Survey says, open source becomes mission critical

A Forrester survey for Unisys shows over half of large enterprises now use open source for mission critical operations. Four out of five (79%) use it in what Forrester calls their "application infrastructure" -- databases, Web servers, application servers.

The point of the survey was to show that these customers want more services from vendors, things like maintenance, life cycle support, integration and application development. This is the "sweet spot" for companies like Unisys, and has been the sweet spot at IBM for several years now.

The survey shows that clients are dissatisfied with the present levels of service they are getting. This is music to Unisys' ears.  

Major vendors believe they can extract just as much money as before from major clients by simply renaming what they offer. It's not a license, it's a support contract. It's not a profit center, it's integration support.

Maybe. The whole point of the enterprise open source market is these folks know they have to pay for what works, that you can't get something worthwhile for nothing. As George Carlin said, "you can spell your name S-M-I-T-H and pronounce it Genofsky if you like." The vendor still gets paid.

But will they be paid as much? As enterprises gain real ownership over their software infrastructure, what happens to the relationship? What has to change, on the vendor end?

Ask customers that and you'll have a story.