Open Source. Pros and contras.

   Open source software become more popular recently– everybody switch to it, the future is seen after it.

 

   But on practice most of users became confused when sees Linux products as Ubuntu with all known Firefox, and simple Open Office should be an ideal variant. And common users bump with heap of questions like, where are my files stored, how to do this, how to do that, etc.

    Business owners who discovered the possible economy from Open source seek to transfer the whole infrastructure to it. But they never think about the price of holding such solution and what looses can cause the declining productivity.

   Many specialists can say that such solutions could be acquitted in small Business.

   A computation for a company of 25 persons:

• Window SBS Standart
• Windows 7 pro
• MS Office 2010
• Licenses for connection, etc.

In total – about $13 000 

   If use free software – this funds saves on the first stage, but goes for the salary for a person responsible for support of the given product. Namely, instead of one admin appear two - so-called help-desk who answers and solves the users questions. Yearly expenses for these specialists are something about $28k.

   In such cases the existence of two specialists – admin and specialist on help desk - is extremely important, because if someone of them will take day off or sick pay – another can support him, but if there is no any support – the whole office work can stop, for example if the accountant don’t know where the calculation of the salaries for the dept has located for storage.

   Considering that it would be spent some time for staff education – the workflow will decrease during this time, thus your losses can surpass your profit from using the open source soft.

   But the biggest minus is a bondage to the system administrator. As a rule, created infrastructure on Linux platform don’t documented in such companies. All in all it should not be challenged that big IT Company can employ high-level IT specialists and using of Linux servers will cover the efforts.

   In the large company these disadvantages (great help desk service and work efficiency) can also cause more great losses. Though the company can employ highly qualified professionals and use Linux servers for several tasks can exonerate one.

   As alternative Outlook can be used – it is very convenient and has heap of business instruments. To the surprise many companies of about 25-50 employees don’t know how to use it. CRM implementation is overmuch in functionality and too expensive. All this functionality has Windows Small Business Server – Exchange 2010. And it’s work and it’s easy and understandably.

   But there are much more variants really exist. Some of them:

• Google Docs
• MS Office 365
• Windows 7 + Open Office

   There is no one universal solution for everybody. To build the most optimal solution it should considered a lot of factors as fault tolerance, availability of high-speed Internet channels, start-up costs, cost of ownership, etc.

   All in all, the decision is after you.