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Open Source Making Inroads in Small Businesses
prostoalex writes "In a story mainly about new OpenOffice release, NewsFactor Network quotes an interesting finding of Jupiter Research analyst: "Open-source productivity suites did "surprisingly well" in the mid-size business market, with the OpenOffice suite alone claiming a share of about 6%. Furthermore, [Joe Wilcox] found that some 19% of small businesses ran Linux on their desktop, and a whopping 26% ran Linux on their servers.""
And those pockets are in small and mid-size businesses -- those of 1,000 employees or less -- where paying top dollar for Microsoft's very expensive productivity suite does not make much sense. In conducting research for a new report, Wilcox found that open-source productivity suites did "surprisingly well" in the mid-size business market, with the OpenOffice suite alone claiming a share of about 6 percent. Furthermore, he found that some 19 percent of small businesses ran Linux on their desktop, and a whopping 26 percent ran Linux on their servers.
I want to know some more detail... What state? What area of business? 26% server share, sure, believeable, 6% OO share, eh, not too believeable, but I will go with it based on the fact that they have shown no data to back up this claim... 19% on the desktop? Uh, no way, that's just too unbelievable for me.
I love Linux and I think it has great potentional but I think this "research" is just as skewed as anything that is funded by MS...
Small to mid-size business move faster than big business. When the smaller ones are more competitive and saving cash the larger businesses will have to follow suit to remain competitive.
Trolling is a art,
If only schools could switch to OpenOffice to, and we could probably get rid of the MS Office dominance for ever in a few years...
Where? Silicon Valley?
Everywhere I've been, it's more like 1% running Linux on the desktop. At least, if you're only counting places where the management has made the decision to run Linux, not places where individual IT folks are running elicit Linux boxes on our^H^H^Htheir desktops.
I ran into several companies and except one, no one runs Linux as a Desktop operating Systems, and every computer runs Micorsoft Office.
Strange, is not it ? I don't believe in that report
can't cahge that
I see you're using Office XP! Good for you. But you should install SP1 which fixes the spell checker.
Wearing pants should always be optional.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
As we may remember from a recent interview with James Gosling, he made the statement,
"There's no way that I could pay nearly $4,000 for a freaking word processor at home. It just isn't going to happen."
If the home user cannot justify purchasing an expensive office suite, it is no surprise that the small business will try to avoid it as well. Initiatives such as OpenOffice really help to push these boundaries, making Open Source software appealing to business, and to the end user.
I personally use Abiword and OpenOffice in my day to day word processing, and I prefer it much to the expensive Microsoft Office suite.
For those companies that are:
1) Big enough to worry about getting busted with unlicensed (pirated and/or over-installed legal copies of) software, but
2) Unwilling to spend $x99.99 on Office per seat,
OpenOffice is a no-brainer alternative. Heck, Notepad is a better choice for some percentage of the staff, I'm sure.
It's pretty much inevitable -- good research becomes commoditized over time, everything from Velcro on the Space Shuttle to Spelling and Grammar checking in a Word Processor. I'm actually sort of surprised that it's taken this long for a Free office suite to start (more accurately, to be SEEN to be) really getting into mainstream commercial use.
Still, I think there will always be a percentage of people who want the latest and greatest features, and organizations that are willing to spend to provide them. And organizations with the money to spend will continue to standardize across their staff, etc.
IMHO, neither 'side' (MS, Oracle, etc. on one side and Linux, OpenOffice, MySQL etc. on the other) should really focus on 'winning'. Keep those core users, go after the others. MS is gradually learning to be competitive instead of anti-competitive, something that will benefit both sides in the long run.
You shouldn't verb words.
It would not be too hard to verify Open Office.org's market share by experiment. All we need to do is start sending out .sxw and .sxc attachments. If we get e-mails asking what programme opens them, we tell them Open Office {though I'd expect MS Office to be able to open them just fine; after all, the Open Office.org file formats are public knowledge, whereas the MS office file formats are closely-guarded secrets}.
Also, it might give some people a dose of their own medicine.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
We're a small business, and we run open source on our server and a few desktops. We'll be moving to more in the future.
You can just imagine the look on my boss's face when he asked how much he had to pay for my software and upgrades.
