Percona Survey Shows Enterprises Increasing Reliance on Open Source Software

Pandemic has accelerated database workloads moving to the cloud, but costs rise along with licensing concerns

RALEIGH, N.C.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–#database–Enterprises have a deep appreciation for the value of open source software with 100% of the information technology (IT) decision-makers in a recent survey saying that “using open source provides benefits for their organization.” The survey of 200 IT decision-makers was conducted over the past month by Vanson Bourne and sponsored by Percona, a leader in open source database software and services.

Over the past disruptive 12 months, use of open source software was reported as increasing by 79% of respondents.

The survey comes ahead of the annual Percona Live ONLINE Open Source Database Conference 2021 and was commissioned to understand the business perspective of open source software. Of the 200 respondents, 25% were from medium-size enterprises of 500-999 employees and 75% were from large enterprises with more than 1,000 employees. They came from a cross-section of industries and had knowledge of open source software.

Large enterprise respondents were most likely to have moved databases and applications to cloud services. Just 15% of large enterprises continue to have all their databases and applications running at their on-premises data center, compared with 29% of medium-size enterprises.

The transition to the cloud was accelerated by the worldwide pandemic and demand for flexible, fast, and reliable technology. However, it’s likely the increase in demand led to an increase in costs — 68% of respondents say that cloud infrastructure has become more expensive in the past year.

When asked about the benefits of using open source, 63% of respondents cited increased innovation, 58% cited improved security, while 50% said cost saving, and 21% said avoiding vendor lock-in.

Nearly half of survey respondents indicated concerns over changing open source licenses, such as the Business Source License (BSL) and Server Side Public License (SSPL). Respondents selected the following drawbacks: it will increase costs (44%); it encourages lock-in (37%); discourages engagement from the open source community (34%); and discourages growth in the open source market (26%).

The survey also asked how public cloud providers can contribute back to open source. 59% said by providing better security, 48% said by encouraging open source collaboration, 43% said by improving existing code quality and 43% said by enabling open source to run on their cloud.

In his keynote address on May 12 at Noon Eastern, Peter Zaitsev, CEO of Percona, will address the findings of the survey in more detail, along with the impact of licensing changes and the importance of keeping open source truly open. The full survey results will be released at Percona Live ONLINE.

About Percona

With more than 3,000 customers worldwide, Percona is the only company that delivers enterprise-class solutions for MySQL, MariaDB, MongoDB and PostgreSQL across traditional and cloud-based platforms. The company provides Software, Support, Professional Services, and Managed Services to large, well-known global brands such as Cisco Systems, Time Warner Cable, Alcatel-Lucent, Rent the Runway and the BBC, as well as smaller enterprises looking to maximize application performance while streamlining database efficiencies. Well established as thought leaders, Percona experts author content for the Percona Database Performance Blog, and the Percona Live Open Source Database Conferences draw attendees and expert technical speakers from around the world. For more information, visit www.percona.com.

Percona is a registered trademark of Percona LLC. All other registered and unregistered trademarks in this document are the sole property of their respective owners.

Contacts

Glenn Rossman

Eckert Communications (for Percona)

glenn@eckertcomms.com
914-623-8354