[ RMLL 2013, Bruxelles Thursday 11 th July 2013 ] Mapping of Belgian open source market Presenter : Dr Ir Robert Viseur
Open source in Belgian public sector 2
Prerequisite: organization of Belgium = federal state composed of regions (territory) and communities (people). Belgium Regions (3): Flemish Region, Walloon Region and Brussels Region. Communities (3): French Community, Flemish Community, German Community. Merger between Flemish Region and Community (= Flanders). Belgium also composed of provinces (10). Closest to the citizen: Belgian municipalities (589). The municipalities are autonomous but... Subject to the power of supervision of the Walloon region. 3
Open source policies in Belgium No real headquaters for informatics policy. Consequence: widely heterogeneous policies... And case-by-case use of free softwares. Differences between federal state, Flanders, Walloon Region, Brussels Region, French Community, German Community, provinces and municipalities. Policies in municipalties influenced by power of supervision of the Walloon region. See (Viseur, 2010) for more details. 4
Big picture (federal state) Variable use of free softwares. Strong interest in open standards, less for free sofwares (FEDICT). Open data portal: data.gov.be. European context: INSPIRE, PSI, etc. 5
Big picture (Brussels) Variable use of free softwares Support of free softwares by CIRB (www.cirb.irisnet.be). Example: expertise in OpenOffice.org migration. Interest for open data : Open data portal for city of Brussels: opendata.bruxelles.be. Availability of data from URBIS portal (CIRB). 6
Big picture (Flanders) ICT services outsourced to Belgacom and HP consortium until 2014. Some reference initiatives. Examples: Free software use in Schoten. Open Data in Gent: data.gent.be. 7
Big picture (Wallonia and FC) (1/2) ICT teams and external ICT structures dedicated to Walloon public sector (+ outsourcing: e.g. former GIEI). Walloon authorities in flavour of promoting free softwares and open data. See «DÉCLARATION DE POLITIQUE RÉGIONALE WALLONNE». «Promouvoir l'utilisation des standards ouverts et les logiciels libres» (p. 120) See «Master Plan TIC». «Objectif stratégique. Libérer les données publiques pour doper l'offre de services aux citoyens» (p. 77). But variable use in public sector... 8
Big picture (Wallonia and FC) (2/2) Used by ETNIC (www.etnic.be) and SMAL (www.smals.be) ICT centers. «Sleeping» forge: forge.etnic.be. Bottom-up project: CommunesPlone. Integrated with Qualicité in IMIO inter-communal structure (www.imio.be). As a replacement for Agoractités and Qualicité custom softwares. Open data portal (new): opendata.awt.be. 9
Keep in mind Two lead projects: CommunesPlone software suite (IMIO). Open data in Gent. Soon: Hackathon egov Wallonia the 4th, 5th and 6th October 2013 in Namur (hackathonegovwallonia.net). See (Viseur, 2010) for more details. 10
Open source companies in Belgium 11
Sources of data Study mainly build on LogicielLibre.be directory (~ 150 companies). Only for companies clearly communicating their engagement in open source technologies (pure players or hybrid offer). Less knowledge about the Flemish market. 12
Location of companies in Belgium 13
Size and rentability of open source companies in Belgium (1/2) Low number of bankruptcies (~5 between 2004 and 2011). Financial indicators (from BNB figures, median): Solvability: 37.1%. Equity: 129 239. Revenues: 3 256 911 (partial data). Rentability on assets: 6.8%. Ratio «salaries / added value»: 79.7%. (work in progress...) 14
Size and rentability of open source companies in Belgium (2/2) Ten open source companies in ERP sector (figures for 2009): Total of 87 employees (average of 9,7 employees by active company). ~45% of companies have 5 employees or more (average in walloon ICT sector: ~25%). 80% of companies are profitable. Companies creating the largest number of jobs are not always the most publicized. Example: Alfea Consulting (22,8 employees, profitable). 15
Products and services available in What we looked at : Sale of hardware Certified hardware. Open hardware Open source edition. Services. Hosting, SaaS and cloud computing. Belgium (1/2) 16
Products and services available in Belgium (2/2) (Viseur, 2011) 17
Products and services: details (1/2) (Viseur, 2011) 18
Products and services: details (2/2) (Viseur, 2011) 19
Quelles sont les relations entre entreprises? (part of the full graph ; work in progress...) 20
Lead open source Belgian projects OpenERP. Claroline / Dokeos / Chamilo. CommunesPlone. Drupal. Ekiga. The DataTank (new). 21
Discussion Comparison with France Lack of representative organisations such as April (www.april.org), Aful (aful.org) or CNLL (www.cnll.fr). Differences between popular technologies due to average size of companies? In general Wide range of services for open source technologies, but... Lack of providers in several domains (SIG, lawyers and embedded softwares). Some lead initiatives about open source or open data in public sector, but... General lack of clarity about open* policies. Commercial activities with open hardware or open data (except Data.be)? 22
Thanks for your attention. Any questions? 23
Useful additional readings... Verstichel, P. (2013), Open Data Données Publiques: Et la Wallonie dans tout ça?, Jeudis du Libre, Mons, 20 juin 2013. Viseur, R. (2013), Les modèles d'affaires des prestataires en logiciels libres, Atelier «open source», Agence Bruxelloise pour l'entreprise (ABE), 27 mars 2013. Viseur, R. (2011), Cartographie des marchés Open Source belges et français, Rencontres Mondiales du Logiciel Libre, Strasbourg, 11 juillet 2011. Viseur, R. (2010), Logiciels libres et données ouvertes en Belgique: point de situation, Rencontres Mondiales du Logiciel Libre, Bordeaux, 08 juillet 2010. 24
Contact Dr Ir Robert Viseur Email (@CETIC) : Email (@UMONS) : robert.viseur@cetic.be robert.viseur@umons.ac.be Phone : 0032 (0) 479 66 08 76 Website : www.robertviseur.be This presentation is covered by «CC-BY-ND» license. 25