This month we reflect on the rise of open source software
and the implications for the e-learning market.
The growth of open source continues to be the dominate theme
of this decade. The IDC in 2007 issued a report which argued “the market for
standalone open source software (OSS) is in a significant growth stage”. The
IDC forecast that adoption of OSS will accelerate through to 2011 as barriers
to adoption get knocked down. Significant demand for standalone open source
software (OSS) will see the market grow at a rate of 26pc a year to reach
US$5.8bn by 2011, according to IDC.
We are in the early stages of the development and deployment
of OSS according to Matt Lawton, program director of IDC's Open Source Software
Business Models research program. "The market is still quite immature,
especially now that we see active open source projects in all layers of the
software stack. Although we see healthy growth in revenue from standalone open
source software, we must keep in mind that revenue will substantially lag
behind the distribution of open source software. Many distributions of
standalone open source software are free, while paid distributions typically
are based on pay-as-you-go subscriptions rather than pay-up-front license
fees."
IDC's study revealed that the drivers for OSS adoption, and
in particular commercial adoption of OSS, include the growing realisation that
OSS “provides them with more choice and leverage with proprietary software
vendors.”
IDC said that worldwide revenue from standalone open source
software reached US$1.8bn in 2006.
The benefits to organizations are real and tangible.
“Organizations are saving millions of dollars on IT by using
open source software. In 2004, open source software saved large companies(with
annual revenue of over $1 billion) an average of $3.3 million. Medium-sized
companies (between $50 million and $1 billion in annual revenue) saved an
average $1.1 million. Firms with revenues under $50 million saved an average
$520,000.”
Walli, S., Gynn, D., Rotz, B. V. The Growth of Open
Source Software in Organizations: A Report.
A 2008 survey on the future of open source software found
that:
- Approximately
81 percent of respondents feel the economy’s turbulence is “good” for open
source software
- Respondents
revealed that the top three factors that make open source software
attractive include: lower acquisition and maintenance costs;
flexibility/access to libraries of community-developed code; and freedom
from vendor lock-in
- More
than 55 percent of respondents believe that in five years 25-50 percent of
purchased software will be open source vs. proprietary
- The
Web Publishing/Content Management market is expected to be most vulnerable
to disruption by open source in the next five years
- Respondents
expect the Security Tools be least vulnerable to disruption by open source
in the next five years
The key findings of the survey are outlined in the slides
below.
Amit Deshpande and Dirk Riehle at SAP Research, have
undertaken a recent study of the growth of open source and conclude that the
growth of open source software code is growing exponentially.
The adoption of open source software is becoming
mainstream. For example BT recently decided to provide the open source
Sugar CRM system to its customers rather than the commercial Siebel product.
What are the implications for e-learning?
The big development in the e-learning market has been open
source learning management environments.
A recent Gartner survey of higher education entitled
"Higher Education E-Learning Survey 2007: Clear Movements in the
Market" found "clear movement in the market" toward more open-source
platforms in 2007. 26 percent of platforms on surveyed campuses were on open
source e-learning system such as Moodle or Sakai. Gartner projects that number
will grow to 35 percent by the end of 2008.
In the corporate sector last year’s E-learning Guild report
found that over 25% of small and medium sized businesses were using Moodle, the
open source LMS. At Kineo we are strong supporters of open source software and
if you are not familiar with Moodle you can try our free Moodle
LMS demo.
There have been less significant developments in the
authoring and development areas although there are open source authoring tools
such as eXe and many free development tools such as Audacity for audio
recording and editing which we review this month.
There are also a range of very useful open source and free
testing tools, you can find out more at Mark Aberdour’s excellent opensourcetesting.org.
The real implications of open source software though are
still be felt. Open source software is a disruptive force. The free nature of
such software means that new tools can be distributed and adopted widely in a
very short period of time. The e-learning market could be affected by
developments of open source software from the education sector which transfer
over to the commercial sector, as is happening with Moodle. We believe we will
see further open source developments from assessment software to authoring
tools to learning environments which will change the shape of e-learning over
the coming years.
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