Black Duck Software Survey Reveals Top Technology Trends, Challenges and Barriers to Open Source Software Use Affecting Enterprise Development Organizations

WALTHAM, Mass., May 4, 2010 -  Software developers from leading global enterprises are looking to cloud computing and mobility as platforms for innovation while facing increased pressure to produce more with fewer resources. Meanwhile, developers are increasing usage of open source software (OSS) to improve efficiencies and accelerate development cycles, but barriers to greater usage of OSS across the enterprise persist. Even among early adopters, few enterprises are fully leveraging the potential time and cost savings of broader use of OSS.

These are the results of a recent survey of development executives from fourteen leading global enterprises conducted by Black Duck Software (www.blackducksoftware.com), the leading global provider of products and services for accelerating software development through the managed use of open source software. Enterprises participating in the survey represent leaders in a range of industries, including semi-conductor, financial services, business software, mobile, healthcare, media and entertainment and data storage.

Cloud Computing, Virtualization and Mobile Spur Application Development

When asked about the top technology trends affecting application development, survey participants reported innovations in cloud computing/virtualization and mobile as the most disruptive technologies currently influencing development projects across the enterprise. Respondents also cited distributed development/collaboration, Agile development methods and multi-company collaboration on OSS projects as top trends impacting development projects. 

Developers Doing More with Less

While cloud computing, mobile and distributed development trends are ramping up the intensity and pace of application development, development managers said that they are under pressure to increase the number of products and releases per year with fewer resources and under tighter budget restrictions. Respondents said that contributing back to OSS projects is another top challenge: they want and need to contribute back, but the lack of formal policies within the enterprise for managing OSS contributions remains the top barrier to participation.

Collaboration and sharing source code globally across distributed teams in addition to processes for enabling code standardization and re-use across the enterprise also were cited as top application development challenges.

OSS Project Contribution Barriers Impeding Broader Use

The fourteen global enterprises participating in the survey are early adopters and leaders in leveraging OSS for improving the efficiency of the software development process; nonetheless, virtually every enterprise said that they are only partially harnessing the potential of OSS. When asked why, respondents cited the lack of a more comprehensive policy and strategy for OSS as the top barrier. Developers responding to this question reiterated the challenges of contributing back to OSS projects as another major barrier to greater use of OSS. As a result -- respondents reported -- developer changes are often not integrated into the mainstream code base, reducing the development team's ability to rely on the OSS projects they're using for the long term.

Although not among the top impediments to greater use of OSS, respondents cited executive buy in/support, concerns about the cost and complexity of managing OSS use, and the perceived risk of OSS as additional challenges.

"These survey results show that the top global enterprises understand the value of using open source software in the application development process, but barriers to broader adoption persist," said Jim Berets, vice president of product management at Black Duck Software. "Most of these barriers can be traced to the lack of an enterprise-wide open source strategy and clear policies and procedures for managing its use. The good news is these barriers appear to be falling rapidly as development organizations realize the benefits of open source and take proactive steps to adopt strategies, policies and solutions for managing its use across the global enterprise."

For more information about Black Duck's Enterprise Software Development Challenges Survey or to request an interview with Black Duck, contact Ann Dalrymple at adarlrymple@topazpartners.com, or by phone at 781-404-2432.

About Black Duck Software
Black Duck Software is the leading provider of products and services for automating the management, governance and secure use of open source software, at enterprise scale, in a multi-source development process. Black Duck™ enables companies to shorten time-to-market and reduce development costs while mitigating the management, security and compliance challenges associated with open source software. Black Duck Software powers Koders.com, the industry's leading code search engine for open source, and is among the 500 largest software companies in the world, according to Softwaremag.com. The company is headquartered near Boston and has offices in San Mateo, California, London, Paris, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Beijing. For more information, visit www.blackducksoftware.com.

Black Duck, Know Your Code and the Black Duck logo are registered trademarks of Black Duck Software, Inc. in the United States and other jurisdictions. Koders is a trademark of Black Duck Software, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.