Basically, we use open source because this company lives month to month. We make plenty of money, but there's not enough to throw around on wild expenses. Also, the only excuse for not using open source is not having any employees smart enough to handle it. The MS philosophy is to make computers dumbed down to the level of the dumbest user. And that's why a lot of businesses use windows. But in a sense, if you have open source knowledge and background, then the sum of all open source software is like a benefit you bring to the company once they hire you. Because you have free or cheap access to a program to do just about everything on just about any hardware. What could be better for a small business? This had a large role in my employment.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
I'm in the IT department of a small company.. ~70 hosts and ~8 servers. The need arose a while ago to have a seperate database offloading data from the MS SQL server for reporting purposes. I installed linux on a redundant P3 lying around and set things up because I didnt want to hit the management with a bill for some fancy UNIX solution, and I'm just used to linux.
So now theres the need to use a better VPN solution than the one that comes with win2k, and to replace the MS proxy server. Will I hit them with a bill for the cobalt raq server, an RS/6000 or a used Pentium3 with Linux/FreeBSD? I've no beef with FreeBSD, but I had to install something on the RedHat that doesnt install on FreeBSD.
So Linux is eventual. Everyone will have a need for a utility server and not want to pay for it... and the techie who suggests it will be preferred, for saving the small business some money, natural selection of OSes comes with it.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
I visit tons of small businesses, and this guys telling me 1 in 4 are running linux somewhere?
.com startups or what? Sounds like a dataset skewed towards tech-oriented businesses.
And what exactly does he call a small business? Are these
I mean, your local mom and pop dry cleaner or deli stand doesn't usually have a server farm in the closet or care how many megaflips per flop the electrowizzer can do.
When I think small business and computers, I think of a cheap dell in the corner running QuickBooks..
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
While it's not for everybody, the open source solution really seems to make sense if a group or company can get started with it. I work for a small (~2500 customer) ISP in central Michigan and we use a combination of Linux and Windows 2000. When I started at the ISP, it was a Microsoft-only shop. I introduced the first UNIX server -- a FreeBSD machine -- after about six months. It had a much better uptime, could seemingly handle more tasks, and was easily maintained.
But the main reason that it worked, I think, is that I was there to take care of the new FreeBSD server and answer any questions. If a company does not have a knowledgeable *NIX person on staff, then the chances of that company making an open source solution work are probably greatly reduced.
There is still, I think, a good deal to overcome to really get Linux and open source software into businesses for good. It doesn't help to have a free or even much-less-expensive solution if nobody knows how to use it or fix it. Maybe we just need to breed more *NIX-loving types. :)
-A
These small and medium sized businesses can move more quickly and make changes that they see as being a better business decision. Costs and benefits of any decision are up-close and personal.
Hmmm... let's see ... I have to retrain myself a little to understand the new application (which takes time), suffer a little loss of features, but it costs a lot less, especially over time.
Large companies take longer to do this. The costs and benefits appear different. Large companies like MyCorp have negotiated multi-year, site-wide contracts with companies like Microsoft for things like Office. Consequently, at the department level those products appear "free", we don't pay for them because it comes out of some company wide expenditure, just like electricity and phone service. (And, too, the standardization on One product helps to minimize support costs; so the old One product line is more firmly entrenched . The support techs are more familiar with the old devil than the new devil.)
OpenOffice still has a way to go to compete against that impression in large companies. CIO's are cautious about making a big move unless they feel real comfortable that they understand the costs involved.
While in a small business, the proprietor feels and benefits the costs directly, in the large business, the CIO assumes all of the costs of worrying about the transition. If they're wrong, it's not like they'll just go back the next day like the small business can. No, a bad IT decision in a large company is head-on-a-platter time.
Therefore, study the issue and defer a major transition decision until more evidence is available.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
About five years ago, I set up a linux server at my godfather's business, and it's been running like a tank since then. It replaced an NT machine that required constant fixing and administration on his end. Since he's not the most savvy user, this was a constant source of complaint for him.
The linux machine grew with his business, and was only recently replaced (due to a motherboard failure). When I asked him what kind of OS he wanted on the new server, the choice was clear: Linux. Since it requires so little maintenance (none from him and only remote administration from me) he's been one of the most vocal Linux advocates in the small business community, and had several business in our area come in to see how well Linux works with their existing technologies.
