In our first annual survey of our membership and other open source software and services companies, the Open Solutions Alliance (OSA) found much optimism despite a murky economy, and a surprisingly high level of collaboration by open source software and services companies.

The survey was conducted among 46 companies - both OSA members and companies that we like to think of as future OSA members.

With 78 percent of survey participants reporting that the affordable price of open source software is motivating their customers, it was no surprise that 83 percent of participants said they expect to see a year-over-year increase in revenue in 2008 of open source-related software and services. Not bad for a year with so much bad economic news.

But, while the affordability of open source is a well-known meme in the industry, what I found surprising - and gratifying - about the results of the survey is the high level of collaboration between open source software and services companies.

Nearly all of the survey respondents - 97 percent - reported that they have active partnerships with other open source software and services companies. And the average survey participant had 10 such partnerships.

Since many of the participants in the survey were small companies, this number is much bigger than what you'd expect, especially among traditional, proprietary software companies. The high degree of partnerships exhibits a clear desire and willingness among open source companies to collaborate.

It's a validation of a concept we've been promoting, namely that the spirit of open collaboration and transparency for mutual benefit can be taken to the next level. That is, collaboration in the marketplace is a natural extension of collaboration at the source code level. These partnerships lend a collective strength to the overall open source software industry.

Still, as I looked at the numbers, I began to worry that the overhead expense of maintaining so many partnerships was a drag on multiple budgets. It gave me the idea that the OSA could become a vehicle for more simple and efficient collaboration for members.

As a volunteer-driven organization, the OSA works together collectively on projects such as member recruitment and marketing our Common Customer View (CCV) product. Why not expand our role to become an umbrella organization for other partnerships among open source companies?

The survey also showed that a large majority of companies (84.5%) that participated in the survey sell open source products or services that run on Microsoft Windows or otherwise interoperate with Microsoft products.

While that may be surprising to some people, it wasn't to many of us. Microsoft is an important partner to numerous open source companies and will continue to be more so moving forward. Enterprises need to maximize their IT resources and many realize that a hybrid Microsoft-open source environment can be the best option for their requirements.

Just over half (56 percent) of survey participants said their customers were concerned about interoperability between open source applications, while 79 percent reported that their customers were concerned about interoperability between open source and proprietary solutions.

Microsoft has become an important partner to many open source companies, and the oft-reviled software giant has taken many steps to be a more collaborative participant in the open source world.

The speed of two trends - open source adoption in Europe and the use of the software as a service (SaaS) model - offered more good news for OSA members.

We knew that open source was growing in Europe when we set up the OSA Europe chapter earlier this year, and it was gratifying to see 85 percent of survey participants report that they have operations outside the United States. Fifty-eight percent report widespread adoption of open source outside the U.S.

While anecdotally, we've heard that SaaS has been a challenge to crack as a sales channel, it was exciting to see 72 percent of our members and friends report SaaS as being important to their business strategy.

Mid-market companies especially are more likely to accept products as-is, and less likely to want to customize the code, making SaaS a good fit. I would expect this trend to continue, perhaps accelerate, as IT budgets continue to get frozen or cut in the face of ongoing economic uncertainty.