Open source alternatives are a viable reality for small and medium-sized businesses (SME), with functionality-rich products and tools available that circumvent the need for traditional, proprietary software.
This is the word from Red Hat GM for the META region, George de Bono. He was in South Africa recently for a two-day roadshow to promote the benefits of open source services and systems.
"There are open source replacements for all common proprietary products, and the beauty of open source is that there's a much lower entry and ownership point from a company standpoint," he says. "From a Red Hat product portfolio point of view, we don't differentiate the functionality between the SME and corporate market.
"What we're seeing now is very real interest in moving from community-based, unsupported variants to the enterprise-supported variants."
Technical challenge
De Bono says Red Hat has been growing globally at an average annual rate of 20%, with South African growth surpassing this.
There are open source replacements for all common proprietary products, and the beauty of open source is that there's a much lower entry and ownership point from a company standpoint.
George de Bono, Red Hat
He admits that operating systems like Red Hat have made the most impact in back-end and cloud-based environments, but that alternatives from Libre Office and Open Office easily replace the traditional Microsoft Office apps, while Zimbra is easily recognised as a competent e-mail and archiving tool.
SMEs adopting an open source approach do face the additional technical challenge of finding the right skills to manage such an environment, although De Bono is comfortable that the skills base and open source service provider base is growing sufficiently to meet demand.
"Yes, the skills base is an area that may well be holding us back. However, for SMEs to have skills sets housed in their organisation may not be the smartest use of their money, which is why we so aggressively empower our partners," he says.
First published in the September 2013 issue of ITWeb Brainstorm magazine
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