During these hard economic times, companies all over the world are looking at ways of cutting costs to survive the lean months ahead. One of the glaringly obvious areas for cost cutting is licensing costs, but the dilemma faced by many is that the services and applications covered by these licenses  are necessary for the running of their business. In searching for a solution many CIOs are now seriously starting to look at open source solutions.

Corporates using open source to cut costs and improve productivity

For many years, open source software has been gaining traction and momentum in business. In fact, in most businesses today, you will be hard pressed not to find any open source solutions at work. Usually though, the use of open source has not been the result of a deliberate corporate policy, but the result of technicians putting solutions in place that help them get their job done without management being aware of it. This has meant that open source solutions have had a low profile, hidden away in the server room, quietly doing their work and saving companies millions.

Now corporates are beginning to look at open source afresh, and ask where can it save them money, and can they put deliberate policies in place to take advantage of open source software in a coherent way.

How Open Source can save you money

The areas where open source can cut costs varies from company to company. When devising a roll out plan there are two distinct areas, the server side and the desktop side.

Server Side Solutions

This is the area where open source software has a strong foothold and is already been used extensively in corporates today. Typical solutions include:

• Web Server using Apache,
• Mail Servers such as Scalix and Zimbra,
• Firewall and routing such as Vyatta and Endian Firewall,
• Web Proxy and Content Filtering such as Squid and Dan's Guardian,
• Remote branches and road warrior access using VPNs,
• VOIP PBX's such as Asterisk,

Desktop Solutions

Open source solutions are now beginning to make in-roads into the desktop space:

• Linux desktops such as Novell's Suse is being used to replace Microsoft operating systems for users,
• Open Office to replace Microsoft Office, especially for light users of office productivity tools such as receptionist, admin clerks and others. In most cases Microsoft Office is replaced on all desktops except for those individuals that need some functionality that cannot be provided by open office,
• Firefox is being used to provide web access

Open source (Linux) and Microsoft interop

Luckily for corporates, using open source software is not an all or nothing decision. In some cases only a portion of the users are migrated to the open source solutions, whereas those that need to, can stay with proprietary solutions.

In addition  Novell's Linux offering is uniquely placed to provide corporates with the guarantees and support that corporates require for their solutions. Novell's solutions offer joint support from Microsoft and Novell, providing CIO with the necessary assurances that they require from their suppliers.

So what are you waiting for?

With the necessary guarantees and support in place isn't it time you started considering using open source in your company? If you want some more information, or a proposal on how open source can save your company money, give us a call on 011-781 8014 and we will gladly assist.