India’s FOSS Market Gaining Momentum
Express Computer (of India) publishes a detailed investigation of the growing importance of FOSS in Indian computing, titled “OSS Diversifies as it Gains Acceptance.”
“A lot of organisations are using Open Source solutions even though they may not be running an end to end OSS solution stack. The OSS landscape in India is changing rapidly because of the demands that customers are placing on vendors to offer a business advantage, value for money and reduce the risk associated with making long-term technology investments.”
In some ways, adoption is happening the reverse of the process in the US and Europe. End user applications may be switching to FOSS first: “In India, enterprise productivity tools such as OpenOffice have become quite popular. However, to a large extent, enterprises haven’t adopted open source applications at the back-end.”
The article mentions the major factors behind Linux’s rapid adoption as cost, interoperability, stability, security, innovation and choice.
One of my key interests is open source on the desktop. And the article touches on that subject too:
“In India the adoption of the Linux on the desktop is at a nascent stage. Mass adoption on the desktop is still a dream. Pradhan says, “This is a key area of interest for Red Hat today, since we have visibly moved beyond the platform and are now making ourselves felt in applications developed around Linux.”
The Linux operating system is already making inroads in Indian enterprises with huge deployments such as LIC with 2,000 desktops. 6,000 schools in Uttar Pradesh have adopted Linux in their curriculum.”
With Red Hat doubling in size in India each year, I expect to see a lot more migrations to Linux and OpenOffice throughout the country’s educational and broader IT sectors.