Lots of businesses we speak to rely on a particular piece or type of software to do their core activity. Whether it be publishing, manufacturing or design, to name but a few of the sectors we work with, some things are sacred and that’s fine. The beauty of open source products is that they are so flexible and cheerfully work alongside all sorts of other programs, open source, proprietary or something in-between.

The practical application of this for your company is that you can continue using any number of applications that your daily business relies upon (chances are there’s an open source equivalent, but we understand that people build up a relationship with a program and don’t want to lose that), but can use open source in other areas and immediately reduce your IT spend.

Take publishing. We can provide email and host a website, microsites and blogs on open source software, while the publishing house happily continues to use its long-standing publishing software without a hitch. Immediately the publishing house saves on the server licensing costs that hosting companies that use proprietary server software have to pass on. Take that one step further and lose Microsoft Office. Replace it with OpenOffice or Libre and do away with licensing and upgrade issues. Abandon that eye-wateringly expensive proprietary accounting package – Basil, is it? Oregano? – and replace it with open source and the savings mount up very fast. But it’s a pick and mix system: keep the proprietary systems you want or need, and go open source for the rest.

Does that sound like something your company could benefit from? Are you interested in finding out which functions in your company could go open source? We’re always very happy to chat (talk is free, as in free beer) so please get in touch via info@opensure.net – we look forward to hearing from you.