Smaller Budgets, Not Smaller Deployments

My fave tech industry insider, The Reg, today reports on an IDC study that indicates the recession is speeding adoption of Linux. The conclusion mirrors what we’ve been seeing at water&stone as well, that is, while the downturn has lead to a few people deferring projects, many have not, choosing instead to consider lower cost alternatives.

As the study put it: “IDC has found that economic downturns lead to a reduction in spending, but not necessarily an equal-sized reduction in deployments. In fact, past recessions have helped to accelerate platform shifts that were in progress.”

Note, this isn’t a fluffy little single digit shift in trends — a full 72% of the firms evaluated indicated that they “are either actively evaluating or have already decided to increase their adoption of Linux on the server in 2009.” Perhaps more surprising: 68% made the same claim for the desktop!

:: UPDATED 28 March ::

RedHat is reporting a 25% jump in their annual revenues, noting “Our value proposition is even more compelling in a challenging economic environment, and we believe that’s a key driver to our solid financial results and market share gains.” At least, that’s according to a story at ArsTechnica.

:: UPDATED 27 March ::

North Bridge Venture Partners have released their 2009 Future of Open Source survey results. Not only is it consistent with the conclusions in this posting, but it also indicates the web content management is one of the top areas set for disruption by this trend. The presentation can be viewed at SlideShare.