Von Rotz, who is a manager for Optaros' Switzerland operation, said that the categories with the most strong open-source software today include content management, CRM, application frameworks and operating systems. The weakest areas remain offerings in identity management, where software tends to have narrow functions, e-learning and enterprise-level ERP. "There's no alternative to SAP yet," he said.

While Optaros ranks open-source productivity software, such as OpenOffice, and desktop operating systems, such as Red Hat, SUSE Linux and Ubuntu, highly, von Rotz admitted that the company has few clients making the jump from Microsoft Office or Windows to open source on client PCs.