A survey conducted by the Federal Open Source Alliance – a group supported by HP, Intel and Red Hat – said more than 70 per cent of respondents said their agencies would benefit from open source software.

The Federal Open Source Referendum is the first of an annual report aimed at identifying open source adoption rates and trends in federal government.

Federal ICT executives view data centre consolidation as accelerating open source transition – 58 percent of respondents note they are more likely to consider moving to open source as they consolidate data centres.

The survey found that those executives that had already implemented Open Source in a project identify advanced security as the biggest benefit, with 30 percent citing access to advanced and multi-levelled security capabilities as the top benefit.

Those that had not implemented an open source project cited security as a top challenge – 40 percent.

“The focus on data centre consolidation as an inflection point on open source migration echoes what we hear directly from Federal as well as state and local agencies,” said Red Hat government sales operations vice-president Paul Smith.

“The study underlines the perception divide on security as well as the important role that cultural attitudes to change and robust structured technical support play in open source migration success,” Mr Smith said.

“The Federal Open Source Alliance is committed to fostering collaboration to close the open source education divide and empower implementing agencies to obtain maximum value from their open source migrations.”

The study underscores the fact that open source is gathering broad-based support and an impressive record for success in the Federal space. Some 55 percent of respondents note that they have been or are involved in open source implementations and 90 percent of those respondents assert that the deployment has benefited their agency.