Using Open Source

Using Open Source Software for Businesses

It makes good sense for small businesses and organizations to save money by working with software like 'Open Office Suite' instead of the proprietary Microsoft Office Suite – and there is even more to it! Trim your expenses with just the tiniest bit of know-how.

In financial crunch times one may consider becoming acquainted with computer technologies and their costs. Most of us are used to software that do a pretty good job for surfing the internet, making presentations and managing some business accounting.

Office Suites – Daily Working Tools

'OpenOffice' is compatible to 'Microsoft Office'. OpenOffice can open and edit files created with the newest version of Word and save them back in the format that Microsoft Office uses. OpenOffice is a full fledged office suite and has become a serious competitor to Microsoft's office suite because it works – and it's free!

An Overview Of Applications And Platforms:

* Not Open-Source but free

Web Based Data Management, Collaboration and Content Management

For online data management, collaboration, enterprise content management systems, with high security, Plone is a great by all accounts a better solution than Sharepoint from Microsoft. Why? Microsoft is a proprietary software, hard and expensive to customize. With Plone one gets 'out of the box' goodies like accessibility, high search engine ranking through structure, and high security (intelligence agencies are using it) and most important: one can get functions customized to needs. In short, with Plone one gets more value for the same, or less cost (sometimes dramatically less depending on the application needs).

Blogs and Small CMS

For a blog and/or small content management system Wordpress can do a great job for your small or start-up business. Wordpress.com is free with free hosting by Wordpress. Wordpress.org is hosted by yourself, and gives you a lot of customization possibilities and functionality.

Does Open-Source Equal Free?

Proprietary software has a cost as does 'Open Source' but the costs are weighed differently. Here a little bit of explaining about the term 'Open-Source' and 'free' since they seem to get confused sometimes. Open-Source means generally that the source code of an application is open for developers to adjust and customize. That leads to a very powerful phenomena: because the source code is open and free, it is likely to be intensively used and intensively developed.

If the out-of-the-box-solution is not exactly what you need, and you like to have the product/application customized for your specific needs, there are companies to do that work that are familiar with the application – usually on any website for an Open-Source application there are links to companies who can do that work for you. And of course, customization is not free. But the value one receives is typically much higher since there are no software license costs involved and the money can go towards customization. And if you are happy to use a software as it comes with the download, then the software is free to use.

Now, there are other things that are free on the market but are not Open-Source, for example Facebook and Twitter, or Flickr for free photo sharing, YouTube for free video sharing, etc. These are handy tools to use for social networking and for promoting your business.

And there are many valuable free tools that are not Open-Source, meaning there is a company behind the service that controls the source code and business structure – it is free for regular users and the company makes money with advertising appearing on the site, or by selling upgraded 'pro' versions, or with accumulating users shopping behavior and monetizing that information (that for example makes Facebook controversial, the California courts and a Canadian commission are suing Facebook over privacy concerns, for disclosing information to third parties.) But yes, Facebook can be a strong tool to promote certain types of business.

Online Document Sharing

Google Docs is great to share work online. It lets you upload from and save to your desktop, edit and access the documents in real time from anywhere and any computer. It is compatible with regular office documents, such as Word and Excel – and it is free with some 'pro' up-sale possibilities.

And one more and relevant tip for businesses of all size: Google Apps. Google Apps combines all the Google free tools and more. It has some costs to it, but is certainly a big money savor. The Swiss printing enterprise 'Ringier' made the decision not to upgrade to Office 2010 but to use Google Apps instead – and to save over a million dollar per year – not bad!

Giving it a go?

Article written by Harito Reisman for GoodLifeTimes – the online magazine for humans.