60% of US financial firms use open source software

Is open source the future?

It appears that open source software could be the future of IT technology in the financial industry. According to a survey from Accenture, around 60 percent of financial services firms in the US say they are fully committed to, and are already using, open source software.

The survey saw over 300 public and private sector organizations questioned (in the UK and Ireland as well as the US) with the firms all having annual revenue of over $500 million. Of those asked, nearly two thirds of respondents from the financial services industry were committed to open source while only seven percent said they have looked at it but decided against.

However in comparison, only 38 percent of respondents from the public sector are fully committed while 15 percent have decided against.

What was most interesting though was that a third of financial services respondents said that open source was changing their business culture for the better, while 40 percent said they thought it was changing the way IT is operated.

Competitive advantage

Backing the technology, 13 percent said that believed that the benefits of open source "will generate a true competitive advantage" over those using propriety software while 33 percent thought there were not enough open source alternatives to use it confidently across the entire business.

The survey also revealed that for the financial firms, the biggest concern in opting for open source software was cost especially in the wake of the recession. However those asked did they could potentially see savings of up to 44 percent in the long run. As such, three quarters of respondents in the UK and US cited quality as a key benefit of open source while two thirds said it improved overall reliability.

All this meant that in 2009, 20 percent of developments were in open source, but this is expected to rise to 23 percent this year and 27 percent by 2013.

Speaking to Finextra, Paul Daugherty, chief technology architect, Accenture, says: "What we are seeing is the coming of age of open source. Through both our research and our work with clients, we are seeing an increase in demand for open source based on quality, reliability and speed, not just cost savings."

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