Enterprise Software: Consumerization of IT Includes Greater Enterprise Use of the Python Programming Language

As enterprises increasingly adopt more technology originating from consumer technologies, like social media and collaboration tools, the patterns used for implementing those technologies are being adopted too.  And that includes ‘consumer technology’ programming languages.  Python and PHP are two languages that are frequently used in development by companies like Google and Facebook.  While PHP focuses more strictly on web page development, Python is less restricted and has been used for a variety of types of applications and tools.  Python is only one of three programming languages ‘santioned’ for use at Google.

Jeff Hobbs of LinuxInsider summarized five reasons back in 2010 why Python was poised to take deeper root in the enterprise:

Strong Support and Community. Python is widely used by organizations like Google and Yahoo, NASA and LLNL, Nokia and IBM.  Even Microsoft has dabbled with the use of Python.  The language is well documented and actively supported as evidenced by the Python issue tracker.

Established Developer Base. Developers typically like Python because its syntax is clean and Python code is easy to read.  Python is used in major operating systems, cross-platform implementations, and cloud deployments.  One measure of the widespread use of Python is the Python Package Index, a repository of Python-based projects and tools that can be reused — it currently includes more than 22,000 entries.  Many of these projects are middleware or database related, both areas in heavy demand for the enterprise.

Vendor Neutral. While Guido van Rossum, creator of Python, now works at Google, Google has not tried to exert control over the Python language.  Van Rossum spends about 50 percent of his time working on the Python language and the remainder of his time working on the Google App Engine. Google, Yahoo, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle have all made use of Python to some extent in their Software offerings.

Protects Current Investment. Python has been used as a nimble scripting partner language to supplement more rigid and strictly typed languages like Java and C#.  Jython, for example, integrates the Java and Python programming languages.

Enterprise-friendly Licensing. Python is licensed as Open Source and is compatible with GPL licensing.  It comes with no restrictions on its use.  It’s free and allows the resale of products written in the Python language.

In a recent article on The Register, Open Source evangelist, Matt Asay, shows evidence that the demand for PHP and Python programming skills in the enterprise are becoming some of the skills that are in high demand within enterprises.  Asay concludes that “Alongside other technologies originally developed by or for the web technology world, including MongoDB, Hadoop, MySQL, Node.js, and more, it would appear that the consumer technology world is infiltrating the enterprise at a frenetic pace. It’s about time.”