As 2021 draws to a close, the time has come for ZDNet’s editorial staff to review the technologies that will mark the year 2022. Let’s start with a review of open source software and the cloud. We will continue in the coming days with a review of blockchain, AI and knowledge graphs.
Open source software has been on the rise for a long time. A trend that will not weaken in 2022. According to Gartner’s 2021 Hype Cycle for Open-Source Software (OSS): “By 2025, more than 70% of companies will increase their IT spending on free software, compared to In addition, by 2025, Software as a Service (SaaS) will become the preferred consumption model for open source software due to its ability to provide greater operational simplicity, better security and greater scalability “.
Gartner’s predictions for open source at large are even bolder when it comes to open source in the world of databases and data management. As early as 2019, Gartner predicted that the future of databases lies in the cloud. But the future of databases should also be written in open source.
Software more and more in demand for internal applications
By 2022, Gartner predicts, more than 70% of new internal applications will be developed on an open source database, and 50% of existing proprietary relational database instances will have been converted or will be in the process of being converted.
Gartner provides an explanation for this increased attention. According to the analyst firm, the source of the success of open source lies in the link between open source software and the cloud via SaaS offers. Open source software can mobilize people beyond the boundaries of a single organization to help create high quality software. And they can win the hearts and minds of developers. These facts are now widely recognized.
For many organizations, databases and data management systems are becoming something of a commodity best used in the cloud, where resilience and elasticity are someone’s job. other. So organizations can focus on their core mission, which is to use data to deliver value.
A quantified success
In January 2021, open source software databases overtook their proprietary rivals on db-engines.com, the website that tracks database metrics.
In addition, the score of databases and data management systems among the fastest growing open source software projects is another clue. The ROSS Index (Runa OSS) is an index created and maintained by Runa Capital, a fund that supports startups in the B2B SaaS and regulated industries sectors.
In 2021, around 35% of the OSS projects included in the ROSS index were databases and data management systems, including Appwrite, Prisma and SeMI Technologies. A percentage that shows a clear over representation.
Steadily increasing funding
Another proof of the prevalence of free software and the cloud is the amount of funding received by companies that use this combination in 2021. In 2021, Databricks, the free software juggernaut, raised a Series G round of funding. $ 1 billion in February and a Series H round of funding of $ 1.6 billion in August, bringing its valuation to $ 38 billion. Confluent, another free software giant, has filed for an IPO.
The year 2021 also saw the birth of a few other unicorns in the open source world. Database specialist graph Neo4j has raised a $ 325 million Series F funding round, the largest in database history, bringing its valuation to over $ 2 billion. Apollo GraphQL has raised $ 130 million in Series D for a valuation of $ 1.5 billion. Yugabyte has raised $ 188 million in Series C for a valuation of $ 1.3 billion. And CockroachDB has also raised several rounds of the table, the latest being a $ 278 million Series F at a $ 5 billion valuation.
And all this without counting all the OSS unicorns in the making, from OctoML and Edge Impulse to Superconductive and Startree. As Luis Ceze, CEO and Founder of OctoML, recently told ZDNet, a lot of capital is flowing and being invested in open source software vendors. A trend set to continue in 2022.
Source: ZDNet.com