running on the same network.

One of the largest projects we host on that network is being re-rewritten from VB-SQLServer (it also has a web piece in CF5) in .NET by an old stored procedure (T-SQL) guy. This implementation has to be done entirely in web services. He's drank too much of the kool aid.

In java, there seems to be an entire community that's shunned the over-engineering of EJBs and went with POJOs (Plain Old Java Objects). Why? It just works. It's simple. In my observation, the .net crowd doesn't believe in POCO (Plain Old C# Objects). Everything has to be a webservice or somehow use xml.

They'll learn (or they won't). Doesn't matter much to me. I've already started using a functional programming language for my java apps. Much, much shorter programs, flexibility out the wazoo, and you don't have to write 10 lines just to get "Hello World" from Standard Out. The secret is the Rhino javascript from Mozilla. It will be included by default in Java 6. Apparently I'm not the only one tired of verbosity.

In a nutshell, do the simplest thing that could possibly work in the fewest lines of code and the least amount of mental constructs using the highest level language you can get away with. Tune for performance only after you've perfected how it works.

Hilarious

[overshoot]

This is a hoot.

Atos/Origin manages $EMPLOYER's network and has to be one of the most software libre-hostile service organizations around.

I did a survey

[Anonymous Coward]

I asked the question "Do you usually give the answer the person taking a survey wants to hear?"

The overwhelming response was "yes" thus confirming my thesis.

On the other hand

[thelexx]

Some businesses are burying their heads further up Microsofts ass than ever. The lords on high at the company I work for, a GM sub-subsidiary, just decreed that there will be no open source used for anything, anywhere. The only exceptions will be on a case by case basis providing you have spent the time to write up a business need proposal for why you want something. We can't even run Firefox/Moz anymore and the RHEL desktop I've run for the last three years just went by-by in favor of Win2k. But NO, I'M not fucking bitter...

Well done, SCO

[file-exists-p]

From the article:

Meanwhile, there was a clear leader in terms of the perceived inhibitors for open source adoption, with the lack of long-term support scoring 33%, ahead of legal issues related to intellectual property and copyright (21%), and a lack of understanding of the benefits, and a lack of clarity on potential return on investment (both 19%).

Since -- as far as I know ? -- there is still not ONE case of an open-source project having lost a case of IP violations, we can conclude that SCO did its FUD job very well.

Cheers!

--
Go Debian!