Did we have trouble? Yeah... ACT didn't like to be on a SAMBA share (until I found out it needed oplock tweaking), and getting tech support from his ISP was troublesome, but once everything was set up, there was nothing more to do.
Small businesses often can't afford to have a full time IT person, so this kind of set it and forget it proposition makes great business sense.
"This is not a company that appears to be bothered by ethical boundaries."
Attorney General Mike Hatch on Microsoft
I'm sure that my observations mirror those of many, many others. Linux is making significant penetration into many new markets, true. But the desktop and small-business-server aren't two of those markets.
It's more like 70% for big companies.8 ,17096,00.html
http://www.forrester.com/ER/Research/Report/0,133
It's not saying they're *exclusively* using linux, and it's unclear whether this is server or desktop.
That is, once people know 2 or 3 people who say "we used OpenOffice/StarOffice at company X and it was fine and saved us a packet".
OpenOffice isn't going to grow because of IT Directors deciding to use it. It will be people installing it themselves, or trying it at home and finding they like it and forcing the issue upwards.
I think Microsoft is finally starting to succeed in eliminating the 'casual' software pirating. Sure, there are the larger corporate versions that don't have the activation feature - but most of the smaller companies (less than 25 people) won't have that type of license. A few years back, you could buy a dell and take the copy of office 97 and stick it on every desktop - not legal, but easily to do. Now that is just not the case as today's software loves to finger print your hardware to prevent this from happening.
So why the increase in OSS? I suspect a big chunk comes from folks who look at the CAL's, email, file, or print servers - all the things in addition to an office suite - and have to decide if they really want to pony up for it. A personal example: a friend was looking to get a copy of office to update their resume, among other things. With the product activation, they could not install my copy of Word. Best case, they could buy a student edition for $130 (and sign up for classes) or plunk down $200 for a normal version. I explained what the activation did, pointed them to some on-line vendors I trust, and then gave them the link to Open Office to use while they thought about what to do.
Office is just peanuts, IMHO. The back office pieces are the spendy bits, and that is where a lot of the OSS software shines. Even for something as basic as a web server for the public, is it really worth two grand for IIS? Some folks might say yes, others might go Apache...
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
For s small development company like this one, nothing beats the deal MSDN gives you. If you shop around you can get universal subscription for around 1k and that gives you enough dev licences to ALL of their software. The time saved from not having to reinvent the wheel pays for itself.
I haven't consulted for small businesses in a few years, but when I was, I didn't find ANY linux
Yes, and we all know that the world is a fixed, static place, where nothing ever changes.
I haven't consulted for small businesses in a few years either, but when I was, I didn't find ANY Windows servers. Everybody was using Novell!
So, therefore (by your own logic), Novell must be the most popular server platform for small business.
Wow, I think somebody should tell them, I'm sure they'd love to hear that!
My wife runs a small business (40 employees) and I do the computing stuff (in my leisure time, basically). So I have some experience in SMB and Linux.
5 years ago I introduced Linux file + print servers, routers, and firewalls. Since I was a newbie in the beginning I had a steep learning curve to climb up. After that, everything was perfect. No problems with the 4 Linux and 1 FreeBSD servers, but there still is a NT machine, because some software the company (fashion business) needs runs only on windows. The maintenance costs for this machine are 10 times higher than the 5 other servers combined. I would be glad to get rid of it, but software we need is simply not avaliable in Linux. This is a big obstacle towards an MSfree life.
Then, the desktops. All these Win machines on the desktops require far too much attention. Many of them are > 5 years old and need to be replaced. So this is a good time to migrate towards OSS. So I gave a KDE desktop machine a try --> endless hassle with MS office formats, OpenOffice crawls, users dislike it because it's not Windows, 1 GHz + 256 MB RAM needed etc etc. My conclusion is that it is not the MS desktops which are the problem. Maybe some might be better off with Linux desktops but I think the gain will never be more than 10%, if at all.
