New Evans Data Study Shows Fragmented Open Source Market

Business Wire, April 3, 2006

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. -- Evans Data Corp today announced that the results of its newest survey on Open Source and Linux development show a market that is deeply fragmented with no clear leader. When over 400 Open Source developers were asked to name the company that provides the best OSS offerings, Red Hat, Novell, IBM, Sun, and several others were named but no company was mentioned by more than 12% of the developers. Red Hat, mentioned by 11.7% and Novell, 10.5%, were the two most commonly named followed by IBM and Sun.

"This is the classic early growth profile for innovative new market segments," said John Andrews, President and COO of Evans Data. "While there is no distinct leader at this time, the four companies mentioned most, Red Hat, Novell, IBM, and Sun, have devoted tremendous resources to the Open Source community and are poised for huge gains in this sector."

Over 70% of Open Source developers also indicated that application development tools were the OSS implementations most likely to be considered for adoption in their companies during the next 2 years, followed by browsers (69.3%), databases (65.4%), and operating systems (63.8%).

In other findings:

--Cost is not the main driver for OSS adoption. The philosophy of open source was the most important motivator for 25.5% of the developers, followed by access to source code for 22.4%.

--Use of a Web UI is the main strategy for cross-platform development amongst OSS developers.

--Applications for back end systems and infrastructure are the main type of OSS being developed by 22.5% of Open Source developers, followed by Web applications 20.9%, and Desktop applications, 11.7%

About Evans Data Corporation

Evans Data Corporation (www.evansdata.com) provides regularly updated IT industry market intelligence based on in-depth surveys of the global developer population. Evans' syndicated research includes surveys focused on developers in a wide variety of subjects. Evans Data has recently announced their Development Products Conference to be held June 15 and 16 in San Jose, CA.

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