When it comes to what skills developers should be learning, a recent report found organizations and technology managers value open source. According to the report, which was conducted by O’Reilly Media and commissioned by IBM, the increasing adoption of hybrid cloud is driving the importance of open source skills. IBM predicts hybrid cloud adoption will grow by 47% over the next three years and organizations will be using an average of six hybrid clouds.
“Two significant shifts characterize computing in the past two decades: the widespread use of free and open source software (OSS), and migration to the cloud. The relationship between these trends is complex and deserves close attention. Developers need to understand the growing value of OSS in the cloud era. Mastering open source tools and programming libraries will make them valuable, even as this software is increasingly deployed on third-party cloud offerings,” the report stated.
RELATED CONTENT: Skills that matter for software developers looking to get hired
According to the report, which surveyed more than 3,400 developers and technology managers, 94% of respondents stated open-source software was equal or better than proprietary software. Seventy percent of respondents choose a cloud provider based on open source, and 65% of respondents prefer skills related to open-source technologies such as Linux, Kubernetes and Istio.
Open source becomes more valuable in a hybrid cloud world because it’s built on open-source technologies. “In fact, almost every major cloud vendor’s container platform is built on Kubernetes—and the containers themselves are being built with other open technologies,” IBM developer advocates Willie Tejada, Todd Moore, and Chris Ferris wrote in a blog post. “The skills you develop related to these technologies are transferable across the developer community and ecosystem, and of course to any proprietary cloud that you work on.
The report also found that open source contributions impress potential employers, result in better job opportunities, and result in better professional opportunities.
