Why Enterprises Embrace Open Source

I just finished attending two conferences: the Cloud Foundry Summit and the OpenStack Summit. Both were hives of activity, with attendance well up on the previous event. Most striking to me was the significant presence of large enterprise IT decision-makers — architects, directors of applications and operations, and even a sprinkling of CIOs.

And, despite the fact that both events were held in good-weather locations (Cloud Foundry in Santa Clara and OpenStack in a spectacular Vancouver waterfront convention center), these enterprise IT attendees were on no corporate boondoggle — they were attending to evaluate how these open source products could help them meet their organization’s responsibilities. These examples illustrate something I’ve been seeing for a while — enterprise IT has a large and growing commitment to open source products in preference to proprietary alternatives. ...