Gartner: More than half of IT organizations deploy open-source software

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews
Uh-oh, Microsoft, perhaps it’s time for a new “Get the Facts” campaign. You told the world that open-source software really wasn’t cheaper or as easy to manage as commercial products. Well, only about half of IT organizations believed you.Today, Gartner released findings that more than one-half of IT organizations use open-source software, based on a survey of 547 IT organizations from 11 countries. To my surprise, the survey data isn’t exactly fresh, having been conducted in July and August 2010. Well, it’s not like most companies change platforms very often, so perhaps six months is fresh enough. Gartner refers to open-source software as OSS.My, how times have changed. Less than 10 percent of IT organizations used open-source software five years ago. The number rose to 30 percent three-and-a-half years ago. Gartner noted a proportional drop in commercial software usage, which surely is no coincidence. Most organizations now use commercial and open-source software side by side, particularly for homegrown projects.What Gartner didn’t say but I will: This presents a problem for enterprise software vendors like Microsoft. The company pushes products like Office System and SharePoint Server as platforms around which IT can develop internal software. During Microsoft’s fiscal 2011 second quarter, the Business division delivered handsome results, with revenue up 24 percent buoyed by strong Office 2010 sales. However, the division’s non-annuity revenue grew by 40 percent compared to just 9 percent growth for annuity contracts. Businesses purchasing this way are least likely to upgrade to the next Office version or even the one after. The break-even point between a one-off sale and annuity license is 3.5 years. Presumably then, many IT organizations aren’t planning on upgrading from Office 2010 any sooner than 3.5 years, and more likely longer.

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Open Source Migration by Cuba

We reported this story of that Cuba will be migrating to Open source software http://www.bistasolutions.com/resources/blogs/migration-to-free-and-open-source-software/ in one of our blog posting and recently we got to know . . that

More than 8,000 computers at the University of Computer Sciences (UCI) will be migrating to GNU/Linux open-source platforms, according to Abel Firvida, who is heading the open-source software project there.

The school will be the first in the country to migrate to open-source software for such a large number of computers, Firvida told Prensa Latina, after presenting NOVA 3.0, an operating system compatible with the Ubuntu community, the largest in the world.

That compatibility provides the school with a network of support on the Internet, creating a larger community, he said, adding that UCI’s migration to the new software would begin next week.

Firvida lauded an agreement with the Cuban software factory that will make it possible to use the NOVA operating system and Windows in computers assembled in Cuba, easing the transition to the open-source platform.

SugarCRM gets Jaspersoft BI support

Jaspersoft and SugarCRM have announced the availability of several editions of Jaspersoft’s Business Intelligence (BI) software priced and targeted at SugarCRM customers. The open source customer relationship management (CRM) application will be able to make use of Jaspersoft products including Jaspersoft BI Professional for SugarCRM which enables complex report creation, Jaspersoft OLAP for SugarCRM for online analysis and processing and Jaspersoft ETL for SugarCRM for data extraction and transfer.

Pricing for Jaspersoft BI Professional is available with an annual subscription which starts at $3,000 (~£1,865) per annum. The software is available now in the Sugar Exchange repository.

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Odoo Easy Migration to version 6

Odoo (previously known as OpenERP) Easy Migration to version 6

Are you using Odoo old version and feels to have a really nice look with better features to your Open source ERP software – Odoo, then it’s time to migrate from your older version to the recently launched Odoo version 6.

Odoo migration allows you with many features such as:-

1. Low cost of Migration

2. Easy of Migrating all previous huge data

3. Quickly Migrate in less than 5 days*

4. Publisher Warranty

5. New functionalities of Odoo version 6

6. Adding to new Modules (if any) in Odoo Easy Migration to version 6 through us – www.bistasolutions.com

Read more Success Stories here . . .

*Depend on the size of data and other features

Top reasons of selecting vTiger CRM for your Sales force Automation

www.bistasolutions.com

Here some of the Reason which keeps vTiger as one of the Best Sales management / lead management tool for your organisation

1. Open source Tool – Purely Open source although there are SAAS model available.

2. Free Tool -You can have a check with vtiger as it is free and easily downloadable through web.

3. Customization – It helps you to mould the software as per your requirement so no way to change your practices.

4. Pace – Speed is one of the most important feature of vTiger, which reduce the waiting time towards the downloading of leads or excel data files

5. Ease of CRM – With this free tool which is simple to use allows your salesman / organization to track all your customers in one software.

