The best known Open Source software is Linux. According to IDC, Linux has almost a 15% share of the server market by dollars. That doesn’t even count the millions of freely deployed Linux servers. But Open Source has grown up beyond well-known infrastructure software like Linux, Apache and MySQL. Open Source now plays at all levels of the software stack, including critical business applications such as CRM, ERP, and BI. Gartner predicts that by 2011 Open Source software will account for 27% of the $169.2 billion software market.
Open Source is also having a major impact on computing by enabling the availability of low-cost, ubiquitous, network computing resources (cloud computing). Cloud enabled applications will arise in 2010 as the next generation of software-as-a-service. The SaaS market is evolving from multi-tenant monolithic infrastructures towards open, distributed SaaS applications powered by open source and cloud computing. These new “distributed SaaS” applications, powered by cloud computing services, are proving an attractive alternative to the older multi-tenant solutions.
Larry Augustin, CEO of SugarCRM, lead this discussion. Larry is an angel investor and advisor to early stage technology companies. He currently serves on the Boards of Directors of Appcelerator, Compiere, DeviceVM, DotNetNuke, Fonality, Hyperic, Medsphere, Pentaho and SugarCRM. One of the group who coined the term “Open Source”, he has written and spoken extensively on Open Source worldwide. Worth Magazine named him to their list of the Top 50 CEOs in 2000. From 2002 to 2004 he was a Venture Partner at Azure Capital Partners. In 1993 he founded VA Linux (now SourceForge, NASDAQ:LNUX) serving as CEO until August 2002. While CEO he launched SourceForge.net and led the company through an IPO in December 1999.