European Public Sectors Embrace Open Source
Public sector authorities all over are involved with partial or complete migrations. Since 2001, in the Extremadura region of Western Spain, the regional government has sponsored the development of gnuLinEx, a Linux distribution based on Debian. Today gnuLinEx is installed on 100,000 computers in public schools, the public health service, and several other departments.

In southern Germany, the city of Munich has converted to open source software as its operating system of choice, migrating 16,000 users, 14,000 desktops, and 300 pieces of software including 170 business applications.

It isn’t just local governments making the news. Germany, Belgium, Finland, France, the UK, and Spain, among other countries, each have national initiatives to foster the adoption of open source. Passing favorable laws, deploying open source and migrating public administrations, open source is gaining a notable influence across Europe.

While many European public administrations increasingly use open source, the OSA is well aware that a mere handful uses it exclusively. Oftentimes it is just partially used on servers: on the desktop it is used far less, while a fifth of public administrations report pilots through experimental projects. At the OSA we view this as an opportunity rather than a weakness.

Even in the UK, where Microsoft has proved especially determined to halt open source progress, rapid progress is being made in the public sector. A Kable survey in May of last year showed that just over a third of the respondents are using open source, while almost another third are giving it future consideration. The survey drew responses from all areas of the public sector, with 35 percent of respondents acknowledging that open source was already in partial or widespread use in their organizations.

The SME Opportunity
In contrast to the U.S., where small-to-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) tend toward the 500 employee medium-size mark, European SMEs are smaller in terms of both staffing levels and turnover. However, with 22 million SMEs in the region employing almost 120 million people, the European Union (EU) has correctly identified the sector as the “growth gene” of the European economy. Making up 57 percent of the EU’s GDP, SMEs comprise the bedrock of the economy.

According to Microsoft’s own figures, SMEs account for a considerable 55 percent of IT spending across the region. Many IT organizations are SMEs themselves, with an estimated 70 percent of IT industry employees working for SME firms.

As in the U.S., one of the biggest benefits is open source's ability to adapt to the costs and needs of SMEs when compared to proprietary alternatives. Paying for value, without vendor lock-in, is a much better and fairer value proposition for them. Furthermore, like their counterparts across the Atlantic, SMEs using open source can save more than just license fees. Greater transparency in all stages of software development, more freedom, and a larger role for the trusted system integrator all end up in a lower total cost of ownership for a truly customized solution.

Local Sensitivities Require a Different Approach
Though it remains essential to maintain a global perspective on open source technology, we need to acknowledge that a one-size-fits-all approach to sales and marketing simply won’t work in local software markets. With 48 countries, more than 200 languages, and a population in excess of 700 million, all marketing, sales, and customer interactions across the European region need to be tailored to accommodate the sensitivities and needs of each locality.

At the OSA, we believe a “chapter-based” structure – a structure that has served other international organizations such as the IEEE so well – is best suited to cater to these needs. The addition of new chapters will better enable the OSA to address the requirements of independent software vendors (ISVs), systems integrators, and users who are deploying business-ready open solutions all over the world, but with a regional focus that is tailored for regional differences in culture, business practices, regulatory environments and open source adoption patterns. In Europe, as in other regions, the OSA will continue to focus its efforts on defining and promoting tools, frameworks, and best practices that facilitate easy deployment and interoperability between applications.

Think Global, Act Local
This doesn’t mean we should retreat into localized open source bunkers. Open source's greatest asset – the ability to tap into the innovative talents of organizations and individuals worldwide – is as true today as it was when the OSA was founded a year ago. Interoperability is a collective problem and collective global action is the best way to address it. What better model for international collective action than open source, applied to the universe of business solutions? This was the founding premise of the OSA. Through collective global action the OSA intends to accomplish more than vendors can accomplish independently.

While regional chapters will work primarily on missions that require regional focus, it is essential that interoperability remains a truly global initiative. All OSA members across chapters must continue to work together on interoperability projects and drive the overall adoption of open source, worldwide.

The launch of the OSA European Chapter isn’t the end of the story. Our chapter system is intended to scale around the world. Our goal is to think global and act local. We would expect that by this time next year, when the OSA blows out the candles on its birthday cake for a second time, to have chapters up and running in other regions that are enjoying strong open source adoption, including Asia and Latin America.