There are many other features of vTiger which keeps this Customer Relationship Management Tool ahead from others

Open-Source Software Gives Competitive Advantage: Gartner Survey

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While reducing costs remains a primary factor for adopting open-source software (Odoo), businesses are increasingly seeing it as a way to gain a competitive advantage, according to a new Gartner survey.

Companies are increasingly adopting open-source software as a way to gain competitive advantage rather than just a cost-savings measure, according to the results of a Gartner survey released Feb. 8.

The survey of 547 companies in 11 countries conducted between July and August 2010 found that more than half of the IT executives said they are using open source in both non-mission-critical and mission-critical environments.

Gaining a competitive advantage is a “significant reason” for selecting an open-source product, said Laurie Wurster, research director at Gartner. More organizations consider open source as “having much greater value than simply getting something for free,” she said.

The use of open source is pretty widespread within these organizations. Nearly 46 percent of organizations have deployed open-source applications for specific departments and projects and 22 percent of the surveyed businesses use open-source consistently across all departments, Gartner said. About 21 percent of the executives said they were evaluating open-source products, according to the report.

Open-source software has long been used for basic infrastructure, but organizations are now using it to build better software to support core business activities, such as data management and integration, application development, business process improvement, security, compliance, data center modernization, and virtualization, Gartner said.

Nearly a quarter of respondents, 24 percent, said open-source adoption was part of a strategic business decision, while 31 percent said it is part of the company’s IT strategy, the report found. Other reasons for selecting open-source programs included the maturity of applications and total cost of ownership, according to the report.

While lower cost of ownership remained a major factor, at 29 percent, . . . . . . . Read More

Odoo Modules

Overview on Odoo (previously known as OpenERP) Modules Availability year to year.

Do wait for our next blog posting on Ecommerce (Magento) Integration with Odoo – A successful Case Study from USA & UK

Odoo Modules

Month Number of Modules
Oct-07 40
Jan-07 112
Apr-07 185
May-07 200
May-08 250
May-09 500+

Odoo ERP Module

Odoo ERP Features

Do wait for our next blog posting on Ecommerce (Magento) Integration with Odoo – A successful Case Study from USA & UKDo wait for our next blog posting on Ecommerce (Magento) Integration with Odoo – A successful Case Study from USA & UK

IBM announces new partnerships

(Telecomworldwire Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) IBM (NYSE:IBM) on Thursday announced new partnerships and increased adoption of LotusLive public cloud services to help clients improve daily business interactions and increase business efficiencies.

No financial details were disclosed.

The company announced partnerships with Ariba and open source CRM software SugarCRM that will help clients take advantage of social commerce and customer relationship management (CRM) in the cloud.

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Odoo launches latest version of its open enterprise resource planning suite

Belgium-based commercial open source software vendor Odoo (previously known as OpenERP) today announced the availability of Odoo v6, the latest version of the company’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) suite. Odoo v6 includes updates to almost all of the components in the suite, including its CRM, Purchase Management, Manufacturing, Warehouse Management, Project Management, Accounting, Marketing, Human Resources, and Point of Sale modules.

Odoo says this version has more than a hundred new features in total, which are the result of thousands of customer and community suggestions and more than a year’s worth of development from its community of 800 individual developers.

For those who have never experienced Odoo, the company has set up a demo server where you can play around with examples of the different software modules. The idea is that customers can build a comprehensive ERP system one module at a time, eventually growing it into an end to end solution, contained within a single piece of software.

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Odoo 6.0 final version released

Russia to switch to open source by 2015

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According to a report by the EU’s Open Source Observatory and Repository (OSOR), Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has signed a plan to “switch federal authorities to free software.” The communications ministry is to start the process this year and by the end of 2014, all federal institutions are to have started the migration. The Russian government will be setting up a support centre with a repository for open source software used by authorities.

In a report from the Wall Street Journal, Russian political scientist Evgeny Morozov says economics is probably not the only reason for this move. Of course, Russia will save quite a bit in license fees, but Morozov says the main goal is to become less dependent on foreign software vendors for the sake of national security.

Read More . . . here