More than 40% of organizations in Ireland will use some form of open source software in 2006, according to a wide-reaching study of 250 CIOs in Ireland regarding their IT and telecom expectations for 2006 by iReach, a research company in Dublin.

The growing use of open source software will be driven by several factors, said iReach. While telecommunications operators, technology companies and the government have historically been open source users, new sectors such as financial services are expected to increasingly turn to open source tools. Reduced security concerns and the more prevalent ability to customize the software are attracting those new users to open source products, iReach found

Beyond the corporation, iReach also expects to see open source products reach further into homes.Overall, spending on enterprise software will increase by 5% in 2006, the researcher found. Database, messaging, integration and business intelligence software will account for a growing proportion of enterprise software investments.

Source: 1Prashanth RaiTag(s):Open+Source