The real problem is that there is an overly complex machine at every desk capable of gazillion CPU cycles per sec and able to process GB of data, for what? Writing an invoice (3 kB data) or booking something into an accounting system (234 bytes data). That's what 80% of all workplaces are like. For these 80%, all these diskussions about which desktop is the best are regularly missing the point. That's why I will give thin clients a try. So my idea is: big server machine for those 80 %, old PCs as thin clients, typical desktop with 4 buttons: e-mail, web, write_a_letter, modify_database; Linux or MACs for the remaining 20% (mostly designers). This will take a long time to set up, because there are no off-the-shelf solutions. So the 2nd big obstacle is: there are no experts available to help SMBs. My wife's company would still be locked in Windows if I were not around. Businesses of this size cannot afford a full-time sysadmin. If Joe Fashion or Jill Plumber needs a network for their 5 employees business, they will always end up with MS, provided by the local we-sell-computers shop.
For SMBs, the break even for OSS is still far, far away.
I think the freedom to "just do it" is as significant a factor as the free price and the freedom to modify the code. The ability to download open source software, install it on an old, redundant computer, and play around with it without having to ask anyone for permission or money is a huge factor. Even if the techie knows that his boss will probably approve the money, it is still a hassle. The boss might say "no", the boss might not be around, the boss might use the discussion to bring up other, unpleasant things, such as WTF those clueless users in Marketing are demanding right now.
Of course, this "freedom from hassles" is also why people use the software that is installed by default on the computers they buy instead of going through the hassles of downloading OSS. It does cut both ways. This changes when it is time to upgrade the system, and then the hassle factor comes back in. If you can upgrade that Win98 box to Linux without having to get permission, then even if the TCO is higher for OSS, it will still get done.
SPF support for most open source mail servers can be found at libspf2.
The point I switched over to RH for work was when it set up the display & wireless card on my notebook straight out of the box. Goodbye Win2K. The only app I'm really missing is AutoRoute - for most things OpenOffice is just fine. Its a bit sad that there isn't more educational software for Linux - all the stuff in PC World is for PCs. Having said that my kids are happy enough with mame, doom, pingus etc...
Well, as the previous poster says, you must be a Linux consultant. I have spent the past five years doing some consulting jobs around all Spain, about twenty medium companies, and all I can say I have seen is about half a dozen Linux servers, mainly in file and web server tasks. Most of the remaining servers run Windows 2000, and there even were a couple of ancient HP 9000 running HP-UX.
If so, a Microsoft spokesperson did not show it when he gave a cool response about his company's faith in the free market -- a safe bet when that company owns over 90 percent of the market for desktop-productivity suites, according to Wilcox's research.
and
Hiser said that OpenOffice version 1.1, due this week, can translate Microsoft files with an accuracy of 90 percent.
But anything less than 100 percent is not good enough, Wilcox noted.
So at the end of the day, why all the poncing around with Media Player and Explorer at the anti-trust trial. Bundling these two packages into Windows pales into insignificence in the MS monopoly when compared to the constantly changing and jealously guarded MSOffice file formats.
Until Microsoft is forced to compete on the quality and features of MS Office (neither of which are worth the price over OO.org) as opposed to locking everyone else out with convoluted file structures they will have a stranglehold on business.
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
I think that ClarkConnect (free as in beer for the home edition) is exactly what the community needs to make inroads in the SOHO: take an old computer, put in two nic cards, pop the CD in the drive, answer about ten questions (mostly everything autodetects), and you've got a small business server.
Web based administration (you don't have to touch the cli), samba, firewire, vpn, antispam/anitvirus filters, apache, email/DNS backup. Best of all, there's a solid community behind it.
Such a price the gods exact for song: to become what we sing - Pythagoras
I run Debian, and your suggestion chills my spine. Most people should install a distro without too many options. Red Hat, Mandrake -- anything which has been commercialized. Not Debian, and probably not Slakware.
No wonder you think that non-techie users should run windoze.
Big Brother Bush is doubleplus ungood.
Hey - I looked out of the Window and didn't see any chinses people! All that crap about 1/5 of the worlds population - its a boax!
I work as a technology consultant, independant mainly to very small mom and pop shops and small offices. Many have upgraded PC's in the last few months and just now have Office XP/2002 and here 2003 is comming out at the end of the month.
