France leads Europe in the use of open source software, ahead of the UK and Germany. The three main areas of application are data, artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things (IoT or Internet of Things). That will show the study conducted by Markess on behalf of CNLL, Numeum and Systematic Paris-Region. The very detailed study was presented at the Open Source Experience fair, held in Paris on November 8th and 9th.
A sector that employs 64,000 people in France
Open source is experiencing constant growth in France and occupies an important place in the IT of companies and service providers. In France, free software spending in 2022 will amount to 5.9 billion euros, or 40 times more than 20 years ago. The sector employs 64,000 people who work on the integration and development of these solutions.
Spending in France on artificial intelligence and big data with open source will more than double by 2027, growing from €1.7 billion in 2022 to €4.3 billion in 2027, a growth of 19.8% per year corresponds. With more than 40% of spend related to open source, artificial intelligence and big data are mostly based on free technologies like Hadoop, MapReduce, Spark, etc.
Open source growth is outpacing market growth
As for the Internet of Things, open source spending will grow from €705 million in 2022 to €1.7 billion in 2027, a growth of 18.8% per year. The growth in the use of open source is slightly higher than that of commercial software. In 2027, open source spending in France is expected to reach 8.7 billion euros in a software and services market that will total 72 billion euros.
The dynamic of open source is +7.8% and thus slightly above that of the overall market, which will be +6.3%. Currently, in 2022, open source represents 11% of the software and IT services market in France, which has a total value of 53 billion euros. In terms of services, open source weighs heavily, representing 16% (5.5 billion euros) of IT activity in France, with services worth a total of 34 billion euros. Open source software weighs only 0.5 billion euros in a global software market of 19 billion euros.
Growing number of people working with open source
To support the growth of open source, the number of open source jobs is projected to increase from 63,800 full-time equivalents (FTEs) in 2022 to 90,200 FTEs in 2027, a 40% increase. Software developers are most in demand, the Internet of Things is the main area of application.
Specifically, the skills sought are concentrated on the profiles developer, devops, marketing, architect and business consultant as well as on the areas of IoT (Internet of Things), APIs (Application Interfaces), containers, machine learning, cybersecurity and web development. The requirements are strong in terms of programming languages (Java, Javascript, PHP, Python, etc.), technological solutions (Docker, Drupal, etc.) and databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc.), but also in terms of open-source business applications.
Important information on this topic
