The Open Source vs. Proprietary competitive landscape is constantly changing and current information is hard to come by.  We decided to create this matrix for those looking for an open source alternative to proprietary solutions.

So to try and help, we have looked at search data from Google which produced some surprising results.

Our Methodology to Determine Popularity 

We used a number of tools from Google to determine popularity of the products around the world.  For instance, the search volume methodology uses a scale and is based on the average worldwide traffic of the product in the last 12 months.  It is also relative to the comparison product. 

Regarding country popularity, if a high proportion of the searches in a country are for the product term, then this indicates the search term has a high degree of popularity in this country relative to the other countries. 

The Proprietary Versus Open Source Matrix

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A reminder that when we say “popular” here, we mean how popular the search term is.

Also remember the results are normalized, so the size of each region is not a factor. Everything is in proportion to the size of the region.  So larger regions are not favored over small, as would be the case otherwise.

Automated Lifecycle Management

Both Collabnet and Visual Studio Team rank high in India and the United States.  Visual Studio Team has almost 4 times the global search traffic of Collabnet, but Collabnet is catching up. 

Enterprise Resource Planning (Medium company)

Microsoft Dynamics has almost twice the traffic of Compiere, but has stabilized.  Surprisingly, South Africa heads up the Dynamics search traffic (relatively speaking). 

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ERP/Accounting (Small Company)

In this category, we are looking at small companies under $10 million in revenue. Quickbooks has far more search volume than its open source competitors but Open ERP has recently made some moves towards closing the gap.  I was surprised
to see Kenya top the country search list for Quickbooks.

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Content Management System

Drupal rules the search area here with nearly 4 times that of DotNetNuke.  Still, both open source companies have much stronger search volume than their OpenText competitor. 

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Master Data Integration (MDM)

While Tibco has higher search volume, Talend has been steadily closing the gap since 2007. 

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

CRM is hot! But most surprisingly, SugarCRM search volume is slightly greater than Salesforce.com.   

Enterprise Database

The big surprise here is that PostgreSQL has higher global search volume than Oracle Database (almost a 3 to 1): 

Business Intelligence

Considering all the recent press around Jaspersoft, I was surprise Business Objects has much greater search volume than Jaspersoft.  Business Objects and Cognos have almost equal global search volume. 

Pentaho and Jaspersoft have almost equal search volume.  Both appear to be gaining on their proprietary rivals. 

Enterprise eMail Management

Another surprise Zimbra has higher search volume than Microsoft Exchange. Zimbra’s search volume is understandable considering it is open source, but it doesn’t explain it’s commanding lead over Exchange. 

Business Application Platform

While Sharepoint 2010 is an unreleased product, plenty of buzz has been generated around this forthcoming product. 

Document Management Solution (DMS)

Apparently India and Singapore are the big search winners in DMS. 

IT Monitoring and Network Management

Groundwork has IBM Tivoli beat slightly by search volume.  All of the companies are fairly close though.  Regarding IBM, Denmark is proportionally stronger than any other country?