Open Source and the Federal Budget Squeeze, Part 2

Part 1 of this two-part series takes a look at some of the reasons government agencies are turning to open source to get more IT bang for their dwindling bucks.

The marketing stars appear to be coming into alignment for the vendors of open source offerings who are targeting the U.S. government. Significant barriers to adopting open source technology at the federal level are breaking down, and tight budgets provide an opportunity for vendors to emphasize the cost savings features of open technologies. Despite these advantages, vendors will still have to work harder to develop marketing channels to capitalize on the potential for federal sales.

For all IT providers, the federal market is a continuing opportunity. "The United States government is the world's largest purchaser of information technology, with an annual IT budget over (US)$80 billion," Federal CIO Vivek Kundra told the World Economic Forum in early November.

Just fractions of that amount are attractive to vendors, for whatever IT specialty they offer -- including open source solutions. "We don't really focus on an overall market figure, since open source can't be described as a monolithic entity. We prefer to emphasize the value it creates in a specific application," Gunnar Hellekson, chief technology strategist at Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), told LinuxInsider.