Open-source solutions used to be adopted quietly by company boffins who snuck in an Apache Web server or an open-source development tool suite under the philosophy "It's easier to get forgiveness than permission" (not to mention "It's easier to do it with open-source tools than to get an IT budget").

That's no longer the case, according to a survey of IT and business executives and managers, conducted in late April 2008 by CIO.com. The survey, collecting data from 328 respondents, showed that more than half the respondents (53 percent) are using open-source applications in their organization today, and an additional 10 percent plan to do so in the next year. For nearly half, 44 percent, open-source applications are considered equally with proprietary solutions during the acquisition process.

Among those currently employing open-source solutions, the primary uses are operating systems such as Linux (78 percent), infrastructure applications, such as back-end databases and Web servers (74 percent), and software development tools like Eclipse (61 percent).

Those may sound fairly geeky, but business application use isn't far behind. Nearly half of the survey respondents, 45 percent, are using desktop applications such as OpenOffice.org, and 29 percent use open-source enterprise applications. The most popular of those enterprise applications are collaboration tools, customer relationship management (CRM) tools and ERP applications.

For specific discussion about open-source enterprise applications, see Is Open Source The Answer to ERP?, Open Source ERP Grows Up and Open-Source Software and Its Role in Space Exploration. We have plenty more under the Open Source tab.

Moreover, open-source solutions are generating confidence. Close to three in five respondents, 58 percent, strongly agree or agree with the statement that Linux is reliable enough to depend upon for mission-critical applications. Remarkably, that confidence is highest among IT executives and managers: 62 percent say Linux is ready for prime time.

Respondents to the survey ranged from IT executive or manager (59 percent) and business executive or manager (13 percent) to IT professionals (20 percent) and business professionals (8 percent).

For contrast: Three-quarters (77 percent) of software developers responding to the last Evans Data Open Source Software/Linux Development Survey absolutely or probably have enough confidence in Linux to use it for mission-critical applications. Take that with a grain of salt: By their qualifications for participation in that market research study, those developers are tipped in favor of using or writing open source (if not Linux), so a higher ranking is not surprising.