MARKHAM, Ontario--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Univa, the Data Center Automation Company, today announced the findings of its 2013 Free and Open Source Software survey. Conducted online by uSAMP, the report finds that Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is prominent within businesses today with 76% using it internally; however, 75% of those users experience problems utilizing FOSS in mission-critical departments. Although businesses are relying on unsupported FOSS solutions today, 64% say they would pay for supported software to solve their issues.
A lack of enterprise-grade support is the largest problem FOSS users have experienced in their company with 27% of respondents raising it as their top concern. Other troublesome issues include usability (24%), maintenance (20%), crashes (19%), bugs (18%), downtime (16%), loss of productivity (16%) and interoperability (16%).
Indeed, FOSS’ importance today means that 64% are willing to pay for better quality, with the following listed as reasons to do so:
- Stability (25%)
- Enterprise-grade support (22%)
- Ease of use (20%)
- Extra functionality (18%)
- Bug reports/fixes (15%)
- Integrated solution (13%)
- Product upgrades (13%)
- Predictable lifecycles (13%)
The demand for stability and enterprise-grade support suggests that the comfort of reliability is the number one factor that leads to investments beyond Open Source solutions.
“We have always said that users are willing to pay for quality when it comes to Open Source software, and the results of the survey have confirmed as such,” said Gary Tyreman, Univa CEO. “A large number of organizations use Open Source Grid Engine as a key ingredient in product development, but as the company grows they can’t afford to rely on unsupported Open Source Grid Engine. That is when they can turn to us for peace of mind, scalability and reliability provided by our team and proven Univa Grid Engine.”
The key product development departments of a business where most mission-critical software resides - engineering and R&D – rely most heavily on FOSS (32%). These trump executive (5%), legal (1%), finance (6%), sales (8%), HR (3%) and marketing (6%) combined. One in ten businesses uses FOSS across the board in every department, indicating how important FOSS is depended upon as the backbone of a company.
To download an infographic of the survey results, go to: https://www.yousendit.com/download/UVJqV0o5NmNVbThQWWNUQw
About Univa Corporation
Univa, the Data Center Automation Company, is the leading provider of automation and management software for computational and big data infrastructures. Our products and global enterprise support give our customers the power to manage their entire computational space, no matter how big or where it is deployed. Many of the leading brands in the world depend on Univa’s unsurpassed expertise, and premier services and support. Univa is headquartered in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, USA, with offices in Markham, ON, Canada; Austin, Texas, USA and Munich, Germany.
Survey Methodology
Sample was provided by uSamp, a premier provider of technology and survey respondents used to obtain consumer and business insights. This project was fielded from 3/14/2013 through 3/18/2013, collecting 128 completes from uSamp’s Whiteboard B2B panel. This online survey is not based on a probability sample and therefore no estimate of theoretical sampling error can be calculated.
