You'll be amazed at the quality of open source and open standards software which you can get for:

• No software licencing costs (yes, it's free!)
• No ongoing licence maintenance nor management costs (this can be more than the licence costs!)

From BI to ERP, CRM, Workflow, a complete office suite and much, much more.

But just because it's free does not mean it does not add significant value to your business and compete on an equal footing with expensive proprietary solutions. Open source software is developed under a different, community based model when compared with commercial proprietary software. And in many cases this actually makes the software better and more stable as it is open to far greater scrutiny and review than commercial software developed in-house by a small and closed team of people working to tight time and cost constraints.

Open source is a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. The promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in.

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is a non-profit corporation formed to educate about and advocate for the benefits of open source and to build bridges among different constituencies in the open-source community.

But what about the benefits for business? Well, you get:

1. Free software with no up front licence capital cost
2. Huge reduction in TCO by eliminating time consuming and costly ongoing licence management
3. Reliable software with large and supportive online forums
4. No need for escrow agreements as the source code is freely available to you
5. Modifiable and customisable platform should you require it
6. Corporate backing and support on selected enterprise level products for long term peace of mind
7. Regular functional and security updates

Why pay exorbitant licence costs when you can get an equivalent and often better product for zero licencing cost, with professional corporate support? But that's probably not even where you'll save the most time and money. The cost of ongoing Licence Management to track proprietary product usage can be quite significant and require a lot of  support to uninstall applications from one machine and install them on another to shuffle licences around as your business needs change. This task is eliminated using open source software.

Clearly there is still some cost to be incurred by an organisation in deploying any product, whether it be open source or proprietary. Whilst the use of open source avoids licencing related costs, it still requires deployment, integration and training activities to take place.

At knowledge associates we believe that open source and open standards software is the way of the future. Start getting the benefits NOW to reduce your total cost of ownership (TCO) and increase your net profit.