Is Open Source the Future of UK Retail?
The deployment of open-source software looks set increase across UK retail businesses, as Red Hat chief executive Jim Whitehurst says the company is targeting new British markets
Posted by Killian McAleese, 1st April 2011
Despite the fact that the UK was described in The Register a year ago as a “closed source stronghold”, businesses here are no strangers to open-source software. Across the financial and telecoms sectors there has already been significant interest in and implementation of Linux.
This trend is also partly true of government and military uptake. While the UK government and civil service still rely heavily on Microsoft products, the cost-cutting benefits of open source have certainly not been lost on the current, budget-strapped government, with the cabinet this week publishing a paper on the issue.
This week Computer World reported that Jim Whitehurst, Red Hat CEO, identified several sectors that Red Hat aims to expand into, including retail, which he said were “big sectors for growth” for open source.
Billion Dollar Open-Source
The strategy of expanding into “non-traditional markets” like retail and transport has already been undertaken by Red Hat in the US.
It should be noted that this is not just a throwaway comment from some ambitious CEO: Red Hat is an enormously successful company which increased year-on-year revenue by 25% in 2010 and is expected to be the first open source business to reach the billion dollar mark for turnover in 2011.
Recent years have seen the development of several successful open-source platforms which have made inroads in retail, especially online retail. Notable amongst these are the various editions of the Magento ecommerce platform.
While there remains scepticism about the government's open source aspirations as announced by the cabinet office this week, retailers are not as likely to pass up on the opportunity to cut costs with open source.
What looks likely to be the first billion dollar open source business has big plans for the UK, and retailers are high on the agenda.
Open Plus and Open Source
Find out about the open-source software solutions Open Plus offers on our Open-Source IT Solutions page.
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