IDC has also predicted that the market will grow by a compound annual growth rate of 26% from 2006 to reach $5.8bn in 2011, driven by customer interest in increased choice and more comfort with the subscription revenue business model.
The research firm woke up to the potential impact of open source software last year when it described open source software as the most significant all-encompassing and long-term trend that the software industry has seen since the early 1980s and predicted it would fundamentally change the value proposition of packaged software for customers.
Our view
Perhaps more significant than the value placed on the open source market is that fact that IDC has chosen to calculate a figure at all. The big analyst/research firms have been slow to pick up on the impact of open source beyond Linux, so the research report is indicative of the fact that open source has passed another enterprise acceptance milestone.
