Open Source Enterprise Apps for Cloud Shot Up

According to an analysis by Black Duck Software, provider of products and services for software development with the help of open source software, open source projects in terms of enterprise IT application development for cloud is expanding rapidly. Melinda-Carol Ballou, program director, application life-cycle management & executive strategies, IDC further added that enterprise IT developers reconfigured their application and they are tending more towards low-cost open source solution because of the financial crisis in the last 24 months. Although, many open source projects suitable for cloud development and deployment don’t refer cloud, Black Duck found almost 400 similar type of projects.

“Open source’s low barriers to entry and abundance offer significant time-to-market advantages and make it an emerging and important element of cloud development strategies for enterprise developers. At the same time, organizations must put in effective open source assessment and management capabilities to leverage it as part of a complex software sourcing strategy for the cloud and for other environments,”  added Ballou.

The analysis shows that there is a 70 percent growth of projects associated with cloud computing from 2008 to 2009. The report further said that these cloud-specific open source projects have nearly 50 million lines of code. The vice president of Black Duck software continued that there are projects that focus on security, privacy, and management. He added, “The variety of projects that self-identify as ‘cloud’ is much broader in scope, reflecting the sophistication of the cloud application ecosystem and confirming the importance of OSS cloud software developed to support the needs of enterprise IT.”