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Cost-Conscious Companies Turn To Open Source

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the only-a-matter-of-time dept.

Martyr4BK writes "BusinessWeek has a slew of special reports today on open source software discussing the benefits for buyers who are cost conscious and open source being the silver lining for the economic slump. They even have a slideshow of 'OSS alternatives' like Linux, Apache, MySQL, Firefox, Xen, Pentaho, OpenOffice.org, Drupal, Alfresco, SugarCRM, and Asterisk. These are all good examples (we use a bunch of them already); what other open source software can I use to drop my company's IT costs, and maybe get a decent bonus for the year?"

5 of 249 comments (clear)

  1. I wonder by LWATCDR · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Besides Slashdot how much FOSS does Slashdot use?
    Do they use Asterisk for it's phone system? Or does it's parent company do all the "business" stuff for them and just let write perl and post articles?

    --
    See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
  2. TCO not always lower by NinthAgendaDotCom · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I used to think the TCO argument was rubbish. But then I did some research this year on bug tracking software for my company. At least in this one area, it was obvious that while you'd save a few hundred initially on open source solutions, these solutions were much less polished and supported than their commercial competitors. I would have had to do a lot of additional installations and customization to get things working right. And there was no quick answer from a tech support email address when I would have trouble. And in another recent purchase of music production software, the open source versions were an absolute joke in comparison to commercial varieties. Open source is great. I use Firefox and Open Office all the time. But for business and specialty applications, commercial applications are still often much more solid and cheaper in the long run.

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    -- http://ninthagenda.com/
  3. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  4. Re:Would love to... by The+Great+Pretender · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I'm not convinced yet that money is saved for small to medium businesses. We are supposedly an open source shop and productivity is severely hampered by the constant maintenance required. We have twice the IT staff for half the people that were being served in my previous job, which was MS based.

    In addition, the open source IT staff seem to just want to constantly be changing everything when something newer and flashier comes out (read that as closer to functionality to a purchased project). In one year we have had 3 different email servers, with the associated problems of swapping over. Or the IT recommended web casting software works on MAC and windows but doesn't have full functionality on the Linux boxes. I was hoping that would change when we change the IT staff lead, but the new guys seem the same.

    I also find it amusing that the anti-MS IT staff bitch about things like MS Outlook, but then celebrate when Thunderbird adds a function bringing it closer to MS Outlook.

    Over half the company just use their own personal laptops due to the hassle, which ironically, defeats the crippling obsession with security that the IT guys have.

    --
    A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
  5. Works for me by IceCreamGuy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Ever since I started using Nagios, I've been able to slowly help the rest of the IT department consider open source when starting projects. Now we use Nagios, Backuppc, MySQL, Perl, Splunk, Snare and Ubuntu LTS for servers. The clincher was not having to pay for licensing for a SQL server, OS and all. We're all so tired of dealing with the behemoth of a licensing scheme that Microsoft uses, and that's really what pushed us to alternatives.