Gartner says 85 percent of companies using open source

It was a bit of a surprise to me to see such a high number in this ZDnet article, but this is a global study across the Asia/Pacific, Europe and North American markets. Gartner points out that companies should have a governance process to identify and manage the potential intellectual property risk. Finally, companies should be aware that although open source software is free, this does not mean that it has no cost ...

The study says that 85 percent of companies are already using open-source software, with most of the remaining 15 percent expecting to do so within the next year, according to analysts at Gartner. In terms of the business processes for which open-source software is being used, customer service headed Gartner's list, although enterprise integration, finance and administration and business analytics also showed strongly.

Follow-up: CIO.com has an article about this pervasiveness of open source, and concludes that Gartner is urging companies to adopt and enforce open source software (OSS) policies.