IT Managers Journal has an interview with Mark Driver, a Gartner vice president and research director and the official host for the 2005 Open Source Summit.

Some excerpts from the article:

Driver made four quantitative predictions:

By 2010, 75 percent of mainstream IT organizations will have formal open source acquisition and management strategies. Gartner gave an 80% probability of this occurring.

By 2008, open-source software solutions will directly compete with closed source products in all software infrastructure markets. Again Gartner attached an 80% probability to this assumption.

By 2010, mainstream IT organizations will consider open source software in 80% of their infrastructure-focused software investments. This statement had a slightly lower 70% probability.

By 2010, open source will be included in mission-critical software portfolios within 75% of Global 2000 enterprises. This assumption carried a 90% probability.

Driver for open source software for business?

• The new, fixed-term software license fees introduced by several large vendors.
  


• Significant lobbying activities by vendors that support OSS.
  


• antitrust cases that have raised the profile of Microsoft as being the single dominant vendor.
  


• The realization by several government entities that technology expenditures are not netting the desired results for the dollars spent.
  


• A wider acceptance by business users of OSS solutions.
  


• The widening of choice of supported OSS products.

However, as the open source movement gains momentum, the question on the minds of many IT managers is not one of whether they should consider the benefits of open source, but rather when, where, and how open source can play a role in addressing their IT business challenges.

Prashanth RaiTag(s):Open+Source,Gartner