Open Source IT Embraces Cloud Computing, Google App Engine

Cloud computing is gaining strong momentum in the open source community, with close half of all professionals saying they will offer their apps as web services via cloud providers. Google's Apps Engine, so far, is the top cloud provider-of-choice, says a survey by Evans Data Corp.

by Vance McCarthy

Tags: Open Source, Survey, Cloud, Apps, Evans, Web Services, Database,


Cloud computing is gaining strong momentum in the open source community, with close half of all professionals saying they will offer their apps as web services via cloud providers. Google's Apps Engine, so far, is the top cloud provider-of-choice, says a survey by Evans Data.

The Evans Data's Open Source Development Survey was conducted in November 2008 and released in mid-January. Researchers surveyed more than 360 open source IT professionals.

In summary of its cloud findings, Evans found some 40% of al open source devs plan to launch their apps using web services/cloud architecture; Some 30% of all open source software is now distributed through open source software portals - more than than any other way.

As to popularity of cloud providers, Evan's survey found 28% of those who plan to use the cloud, say they intend to use Google's App Engine, while 15% plan to use Amazon's services, according to the survey. Cloud services offered by other vendors including Microsoft, IBM, and Salesforce are not as popular, at least not yet, the survey found.

"As costs increase for power, staff and data center resources, more businesses are being attracted to the latest promise: moving more of the company's infrastructure and applications into a third-party provided cloud," said John Andrews, President and CEO of Evans Data Corp., in a statement. "Many companies are using this model to not only reduce infrastructure costs but simultaneously increase their computational capabilities."

Evans' survey also found the following trends in other popular open source technologies:

  • Just over half (52%) use Linux in a virtualized environment.
  • MySQL remains the open source database of choice, with more than 50% of all devs using it on at least one project. To compare, some two thirds of the devs surveyed use either a commercial or open source SQL database. Only 10% say they use a relational database management system (RDBMS).
  • One in five developers use the Flex programming language at least some of the time.

    • Sample pages from Evans Data's Open Source Development Survey and a table of contents are available here..

    back

    Share
    Go