Spain's Cenatic to Focus on Open Source Reuse and Certification

In 2015, Cenatic, the open source software resource centre of the Spanish government, will campaign to get enterprises to implement, share and re-use open source solutions. The centre wants to help companies select the right free software solutions. It will also promote sharing and re-use, and reinforce the network of free software service providers.

“Companies are increasingly turning to free and open source solutions, recognizing its strategic advantages,” says Cenatic director Manuel Velardo “with the increase in their ICT system performance resulting in faster time to market and lower costs.”

Velardo introduced the branching out of Cenatic in November at the LibreCon 2014 conference in Bilbao (Spain). The project will be funded in part by the European Regional Development Fund, and managed in part by Red.es, a government-owned company implementing projects to develop the Information Society in Spain.

The Spanish open source resource centre will coordinate the project with Spain’s confederation of open source business associations (Asolif) and ESLE, an industry trade group representing free software IT service providers in Basque Country.

Big mobile cloud

According to Velardo, some 75 percent of the 2,000 largest companies use free and open source software for their business critical systems. He expects that in 2016, nearly all (99 per cent) companies will be using open source. “Free software drives cloud computing platforms, runs Big Data, and enables mobile applications. It is an endless source of new programming languages and innovative software development tools and methods.”

To help especially Small and Medium-sized Enterprises find the right open source solution, Cenatic proposes to build a support network. Encouraging SMEs to adopt free software will in turn nurture Spain’s budding sector of open source service providers. Cenatic also aspires to increase the re-use by SMEs of relevant open source solutions developed for public administrations.

The first pilots of Cenatic’s new services are expected in early 2015, Velardo said.

More information:

LibreCon