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Survey Confirms Strategic Importance of Open Source

New report sees open source move ‘out of the basement and into the boardroom’

London, UK, July 19th, 2007:  The acquisition and deployment of open source software is now a strategic imperative for UK business, according to research released today by Ingres. The Managing 21st Century Business Information survey questioned IT professionals from the UK’s largest public sector and enterprise organisations on a host of open source and information management issues.

The report found that the versatility and adaptability of the open source model is allowing companies to eliminate historic vendor lock-in, reduce database management costs and rapidly develop critical business applications, including Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing and CRM solutions.

And open source is gaining in popularity. 77 percent of businesses were either planning to deploy, or had already deployed, open source software in their core business systems, shattering outdated preconceptions of the inappropriateness of such technology in a mission-critical enterprise environment.

The top three issues keeping IT Directors awake at night are ‘reducing cost’, ‘adding value to the business’ and ‘Keeping the IT lights on’ – while the drive to achieve real business benefit through rapid application delivery was a strong theme running through the findings.

With 89 percent of respondents rating the ‘right database’ as having a significant or critical role in addressing these challenges, the increasing demand for new, more flexible information management strategies is clear.

Further findings of the survey include:
• Exploding Security Myths: Two out of three IT professionals believe that security is no more or less of an issue for open source software as it is in the closed source world
• Questions of Cost: Seven out of ten respondents agreed that open source will deliver the cost savings that are now demanded from today’s IT departments
• Licence Revoked:  69 percent of respondents believe closed source software vendors cannot justify the high licence fees they typically charge
• Open Source Deployment: Despite the relative immaturity of the open source database market, respondents believe developing and deploying applications is more straightforward on open source, than in the proprietary world

Commenting on the survey results, Brian Mort, Senior Vice President, Northern Europe, Ingres Corp., said: “There can be little doubt that open source has now moved out of the basement and into the boardroom. Open source databases, for example, are already delivering real value in some of the world’s most demanding and sensitive environments – from military, police and air-traffic control systems right through to telecommunications, utilities and financial services. To do so, open source had to grow up and offer the highest levels of service, support, security and enterprise-grade reliance, on top of the well documented business model flexibility and collaborative nature of product development.

“All the evidence in the study confirms this, and the enthusiasm for open source promises to continue at pace as the market matures and the reality of achieving real business value explodes many of the long-held and inaccurate myths.”

For a complimentary copy of the research, please contact: dan@octopuscomms.net

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About Ingres
Ingres Corporation is the leading Business Open Source software company, created in November 2005 as part of a partnership between CA, Inc. (NYSE: CA) and Garnett & Helfrich Capital. Based on more than 25 years of technology investment, Ingres Corporation offers a product family of enterprise-class, highly scalable databases and tools that are currently being used by more than 10,000 major global customers and partners. Ingres's database technology is also embedded in a large number of major third-party software offerings including CA's primary product offerings Unicenter and eTrust. Ingres Corporation is headquartered in Redwood City, California, and has major development, sales and support centers throughout the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France and Australia, and supports customer implementations in more than 58 countries around the world. Additional information is available at www.ingres.com.

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