IDC Government Insights recently announced the availability of a new report, “Technology Selection: Open Source (News - Alert) Solutions Will Drive Data Center Consolidation and Cloud Growth.” The report examines how open source solutions are influencing government data center consolidation. As per the study, as federal agencies follow their mandate to consolidate their data centers, both government IT managers and commercial systems integrators (SIs) are focusing on the abilities of open source solutions and open software stacks to help ease this transition.

Three of today's major solutions providers are Oracle, IBM, and Hewlett-Packard (News - Alert). The new report reviews examples of solutions stacks and potential stack components, including what IDC Government Insights refers to as the open source LAMP stack, a system currently used by the government that consists of the Linux OS, Apache Web server, MySQL database, and tools such as Perl, PHP, and Python. The study details how government IT offices should leverage a two- to three-year window of opportunity to help influence the evolution of open source solution stacks chosen by large IT systems integrators (SIs).

The U.S. Federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is giving IT vendors more flexibility with the types of software they choose to integrate into their solutions, and IT systems integrators sometimes can bid lower if they eliminate licensing costs. The new report reviews the opportunities for systems integrators and IT services companies to select and customize robust enterprise-wide open source solutions to penetrate the government market and capitalize on this opportunity.

 In a press release, Shawn P. McCarthy, research director for IDC (News - Alert) Government Insights, said, “Data center consolidation is about much more than just consolidation. It's also about migrating to new platforms, improving IT economics, eliminating unnecessary software licensing fees, and reducing associated management costs. Our research indicates that with federal investment, centralized open source solution stacks have already emerged at government sites. Because of this investment, and because SIs are heavily involved in the consolidation effort, we expect to see rapid growth for some of these open solution stacks.”

Recently, IDC was in news when it won a contract from the European Commission to develop a strategic agenda for high performance computing in Europe.

Sujata Garud is a TMCnet freelancer with three years of writing/editing experience and two years of market research experience. As an editor she has covered the IT, electronics, banking, pharma, construction, mining and healthcare industries. To see more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Tammy Wolf

(source: http://it.tmcnet.com/topics/it/articles/124758-open-source-solutions-influencing-government-data-center-consolidation.htm)