Stories about: Gartner Research

As promised, Mozilla Tuesday launched Firefox 3.0, a major update to the open-source browser that adds a new search tool, anti-hacking protection and revamped bookmarking.

Companies should expect to be able to reduce their software costs significantly over the next 10 years, as new factors loosen the traditional hold of software makers over their customers, according to Gartner.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says Red Hat Linux uses intellectual property owned by Microsoft and that Red Hat's customers should pay Microsoft for it.

You can try to avoid open source, but it's probably easier to get out of the IT business altogether. By 2011, at least 80% of commercial software will contain significant amounts of open source code, according to Gartner.

Analyst firms Gartner and IDC both released reports on the Asia Pacific server market this week but with different results.

Real-time language translation, medical monitoring via the mobile Web and nanotechnology to purify water are some of the innovations IBM Labs thinks will be on the market within five years.

As open source applications become increasingly stable, companies must learn to view the software as just another piece in a comprehensive application architecture that will include open source as well as closed source components.

Mozilla has hired a former Microsoft security strategist to help lock down its open-source products against online attacks.

Google's entry last week into the IM space gave a high-profile shot in the arm to the open IM protocol XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol). The decision to base Google Talk on the XML-based XMPP framework -- combined with Google's considerable market clout -- could shake up stalled IM interoperability efforts, or at the very least gives a big lift to a grassroots Internet standard.

Some observers attribute the growth of Linux servers to the migration of lower-end platforms, such as old Windows NT or Novell file and print boxes, to Linux. The open source operating system is still at the periphery in enterprises and not in large data centers, they say.

Organizations refusing to include open source in their IT portfolio need to rethink their strategy, according to Gartner research vice president Dion Wiggins.