My fave tech industry insider, The Reg, today reports on an IDC study that indicates the recession is speeding adoption of Linux. The conclusion mirrors what we've been seeing at water&stone as well, that is, while the downturn has lead to a few people deferring projects, many have not, choosing instead to consider lower cost alternatives.

As the study put it: "IDC has found that economic downturns lead to a reduction in spending, but not necessarily an equal-sized reduction in deployments. In fact, past recessions have helped to accelerate platform shifts that were in progress."

Note, this isn't a fluffy little single digit shift in trends -- a full 72% of the firms evaluated indicated that they "are either actively evaluating or have already decided to increase their adoption of Linux on the server in 2009." Perhaps more surprising: 68% made the same claim for the desktop!

While the IDC report is focused solely on Linux adoption patterns, I would assert that the conclusions are also relevant in other open source situations, for example in the open source CMS space. The same factors that accelerate Linux adoption are also speeding the shift to open source content management systems.

We've seen several enquiries of late that say, basically, "our budget's been cut so we'd like to explore open source alternatives for completing this project." From our conversations with other vendors, it appears that they are hearing the same sort of feedback from the market.

None of this should come as a surprise. Smart firms are always exploring options to stretch their budgets and achieve better ROI. This shift to open source is overdue. Solutions like Drupal, eZ Publish, Plone, Alfresco and Magento deliver advanced functionality at very reasonable costs. It just makes good business sense from where I stand.

• read The Reg
• read the Novell Press Release on the IDC Report
• view the IDC Report (no registration, no charge)

I received a request the other day from someone interested in finding social networking-type resources focused on open source content management systems. A good question, and one that I thought might make a useful list of resources.

I did a bit of looking around at the larger networks and found the following. Please feel free to add your own faves using the comments function at the bottom of the article.

(Note: Updated 18 March 2009 with a list of Official Project Twitter sites.)

It's been a solid week of writing on the new Joomla! Bible title. I've hit the magic 25% mark this week and am pulling out all the stops in hopes of making the 50% mark around the end of the month. These early chapters are the easiest of the bunch and the ones I am most familiar with. The biggest struggle right now is balancing out the writing with my other responsibilities at water&stone. Maybe there will be a day when I can exclusively write, but that day is not today.

The release date of the Ubuntu Visual Blueprint is getting close -- 19 April. I hope to obtain a sample chapter in PDF format this week. I will post that here and on Scribd to give you a feel for what that book is like.

About a week ago, one of the EyeForTravel crew interviewed me and asked my views about user generated content and the importance of social media in the travel industry. They're running the article now on the Travel Distribution News website.

The article is part of the lead up to EyeForTravel's 2009 Travel Distrbution Summit in Singapore later this month. I'll be participating in a panel discussion at the show. The panel concerns user generated content and is tentatively scheduled to include representatives from Travelocity and TripAdvisor. I will also be doing workshops on open source content management systems and reprising last year's workshop on search marketing trends and techniques.

• Read the interview.
• Learn more about the Travel Distribution Summit in Singapore.

Today is a big day for me -- I finally take the wraps off my new site and I also have the green light from my publisher to announce the new book!

First, the site: The designers at water&stone came up with this Drupal theme for me. I'd moved my site to Drupal at about the same time I released the Drupal 5 Themes book, but frankly wasn't making the most of it. It's a complex system and I just didn't have the time to give it the attention it deserved. Now, almost two years later, I feel a lot more comfortable with it and have grown to love it, frankly. I am, therefore, thrilled to have a site that not only shows Drupal looking good but also takes advantage of at least some of the functionality that Drupal does so well. (I'll post here in the next day or so about the rebuild, but suffice it to say for now that I am really happy to have this system in place.)

Second, as to the book. I've signed with Wiley & Co. to do another title for them. This is the third time we've worked together. They are expanding the coverage of their famous Bible series to include select open source content management systems and I am fortunate to be working on the first title-- the Joomla! Bible. This book should be good news for all interested in Joomla! As you may know from Wiley's other Bible publications, the series strives for a comprehensive and thorough treatment of each topic. Expect this new book to arrive in bookstores in late Q3 or early Q4 and to weigh in on the hefty side of things. More details to come as I get them.

I hope you enjoy the site! (Check out the Feed Roundup!)