These people express a disgust that every 18 months, what the buy today won't be powerful enough to run that in the future and its been cheaper to buy $700 boxes every 2 years and chuck 'em than to go through, upgrade hardware and software.
Many more use FreeBSD and Linux daily. I have helped 4 businesses set up ecommerce sites through Yahoo, they have no idea what the hell FreeBSD is, but that is what powers their site.
Also, I have a portable FreeBSD box called my Apple iBook that many take a look at and two mom & pop stores have switched to using Macs for Point of sale and other uses and love them because they are easy to use and don't crash.
I started out in the graphics/video production field with wedding businesses and most switched around 2000 - 2001 to Dell's and PC's. Many are now switching back to mac because of their lost time and work with system crashes.
Now to the kicker: I set-up a Linux or FreeBSD box with KDE set up and most people can pick up how to launch Mozilla and Netscape w/o any proablems. In fact over the next two weeks, I am converting one office over to Linux on all of their PIII 700 boxes they have. Total cost: About $2540. ($2500 to hire me to do it, $40 for a copy of RH). Most couldn't tell a difference between OpenOffice's Spreadsheet and Excell and since it can read/write MS office formats (at least for now) they have interoperatblity.
Their office file/print server has been Linux for "at least two years" one employee remarked, but I don't know I didn't set up their LAN. Well I know its RH 6.2 on IBM hardware, how long its been there...
Why did they switch? They had spent over $6000 US in the last two years just on support calls to wipe off viruses on these machines not to mention the cost in lost time due to data being lost and computer downtime. The hardest issue was to find a replacement for their accounting/payroll/inventroy software. So I recommended buying one new Dell just to run the software package as it would proably take longer and be a hell of a lot more to reset up 4 years of data on a new system and the PR person wanted an iMac, so I recommended getting her one so she can run QuarkXpress and Photoshop.
People and businesses are sick and tired the MS upgrade game every 18 months and I think Linux is poised to make some grounds in the business world. Red Hat and SuSE has done a wonderful job of taking Linux from Geekdom to so easy grandma could use it. Still the lack of commerical software is hurting the platform. OpenOffice has made some tremendous gains in terms of functionality to the point where it now can be used.
Special software is getting there too, like the NOLA Enterprise Resource Planning software, phpprojekt group ware, are good resources for medium sized businesses. What is lacking is some good small business software like Quickbooks that is extremely easy to use and designed for small business. Maybe there is something out there, I just havn't found it yet.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Instead of teaching general word processing concepts. I.E. text can be selected, then cut, copied, pasted, files can be saved and opened. Margins need to be set. Text can be delt with on a character level, word level, sentence level, paragraph level, then in some programs in "sections" or pages" or with "styles".
If you teach these concepts, then someone can set down at a new wordprocessor they have not seen before, take an inventory of the tools available, and they style (Word is paragraph based, built around sections, Wordperfect is character based, built around pages). Then they can get to work and be productive.
If you have been trained in how to use Word (or any other wordprocessor), click here, pick this menu option, you are lost in a new program, especially if you rely on where things are at on the menu.
A vocational school should teach MSWord, or WordPerfect or OpenOffice, or whatever a student would feel is the WordProcessor they need to learn how to use to get a job. Or what the local job market is demanding for entry level word processing skills.
A regular school or college should teach WordProcessing concepts and theory. Students should be exposed to several different word prcoessors and DTP programs after having some theory, and then the class should focus on basic mastery of one product.
vi +
I've been asked for help over the past couple of years for by a small business contractor, but have always bumped up against the OpenOffice translation problem, so just helped with with the File/Print server on RH.
Finally, I said to hell with MS in any new office installs unless they don't want my help. Amazingly, OpenOffice works like hell on wheels when it isn't having to translate screwed up table formats, etc., and the contractor is able to lower his price for desktop support by a third because of far fewer infected/BSD'd machines. (Admittedly, he's really scoring here because his daily calls dropped by more than 70% at the new sites, and emergency calls stopped altogether.)
I guess the moral of the story is, make a clean break from MS whenever possible to realize the greatest efficiency increase, period.
BTW, none of those linux servers / desktops have ever lost any data or 'blue screened'. Newest versions of Mozilla seem to be THE exception, and the users can handle these problems ~90% of the time.