Open Source Tools- A Future of Software Testing

Growth of open source
The recent recession has tightened the budgets of organizations
the world over and most software and services companies have
really felt the pinch In the
midst of the recession, an Economist article caught the zeitgeist
with the headline “
Open-source software firms are flourishing
”.
In general there’s been a real increase in open-source success
stories in the media, while industry analysts like IDC and Gartner
have been investigating open-source adoption and publishing results that show strong growth in the sector.
As long ago as 2008, Gartner
surveyed 274 enterprise companies
globally
and found that 85% had already adopted open source,
with most of the remaining expecting to do so within the following year. That prediction came to fruition. Forrester’s 2009
report “
Open-Source Software Goes Mainstream
” questioned
2000 software decision makers and concluded that open source
had risen to the top of the executive agenda, with the author no
-
ting that “the mandate’s coming from higher up” and that many
bosses are now demanding “faster, cheaper, better”. This was a
major step- change for open source, which had historically ente
-
red organizations under the executive radar from the bottom-up,
installed by IT and programming teams and gradually gaining
traction through the organization. That situation has now turned
on it’s head with the demand coming from the top. In a
May 2009
report by Wall Street & Technology
, Accenture echoed this, saying
that „financial services firms are taking a different look at open-
source technology now that they are financially constrained”. This
article cited major investment banks not just using but actually
contributing to open-source projects, recognizing a further step-
change and a maturity to open-source adoption that goes beyond
simplistic cost savings.