The Business Value of Red Hat Solutions Compared to Unpaid Alternatives

IT organizations are adopting a variety of open source software solutions to perform system infrastructure tasks including configuration, deployment, and management functions. Open source software can be obtained as community-based (unpaid and unsupported) distributions or as vendor-based paid commercial-grade distributions with maintenance and support services. Unpaid, unsupported open source software reduces the expense of licensing or subscription costs; however, it places the burden of maintenance and support onto the IT organization. Paid solutions, while incurring licensing or subscription fees, can bring efficiencies that achieve higher value and minimize overall costs when compared with unpaid alternatives.

IDC spoke with organizations that have invested in paid Red Hat solutions (including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which comprises Red Hat Insights and Red Hat Smart Management with Satellite) to understand the value they achieve by paying for Red Hat subscriptions compared with unpaid, unsupported software. Study participants reported that they gain staff, cost, and business efficiencies that collectively far outweigh the additional cost of Red Hat subscriptions. As a result, despite taking on the cost of Red Hat subscriptions, the organizations end up realizing cost savings and other value that IDC quantifies as being worth nearly seven times (573% three-year ROI) the investment costs.