Businesses to open wallets for open source

Businesses plan to spend more on open-source software in 2010 as they increasingly realise it can bring business benefits beyond potential cost savings.

According to research by Accenture, 69 percent of the 300 large private and public sector organisations from the US, UK and Ireland surveyed by the consultancy expect to spend more on open source this year than last.

Chief technology architect at Accenture, Paul Daugherty, said the findings show open source is coming of age with companies becoming interested in the software for reasons including quality and reliability, rather than just its ability to cut costs.

For more on this ZDNet UK-selected story, see Open source: Security and reliability lures businesses to up their spend on silicon.com.