54% of European enterprises want long term open source support: how Ubuntu Pro + Support delivers

Europe’s open source ecosystem is at a turning point. The Linux Foundation’s Open Source as Europe’s Strategic Advantage: Trends, Barriers, and Priorities for the European Open Source Community amid Regulatory and Geopolitical Shifts report shows organizations across the continent are broadly adopting open source software (OSS). But adoption alone doesn’t guarantee resilience, innovation, or security. As OSS becomes central to digital sovereignty and critical infrastructure, the gaps in investment, contribution, and – most crucially – the risks associated with managing  OSS without expert support, are increasingly unsustainable.

In today’s enterprise environments – where uptime, compliance, and rapid response are critical – organizations need support models that complement the strengths of open source communities.

Meeting these demands requires bridging the gap between open collaboration and production-grade resilience. In this blog, we’ll highlight some of the key findings and insights from the latest Linux Foundation’s 2025 Open Source as Europe’s Strategic Advantage report, sharing Canonical’s perspective on the challenges and opportunities they reveal, as well as how our solutions aim to fulfil such requirements.

The open source support maturity gap

The survey reveals a telling maturity gap. While 64% of European organizations rely on OSS for operating systems and 55% use it for cloud infrastructure, only 34% have formal open source strategies, and just 22% have established Open Source Program Offices (OSPOs) – both of which are essential for scaling contribution and aligning open source work with business goals.

Most significantly, only 62% of C-level executives recognize open source as strategically important, compared to 86% of non-C-level employees. Many organizations are leveraging OSS tactically, but have not yet made the strategic shift needed to invest in its long-term sustainability and security.

A more mature approach to OSS adoption involves not just using open source, but investing in the processes and expertise that sustain it. Our goal at Canonical is to help our customers outline a clear path to mature OSS adoption. For example, BT Group set out to deliver a UK-wide 5G network and sought greater control, flexibility, and community support than proprietary solutions could offer. By partnering with Canonical to deploy an open source, virtualised network infrastructure based on OpenStack, BT Group was able to successfully virtualize network functions, automate operations, and accelerate service innovation. Through Ubuntu Pro + Support, Canonical provided not only the technology, but also expert guidance and training so BT’s teams could fully operate the platform internally. This collaborative approach meant BT Group gained the agility to launch new 5G services rapidly, maintain the highest levels of reliability, and support over 75% of the UK population, all while strengthening their internal open source expertise and overall network resilience.

Learn more about how BT brought 5G to the UK with the power of open source infrastructure >

Ubuntu Pro + Support is Canonical’s all-in-one subscription for enterprise-grade open source support and security. It provides long-term stability, enhanced security coverage, and direct access to deep technical expertise, helping enterprises unlock the full value of open source.

Delivering technical support

One of the biggest barriers to broader OSS adoption and contribution is the lack of enterprise-grade support. According to the survey:

• 40% cite lack of technical support as a key barrier to using OSS
• 26% say improved security support would increase their OSS use
• 53% say they need paid support for mission-critical workloads
• 54% expect long-term support guarantees from paid vendors
• 53% prioritize rapid security patching in their support needs

These numbers reflect a core reality: the OSS enterprises depend on is not always backed by the lifecycle guarantees, patch responsiveness, or compliance assurances that production environments demand, especially in regulated sectors.

Our customers are facing these challenges too. For example, a customer reported a device that wouldn’t boot, a critical issue for their production line. Our support engineer reviewed a screenshot of the device in its failed state, immediately spotted a corrupted file system, and provided a solution that restored service on the spot.

Many organizations encounter gaps in long-term security, compliance, and expert support as they scale open source adoption. Experiences like these illustrate how bridging support gaps isn’t just about access to tools or updates, but about solving complex operational challenges as they arise. Recognizing this need, Ubuntu Pro + Support delivers 12 years of security maintenance for Ubuntu LTS releases across thousands of open source packages, along with around-the-clock access to Canonical’s experienced support team. This combination helps organizations reduce downtime, manage compliance more effectively, and address even the most nuanced technical issues, ultimately enhancing operational resilience and confidence. 

Focusing on security and compliance

Security is no longer a bolt-on concern. The EU’s Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) and AI Act are raising the bar for transparency and resilience, pushing OSS maintainers, vendors, and adopters toward more rigorous software supply chain hygiene. Yet 62% of respondents said they are unfamiliar with the CRA, underlining a readiness gap that must be closed – quickly. Find out more about the CRA, or how Canonical can help you to meet your CRA compliance requirements.

