OStatic

When we recently covered the results from North Bridge Partners' survey on the future of open source, I was struck by an answer that the majority of respondents gave to this question: What do you see as the key barrier to open source adoption in business? The most popular answer to that question was unfamiliarity with open source solutions. The question was asked in an open-ended way, so I assume that some people giving that answer are probably unfamiliar with the actual existence of open source software that could benefit them, and others are aware of the existence of the software, but don't know how to use the applications.

That last branch of the problem implies that training is more important than many providers of commercial open source offerings think it is. Today, I've been looking at the market research results from IDC's annual Worldwide IT Education and Training Vendor Analysis Study. (PDF) In it, Red Hat is named the commercial software provider that does training and education best. Here are some important reasons for that finding.?

With all that goes on at conferences, it would seem that a white paper presentation would be, invariably, a pretty dry event -- with the document itself being even drier. While there are many topics in the Linux Foundation-sponsored IDC white paper, The Opportunity for Linux in a New Economy (linked here as a PDF), and one might choose to quickly skim the research, data and projections, this report is really well worth taking a close look through.

Overall, IDC is a projecting a rosy future for Linux-related growth in the enterprise, with a compound annual growth rate of 23.6% for the 2008-2013 period. The overall market is projected to experience a 5% growth rate over that same time frame.