Open source services market on course to become $50B industry

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The open source services market, pegged at $21.7 billion in 2021, is on course to more than double within five years. That’s according to a new report from MarketsandMarkets, which predicts that the “professional” and “managed” open source services segments will grow 130% to $50 billion by 2026.

“Open source” refers to software that is made freely available for anyone to access, copy, and modify. It adheres to a collaborative, community-led philosophy that lowers both the bar to entry and the cost of building software. It also gives larger enterprises the freedom to deploy software wherever they wish, including on-premises — offering them greater control over customer data and allowing developers to more easily integrate the software into their existing systems and workflows.

On the flip side, switching to open source software might present compatibility issues, while inherent vulnerabilities and the threat of supply chain attacks can be another cause for concern. This is why the open source services market is predicted to flourish in the coming years, with MarketsandMarkets citing cloud computing adoption and broader digital transformations as a driving force behind this push. Enterprise-grade open source services support helps assure companies that their software stack is robust, secure, and kept up-to-date.

Notable players in the open source services space include Red Hat, which IBM acquired for $34 billion in 2018; Cisco; Oracle; Suse; and Databricks.