FRAMINGHAM, Mass., 19 July 2006. According to a recent analysis conducted by market research firm Government Insights (an IDC company), open source software will gain momentum faster within the government sector than it will in other markets.
Government Insights predicts government information technology (IT) will see the most substantial growth in the use of open source software over the next five years, with rapid growth in the five to 10 year time frame. This study also predicts a value shift for software within the government community, citing the initial shift driven by state and local governments sharing their custom-developed solutions.
"This evolving government open source model has the potential to place the industry's large system integrators in a powerful position," says Teresa Bozzelli, managing director and COO for Government Insights. "Government agencies have shown an increasing reliance on system integrators and IT service providers to build and manage their systems. In recent years, IT service providers have formalized some of their internal support, training, and certification services to encourage development of open source solutions. In preparing for the next decade, system integrators need to work with the growing numbers of open source developers, and continue to integrate the developers' increasingly granular applications that customize the shared governmental software."
The study, entitled "The Long Term Impact of Open Source Solutions on Government IT Spending" (Doc # GI201795), is available at http://www.idc.com.
