For the small business who doesn't have a lot of money to spend on IT, open source is an option they shouldn't ignore.
I’ve spent most of my IT career dealing with proprietary software. Vendors like Microsoft, Sun and IBM provide a number of products and solutions for both the small business and the enterprise size company. And their products are really good. Recently however, I have had the opportunity to sit up and take notice of the other world – the world of open source. There’s some open source software out there that can rival and even surpass the proprietary products on the market today.
There use to be a stigma in organizations against open source. Some believed that because it was free it was impossible to get proper support that is required for software supporting line of business activities. Today, most open source solutions are offered by companies who sell support and/or development services for their products. So they make their money off support and development, not the product itself.
If you take a look at the market today, the number of well-known open source products is huge. Content Management software from Alfresco, blogging software from Moveable Type, these are just two examples of quality solutions – and they are free. Open Source development technologies are also widely used for both proprietary and open source products. Clickability, a SaaS WCM provider has built its solution on these technologies – and it’s the leading on demand web content management provider in the world.
For a small business, it is impossible not to look to open source solutions to solve their business needs. If all they have to pay for is support and development services (if they want them), then they likely have more funds to purchase more products. And it’s likely they have a number of closest open source developers in their office.
