InformationWeek: Is There An Open-Source Solution?

"Despite a lack of marketing resources, more businesses are discovering and deploying open-source software in their back offices. Support has improved, and capable tools quickly become the standard by which commercial products are measured."

"With little or no marketing budget, open-source software is finding its way into the back offices of the the largest companies and is powering some of the highest-bandwidth Web sites on the Internet."

"Not only does open-source software rarely have the benefit of professional marketing, but companies that do deploy it in their infrastructures often hesitate to admit it. Security concerns are one reason, but, also, developers in IT departments often use open source without the knowledge of higher-level management. The result is a general lack of dialogue, both inside and outside businesses, about the use and effectiveness of open-source software."

"The most ubiquitous and well-known open-source software--the Apache Web server, the Perl scripting language, the Sendmail message transport agent, the Linux operating system, and the Gnu C Compiler, already command dominant market shares in their respective categories for many classes of business applications. While Linux has had a well-funded marketing push in the past year or so, other products have spread to IT departments by word of mouth or because no better alternatives existed."

Complete Story

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