Half of Top Enterprise Open Source Projects Don’t Offer Enterprise Grade Support, OpenLogic Study Finds

BROOMFIELD, Colo. –OpenLogic, Inc., a leading provider of software, stacks and support that enable enterprises to easily deploy and manage customized open source environments, today announced the results of a comprehensive study of open source usage in the enterprise. More than 800 IT professionals and OpenLogic Enterprise users participated in the study, identifying top challenges of using open source software; trends for open source policy development and a list of the leading enterprise open source projects.

The research was conducted in the fourth quarter of 2006. There were over 800 respondents classified as IT or business professionals.

Top Open Source Challenges
OpenLogic’s research asked various organizations already using open source software about the biggest challenges they see in implementing open source software.

The top 5 challenges were, in order:
- Choosing the best open source products
- Finding enterprise grade open source support
- Getting open source components to work together
- Ensuring open source software comes from a trusted source
- Managing updates of new versions of open source products

Managing Open Source – How Organizations View Policies
OpenLogic also asked organizations already using open source software whether they have developed or plan to develop open source policies. The results showed that organizations increasingly identify and recognize the need to build policies to manage the growth of open source applications.

Key findings:
- 58% of all respondents have an open source policy, are currently developing one or have a plan to create one.
- 83% of organizations using more than 25 projects have an open source policy, are currently developing one or have a plan to create one.

Open Source Packages Used in the Enterprise
In separate research, analysis of OpenLogic’s enterprise customers discovered that, on average, OpenLogic customers use 75 different open source packages. The research also found that the top open source packages that are most used by OpenLogic customers, include:

Struts
Ant
Xerces
Tomcat
Spring
Log4j
JUnit
Hibernate
Eclipse
Apache Web Server
POI
Axis
Jakarta Commons
Xalan
Velocity
JBoss
JSTL
JDOM
MySQL
iText
CVS
Dom4j
Perl
OpenSSH
Tcl/Tk
vim
PHP
Regexp

Commercial Open Source Support Options
Another finding was that commercial-grade open source support can be difficult to find beyond the top handful of open source packages. OpenLogic offers support for all of the top packages identified. Less than half of the top packages had any other commercial-grade support option available.

“We know that most technical people understand the many benefits of using open source software,” said Steven Grandchamp, CEO of OpenLogic, “but our research shows that there are lingering business concerns, including commercial-grade support, that have enterprises looking for a solution. That’s why OpenLogic is in the business of addressing those technical and business concerns for large enterprises.”

About OpenLogic
OpenLogic is a leading provider of software, stacks and support that enable enterprises to easily customize, deploy and manage commercial-grade open source environments. OpenLogic’s software automates the integration and deployment of any combination of 200 pre-certified open source packages along with proprietary or commercial solutions. The OpenLogic solution also mitigates open source legal risks by enabling companies to manage and enforce open source policies. OpenLogic’s technical support and update services give enterprises the commercial-grade reliability they demand. OpenLogic is currently used by more than 700 customers worldwide. For more on OpenLogic, go to www.openlogic.com

Contact information:
Bret Clement
Page One PR
303.462.3057
bret@pageonepr.com