Obsidian gains from recession-driven focus on open source solutions
Such is the growing acceptance of open source software (OSS) in the enterprise that Obsidian, southern Africa`s leading enterprise open source provider, recorded its best year despite the global recession. "The appetite for open source solutions is healthy and growing, helped in part by the need to optimise IT spend, but also due to more organisations being exposed to the operational benefits of running these systems," says Muggie van Staden, Obsidian MD. "The local market is still a little behind the global growth and adoption curve, but is showing strong enough growth for us to have recorded 25% growth over the previous financial year. "While the recession certainly prompted more IT departments and CIOs to consider open source solutions, we have seen continued investment in our solutions even since the economic outlook started improving. This shows us that they have realised the value and viability of OSS, which bodes well for the industry as a whole."