The open source movement is hotter than ever, giving IT teams a growing array of alternatives to proprietary solutions. The rise of cloud, containers, and software-defined technologies has helped fuel the trend. In networking, the number of open source options has practically exploded in recent years.

But for enterprise IT shops, implementing open source technologies and getting involved in open source projects can be challenging. I recently met with Eric Wright, principal solutions engineer and technology evangelist at cloud and virtualization company Turbonomic, to get his take on the challenges. Wright, who participates extensively in open source communities, said open source can provide tremendous benefits, but IT pros may need to let go of some misconceptions to make it work.

Wright, who is a VMware vExpert and Cisco Champion with background that includes OpenStack, will team with other experts to lead an all-day Open Source Summit at Interop ITX in May.

One of the most commonly cited challenges with open source in the enterprise is a lack of support, but Wright said that's really more of a myth.

[Read more about the myths and misconceptions surrounding open source on Network Computing.]