If our InformationWeek AnalyticsState of Open Source survey of 557 business technology pros proves anything, it's that those charged with selecting applications to meet evolving business needs have more options than ever. But has the overabundance of commercial, open source, and hybrid software choices really made our lives easier, or just added more complexity to an already lengthy evaluation and buying process--especially on the desktop, where years of employee resistance has made it an expensive commercial world?

We say, vive la différence. Throw software as a service and cloud offerings into the mix, and let the competition begin.

If there's an upside to a down economy, it's that business leaders who once may have dismissed open source software out of hand are likely willing to take a second look. What they'll find is that overall, it's less expensive than rival software models over the long term. And an in-house deployment of desktop open source software, while perhaps not simple, can lessen the risk of an undercapitalized SaaS vendor going south and taking your data with it.

IT pros get all that. Total cost of ownership for open source software is the top driver for the 557 respondents to our survey. Of course, closed source advocates argue that TCO doesn't always account for the "soft" costs inherent in supporting open source software, and in fact, this is the single largest drag on open source adoption in our poll.

When we zero in on desktop open source software, the picture gets more interesting. "End-user productivity is a key driver in the decision," one IT director told us. "They know [Microsoft] Office and Adobe Photoshop, so they get Word and Photoshop. But anything that they don't know or touch is fair game for open source alternatives."

Real Savings
The fact is, open source software like OpenOffice.org is one area where companies can save real money. "From our perspective--both from speaking with organizations that have made the move and from having gone through sacred-cow change processes like this--it's not so much a question of whether organizations should use free office-suite software, but rather how much to use and when," says Jonathan Feldman, IT director for the city of Asheville, N.C. and an InformationWeek Analytics contributor. "When you consider the cost of the incumbent Microsoft software--a couple of hundred dollars per license--and multiply that by hundreds or thousands of licenses, it becomes clear it's not a matter of justifying the switch, but rather explaining the additional expense of keeping Microsoft Office around."

Feldman says the fiscal rationale for switching becomes even clearer when you consider that many users of this expensive software need only basic functions. Open source alternatives, including OpenOffice, are viable and much less costly.

A technology director for a Minnesota public school district agrees. "It's coming slowly, but it's coming," he says. "As more stuff goes on the Web, there is less reason for the desktop apps needed by Windows. Most of the basic apps are available in open source. However, there is a lot of inertia toward Windows to overcome."

Indeed. End users resist change, and as a result open source software hasn't made the significant inroads onto enterprise desktops one might expect, though it does boast a respectable following among our poll respondents. Despite support worries, the majority, 54%, say they do use open source on the desktop, with the most popular apps being OpenOffice and the Firefox browser. For both of these, support is readily available, thanks to large user communities.

As for open source desktop operating systems, we saw growth in use of Linux in 2008 primarily among developers. But as this group enhances desktop Linux variants and contributes that code back to the community, projects like Ubuntu become more viable alternatives for the enterprise.

On the support front, while 18% of poll respondents purchase support from their open source vendors, most depend on internal resources. Few end users will be able to diagnose and repair even minor issues in open source desktop software, and even fewer will be able to decode the highly technical forums and wikis that comprise the support community, so competent in-house IT resources are a requirement for any organization using open source on the desktop.