Security and compliance concerns are among the biggest barriers to open source adoption in enterprise environments, with 37% of organizations citing these as primary challenges. Our customers face these challenges every day. For example, Grundium, a medical device manufacturer, needed to comply with strict security and data protection regulations across global markets. By adopting Ubuntu Pro for Devices, Grundium ensured that their digital microscope scanners receive regular security patches and over-the-air updates, maintaining compliance with major security frameworks and keeping sensitive patient data safe. This enabled them to confidently innovate with open source technologies while meeting the rigorous standards required in the medical industry.

Read more about how Grundium secures critical systems with Ubuntu Pro for Devices >

That’s one of the reasons we introduced Ubuntu Pro: to help organizations prepare for new regulations. From vulnerability tracking to FIPS-certified cryptographic modules and CIS hardening, it delivers a proactive security foundation in line with both current and emerging compliance needs. And as regulatory requirements evolve, Ubuntu Pro + Support doesn’t just provide tooling: it provides context, expertise, and a responsive engineering team that has helped customers navigate everything from CRA readiness to multi-cloud compliance and hardware security posture.

Our support team delivers break and bug fixes, incident response, rapid vulnerability remediation, and expert guidance on regulatory requirements, ensuring customers’ open source stack is secure and audit-ready.

Bridging skills gaps

Skills gaps (38%) and operational complexity are major obstacles to successful open source adoption and cloud-native transformation. Many organizations lack in-house expertise to manage, troubleshoot, and optimize complex open source infrastructure.

Our customers are experiencing these operational challenges firsthand. One customer running a large Ceph cluster faced persistent latency issues. Canonical’s support and sustaining engineering teams led a multi-day investigation, provided step-by-step remediation, and ultimately delivered a sustainable fix. The customer renewed their contract, citing the depth and persistence of Canonical’s support as a key reason.

That’s one of the main goals of Ubuntu Pro + Support: to act as a force multiplier for your team, providing direct access to the engineers who build and maintain the software you run.

From cloud to edge, our experts guide you through upgrades, troubleshoot performance issues, and offer best practices, reducing operational risk and accelerating time to value. Whether you’re managing a cloud environment, running mission-critical workloads, or deploying embedded devices, Ubuntu Pro + Support extends your team’s capabilities in both reactive and proactive ways with dedicated support resources, ensuring environments remain compliant, secure, and efficient at scale.

Addressing operational complexity often means supplementing internal skills with external expertise, ensuring issues are not just fixed, but understood and prevented in the future. Ubuntu Pro + Support transforms technical assistance into a strategic advantage, bolstering internal capacity and building operational confidence in open source.

Enterprise-grade open source support for mission-critical workloads

94% of organizations see open source foundation support as important or extremely important, and 53% say paid support is essential for mission-critical workloads. The business value of OSS is high, but enterprises require lifecycle guarantees, rapid patching, and expert escalation paths to deploy with confidence.

Our customers rely on this level of support for their most critical workloads. After a major OpenStack release introduced performance regressions for a customer, Canonical’s sustaining engineering team worked for months to identify the root cause, delivered an upstream patch, and provided customers with immediate workarounds. This not only restored stability but improved the open source ecosystem for all users.

Such outcomes demonstrate the value of having escalation paths and sustained engineering involvement, moving beyond incident response to ecosystem improvement. Our 24/7/365  team doesn’t just resolve incidents: they contribute upstream fixes, influence product roadmaps, and ensure your environment benefits from the latest open source advancements.

Why open source support matters now

The 2025 survey makes one thing clear: Europe is not just consuming open source – it’s starting to see it as a lever for sovereignty, innovation, and economic competitiveness. But open source won’t scale strategically without investment in its maintainers, contributions, and security infrastructure.

Open source support isn’t just about having someone to call when something breaks. It’s about ensuring continuity, compliance, and confidence. Ubuntu Pro + Support offers precisely that: a way to embrace OSS with the rigour and reliability enterprises require.

In practice, this means:

• Minimised downtime through guaranteed SLAs and 24/7 support – even when facing global-scale outages or device boot failures.
• Expert guidance from engineers who’ve resolved complex issues, like Ceph cluster latency, offline snapd crashes, and API failures.
• Contextualised, real-world experience that enables rapid problem diagnosis and sustainable fixes – often in a single support exchange.
• Proactive, preventative case handling around upgrade planning, compliance assessments, and network changes.
• Scalable, high-touch support for device fleets and infrastructure at scale – whether cloud-native or bare-metal.

As Europe looks to build alternatives to monopolistic technologies and chart its own digital future, sustained open source investment , with support at its core – is not optional. It’s foundational.

Ubuntu Pro + Support turns that foundation into a platform for operational excellence, equipping enterprises to adopt, secure, and scale open source with the confidence only production-grade backing can provide.