Gartner doles out sobering predictions for open source use in the enterprise for next 5 years

The economic slowdown should benefit open source software but whether open source software will benefit its owners is up in the air.

That's according to Gartner Group predictions for 2009, which claims that over the next few years most enterprises using open source won't manage those assets correctly and most won't achieve any cost savings over proprietary software. 

I'm late to the game here, but it's worth pointing out two findings in the Gartner Predicts 2009 report, which was  published early last month:

Through the end of 2011, fewer than 50 percent of global IT organizations will have implemented a formal open source adoption and management policy.

And for the next five years, only about 50 percent of all mainstream IT projects using open source software will not achieve cost savings over closed source alternatives, according to the report's author, Mark Driver.

The data serves as good warning for enterprise IT managers and CIOs, especially those who have stuck their necks out to support open source.

Gartner's advise? In order to get a payoff, "move aggressively" to develop an open source adoption strategy and bring OSS and hardware under asset management systems.

"Do not expect to automatically save money with OSS or any technology without effective financial management," Driver writes. "Do expect to carefully manage open source solutions in the appropriate scenarios to realize total cost of ownership advantages. "

Imagine sitting down with your CEO in 2015 and explaining why the supposed cost savings of OSS never materialized with all of the energy and bucks put behind it?

Consolidation will vastly reduce the number of open source partners with whom customers do business.

Gartner predicts, for example, that by 2012, at least 50 percent of all direct commercial sales from open source products will come from projects under a single vendor's patronage. Think about Red Hat, which scooped up JBoss. Think of Sun, which acquired mySQL? What's in store for 2009?

On a good note, this may spread the use of open source (one throat to choke) and reduce the number of vendor relationships customers must support. But on the other hand, it may amass power into too few hands.

There was some good news in this otherwise  sobering report.

Through 2013, 90 percent of all cloud computing providers will rely on open source software to deliver products and services. this will no doubt stimulate more OSS sales and widespread use.

Gartner advises IT managers to manage their cloud and open source strategies together to maximize the potential of each. Tap into the ability of open source software to move workloads to the cloud, Driver also recommends in his to-do list for IT managers.