There's enough business benefit from open source to use it for applications critical to business in key areas such as driving revenue and enhancing customer service, according to a new report produced by Forrester Research for Unisys.

The majority of respondents to the study, based on interviews with nearly 500 IT decision makers, including senior executives, also are using open source for mission-critical applications, but showed concern about the availability of services to unlock the full value of open source solutions.

 
More than half of the respondents – 58 percent in North America and 51 percent in the UK and Continental Europe – stated that they now use open source software for mission-critical applications. More than 79 percent report using open source in the application infrastructure – databases, Web servers and application servers – which provides the underpinning for both routine and mission-critical applications.