Open Source + Commercial Support = Win

Fascinating survey out today regarding the SysAdmin attitudes to open source projects, like, you guessed it WordPress :)

Conducted by Zenoss the findings were that:

98% of respondents indicated they used open source software in some form, and on a scale of 1 to 10, rated their satisfaction between 7 and 8.
71% of 2009 respondents indicated that open source was easier than proprietary software to deploy, up from 48% in 2008, 38% in 2007, and 26% in 2006.
Between 2008 and 2009, the percentage of respondents giving financial constraint as their reason for adopting open source software doubled.
76% of sysadmins indicate they prefer to use open source whenever possible.
The number one reason for not choosing open source was a lack of support, following by poor documentation. But 46% of respondents said there was no reason not to choose open source. [emphasis mine]
More than half the respondents said that they were using some form of cloud technology, either for applications, for storage or for other services,
The top IT management priorities and plans for future open source adoption were monitoring, configuration management, patching and provisioning, and security.

So take another look at that 9.5% slice, and the main reason why people wouldn’t choose open source, namely ‘lack of support’.

Which is why services like WPMU DEV – offering as they do forums approaching 50,000 posts, live support and comprehensive manuals and videos – are such a valuable addition to the WordPress world.

Open Source Systems Management Survey.