p2pnet.net News Feature:- Open Source software is becoming a mainstream component in enterprise Information Technology (IT) strategy and architecture in Canada, says the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance (CATAAlliance).

"Some nine out of ten respondents include Open Source in their planning," it states.

" ‘Open’ Source differs from traditional commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products in terms of intellectual property ownership, which has significant implications in the design of commercial revenue streams, and overall software development methodology."

CATAAlliance says it surveyed Canadian "IT decision-maker perceptions" of open source software and its applicability to their organizations in terms of:

• Managing strategic change and competitiveness over time.
• Integration of new technologies into complex, heterogeneous environments.
• Return on Investment (ROI) in a portfolio context.

Sixty percent of respondents were executive level (CIO, CTO, VP). Three out of four companies represented the Small or Medium-Sized Enterprise community.

Only 13% don’t include open source in their strategy and most of them acknowledged open source as both an implicit component such as a default option for the web (eg Apache, 55%) or part of commercial hardware or software (30%); an explicit component such as open source business applications (50%); or, custom in-house code (51%) for both middleware / interoperability and business solution functionality.

"Almost half of respondents have defined formal policies and practices for both internal open source development , and only a quarter for external sharing back to the open community," says CATAAlliance

The biggest concerns and irritants with open and other (COTS) source were:

Open #1 - Intellectual property concerns
#2 - Time-consuming to research and assess

Other #1 - Pricing and licensing costs and policies
#2 - Security

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