When looking to cut costs one of the items that could be taken off your bottom line is software costs. Open Source is often looked at by start up companies seeking to contain their costs, but can be appropriate to any company.
And using Open Source software does not violate any compliancy issues (which are usually only relevant to redistribution).
Once considered the preserve of the bearded techie and at the “bleeding edge”, Open Source and Free Software was shunned by the mainstream business for many years, but has taken a bigger and bigger hold for the simple reason that the quality has improved significantly allowing access to similar tools for a fraction, if any, cost.
For example OpenOffice from Sun Microsystems will provide tools that allow for spreadsheets, word processing and building presentations. It is very similar in layout to applications you may be using right now and so the migration learning-curve is both shallow and short
For many this might mean a major overhaul and is not suitable. But for others they can assess, on a project-by-project basis, the tools they use and where these alternatives can be best implemented. For example if you are hosting a website that enables customers to look-up items and even purchase them on-line Sun's MySQL solution has been globally adapted by small businesses and also major players. It's free use ‘Community Edition’ and ability to work on lower end servers has enabled many companies to grow at the lowest initial cost of implementation and build up a business that would not have been achievable with the larger investments required for Oracle, MSSQL or other solutions.
So next time you are thinking about investing company money in I.T. the first question to ask is “can we get an alternative for free and if so what added value are we getting for the paid alternative?”. This simple question has enabled entrepreneurs, managers and CIOs to save millions on their I.T. budgets and invest wisely in the projects that need the capital.
Some Options
www.wikipedia.org has lists of open source alternatives to closed source solutions (your mainstream, well known brands), covering just about ever application you might imagine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_free_software_packages
In addition, here are some you may wish to check out immediately:
Quanta Plus 3.5
For quick and effortless web development - Quanta Plus is steadily becoming a worthwhile competitor to the commercial web editors on the market. Quanta Plus's features include multi-document interface, WYSIWYG editing and templates. Among the advanced features your will find team development, plug-in support and a PHP debugger. The objective of the team behind Quanta Plus is simply to develop the best tool for web development.
Dia 0.96
Dia is designed to be much like the commercial Windows program 'Visio'. It can be used to draw many different kinds of diagrams. It currently has special objects to help draw entity relationship diagrams, UML diagrams, flow charts, network diagrams, and simple circuits. It is also possible to add support for new shapes by writing simple XML files, using a subset of SVG to draw the shape.
It can load and save diagrams to a custom XML format (gzipped by default, to save space), can export diagrams to EPS or SVG formats and can print diagrams (including ones that span multiple pages).
OpenOffice Draw 3.0
Open Office Draw, part of the Open Office package, wasn't designed to compete with high-end graphics packages but is an easy to use, effective drawing tool that makes it simple to create flowcharts, graphs and other illustrations from a fast sketch to complex plans. It provides plenty of tools and a variety of toolbars that really streamlines the creative process.
Gimpshop 2.2.11
According to www.osalt.com, if you feel at home in Photoshop, but need an open source alternative - Gimpshop is the way to go. Gimpshop is a hack made on top of the original Gimp project which changes all menues, dialogs, etc., in order to make them look as much as their counterparts in Photoshop. This makes users who are already familiar with the layout of Photoshop feel right at home in this open source application. Please note that all features in Photoshop in not available in Gimpshop, since it is based on the Gimp project and it is feature set.
Gantt Project 2.0
GanttProject is a project scheduling and management tool which also offers resource management. Even importing and exporting Microsoft Project files is supported.Download Page
PDFCreator 0.9.5
PDFCreator is an open source printer driver that creates PDF documents. Acting as a printer driver it allows you to create PDF files from any Windows application. The PDF files can then be view with a standard PDF reader (e.g. Adobe Acrobat Reader). Through it's option settings security can be added - as well as it allows you to control quality of embedded images. Includes PDF-Encryptor (pdfenc.exe) for both standard 40-bit and 128-bit encryption. PDF-Encryptor, however, is not open source, but only freeware.
Note: This is one I use myself and am very happy with!
Mozilla Firefox
This is the premier free, open-source browser. It includes tabs, pop-up blocking, themes, and extensions. It is considered by many to be the world's best browser.Download Page
Mozilla Thunderbird
Email with powerful spam filtering, solid interface, and all the features you need.Download Page
RSS Owl
Solid cross-platform RSS client.
VLC
Plays more video files than most players: Quicktime, AVI, DIVX, OGG, and more. Pretty good interface.Download Page
OpenOffice.org
Big, full featured suite of tools for word processing and spreadsheets. Compatible with and a free replacement for Microsoft Word documents. Also supports OpenDocument Format.
Blender
Powerful 3D Modeling software.Download Page
Cobian Backup
Backup software.Download Page
Mamut Backup & other products
Mamut Online Backup, Mamut Asset Register, Mamut Teamwork, Start up and Online Survey. Download Page
I hope this article helps you to save some money and equips your business with some good software tools. Remember, never has been more important to get value for money. Negotiate prices. Shop around. And find out what you can get for free!
Source: Jackie Prendergast, Jackie@consultingexcellence.ie,m Tel: (+353) 1 4652391