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TechCrunch Euro Tour 08: Yes, even Belgium has startups:

Mike Butcher of TechCrunch came to Belgium (actually he came to Gent, and wrote this about the most pleasant city in Belgium: “Gent is quickly becoming one of the main places to startup in that country, as it’s a short drive from Brussels (which has the main airport and the excellent Eurostar), but Gent is cheaper, somewhat prettier and is a big university city with lots more potential talent to draw from.”).

The real reason he came here was to do a writeup on the Web 2.0/Mobile startups here in Belgium.

You can find his report at http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/21/techcrunch-euro-tour-08-yes-even-belgium-has-startups/

The study says that 85 percent of companies are already using open-source software, with most of the remaining 15 percent expecting to do so within the next year, according to analysts at Gartner. In terms of the business processes for which open-source software is being used, customer service headed Gartner’s list, although enterprise integration, finance and administration and business analytics also showed strongly.

Follow-up: CIO.com has an article about this pervasiveness of open source, and concludes that Gartner is urging companies to adopt and enforce open source software (OSS) policies.