Open Source Wave Threatens Microsoft Desktop Dominance
A new wave of freely available Open Source business software is experiencing rapid adoption by business users. With hundreds of thousands of downloads to date, Open Source solutions like NetOffice and SugarSuite are beginning to tread on territory traditionally occupied by Microsoft products such as Project and Outlook.
(PRWEB) May 19, 2005 -- Much has been made of the potential of Linux to upset
Microsoft’s dominance of operating systems. Little attention however has been
given to rapidly evolving Open Source software applications which may someday
threaten products like Microsoft Office. A new wave of freely available Open
Source business applications is already experiencing rapid adoption amongst
small and medium sized businesses. Open Source solutions like NetOffice and
SugarSuite offer much of the functionality available in Office products like
Microsoft Project and Outlook, but with the added benefit of web-based
deployments that allow groups or departments to easily share information. Unlike
Outlook and Project, NetOffice and SugarSuite store information in centralized
databases as opposed to desktop file systems, allowing users to easily share
data.
“SugarSuite is really a killer Open Source app that greatly
extends the capabilities of applications like Outlook” says Jeff Minich, VP of
Business Development at iRadeon.com. “It doesn’t directly compete with Outlook,
rather it does a number of things Outlook should do on its own but doesn’t.”
“Things like shared calendaring, contact databases, and email archives are
essential in team work environments. Unfortunately with Outlook these
capabilities aren’t supported without a complicated and expensive deployment of
Microsoft Exchange and Windows Server” says Minich.
The Open Source
community has helped fill the gap for small businesses with free and easily
deployable solutions like SugarSuite. SugarSuite’s contact management
capabilities are only the beginning; the application also provides a number of
customer relationship management features usually only found in high end
enterprise software applications like Microsoft CRM and Seibel CRM. The latest
version of Sugar even includes a ‘Projects’ module with scheduling and task
management features similar to those found in Microsoft Project. NetOffice,
another Open Source application, also offers a number of features found in
Microsoft Project with the added benefit of web-based deployment. Unlike the
standard version of Microsoft Project which restricts project information to a
single desktop, NetOffice users can manage their entire project teams via a
shared web portal.
With over 100,000 downloads in less than a year,
applications like SugarSuite and NetOffice are fast becoming part of the
software mainstream. With Open Source applications, small businesses don’t have
to pay thousands of dollars for software license fees. They can deploy the
software in minutes on their own servers for free or use a Managed Application
Service provider like iRadeon.com to deploy and manage the software through the
web. iRadeon.com provides businesses with turnkey deployment of popular Open
Source applications for just pennies per day per user, far less than the cost of
their commercial alternatives.
“Open Source is fast moving beyond the
Operating System and on to traditional desktop user territory via these
web-based applications. As more and more people move to browser-based software
the need for products like Office, and even Windows, itself becomes
marginalized” Minich says. “It’s a fundamental shift in how software gets
distributed and it's a shift that, over time, poses a direct threat to
Microsoft’s preeminent position in desktop applications.”
About
iRadeon
iRadeon is pioneering the delivery of on-demand Open Source business
applications. The company was founded in 1999 to help small and medium sized
businesses improve their competitive capabilities through the use of web-based
technologies. iRadeon is headquartered in Roseville, CA, near Sacramento. For
more information please visit http://www.iradeon.com, or call
1-866-247-3211.
Microsoft(TM), Office(TM), Windows(TM), and Exchange(TM),
Project(TM), Outlook(TM) are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.
SugarSuite(TM) is a registered trademark of SugarCRM
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/5/prweb241391.htm