Online : They Dont Cost a Thing, Anymore

Cost rationalization is the flavor of the season. With every enterprise,
small or large, looking at reducing costs on all fronts, IT budgets are getting
affected too.

This story started with the idea of giving some cost minimization tips to
small and medium enterprises. But as we were working on it, someone asked: why
less cost, why not free? And lo, the effort steered towards identifying IT areas
where the enterprises used to spend on, but which they can now get for free. The
result is this compendium of free IT heads, largely on using the web. We have
even added one free audio conferencing service in the list.

But the challenge in trying to compile such a list is that subjectivity
becomes a challenge. The inherent danger of compiling such a list is that many
people might not agree with the elements in it and debunk it impractical or
childish, while on the other hand a similar audience might actually be happy
with the same and use it to their benefit. One mans honey is truly anothers
poison.

The chief purpose of the list is to provide a small guide to the emerging
companies to put in place a growth strategy and be able to deal with some of the
common pain points. Another point that needs to be noted here is that much of
the free software movement has been carried out by the open source community,
hence most of the applications that are listed here are essentially open source
and free software alternatives to the proprietary ones.

1 Free Storage

Backup is the single largest issue faced by small enterprises. While the big
daddies have their stacks of NAS and SAN, the smaller companies or entrepreneurs
dont really know how and where to store their documents. The issue is not only
of the availability of space but also the ease of use and reuse.

To start off, there are a lot of services that are available online that
provide free. There is Dropbox.io that provides a 2 GB online space free to its
user and then has graded payment options for people who want more. Box.net is
yet another service that allows 1 GB of space free of cost to the user with a
file limit of 25 MB.

But the one that takes the cake is Windows Live SkyDrive service from
Microsoft that currently offers 25 GB of free personal storage, with individual
files limited to 50 MB. This is a mammoth amount of storage (for enterprise and
important documents) and can be accessed through the web. Earlier Yahoo! also
had provided a similar service, Yahoo! Briefcase but now has wrapped it up.
According to certain reports, Google also has plans to offer similar kind of
service titled as Gdrive.

2 Hosting your Website

One of the most important requirements for a business today, is an online
presence. Essentially a business without a webpage is basically like a manager
without an MBA degree, he/she can be successful to an extent but after a while
requires some sort of formal education to excel. Similarly it is very important
for a business or even individuals to have an online presence.

To facilitate websites, there are scores of hosting service providers that
let businesses and individuals host there pages for free and in exchange banner
or sponsored adverts are displayed on the website. Services like Freeservers,
5gighost, Freebeehosting, etc let one host a website with limited bandwidth and
storage space for free. Google too lets people develop their own websites, with
its service called as Google Sites.

Meanwhile for small businesses wanting a more professional website, Intuit
software company offers a Free Website Builder that lets people build a website
in a jiffy. The service is initially free and then charges are applicable based
on the level of expertise that is required by the user.

3The Google Universe

Ever since Larry Page and Eric Schmidt ventured into online sphere in 1998,
with the launch of Google, there has been much change brought about by the
innocuous search company that has transformed into the largest web-based firm.
Today Google is part of almost everyones life, with the company name becoming a
generic term for online search. But the company is not content merely with
search and offers a host of services for both individuals and the users, both
free and for a fee.

Among the most innovative services from the stables of Google has been Google
Apps, a service for using custom domain names with several Google products. It
features several Web applications with similar functionality to traditional
office suites, including: Gmail, Google Calendar, Talk, Docs and Sites. Linked
by the Gmail email id, Google offers a range of services that can be employed by
the discerning entrepreneur, for instance one of the services that are offered
free by Google is Google Analytics, a service that lets an individual or firm
study in depth the efficacy of the online property. Using the tool, individuals
can devise strategies that are best suited to its readers and customers.

4OS Alternatives

Practically speaking, in the Operating System space, there is no real
alternative to Microsoft. With almost all complete dominance of the marketplace
it is hard for any user or organization to not think Windows or Vista. But
nonetheless, there are still the options namely of the Penguin variety. Indeed,
GNU Linux has been one of the most formidable challenges to the dominance of
Microsoft.

As of now, much of the dent made by the penguin is currently limited on the
server side, with scores of organizations going in for Linux derivates like Red
Hat, Novell, etc. It was a space where Microsoft was not too keen to battle out.
But now, the challenge extends further, the desktop. Over the past year or so, a
South African based company has been making inroads on the desktop space by e
offering Free OS and applications that more or less mimic the Windows or rather
the Vista environment. Ubuntu is steadily becoming a choice for companies and
professionals that are looking for options that are easy to use and cost
nothing.

5Another Office

Another reason why Microsoft has been able to maintain a dominance of the
marketplace is due to its spread of the Office Suite of applications. People
across the world are using the Window applications, like MS Word or MS Excel.
The company sells a suite of these applications in the market and the pricing is
dependent on the type of application desired by an individual.

There is an alternative that is available to people who dont want to pay
anything to giant from Redmond and invest the same money in some fruitful way.
The name of the suite is OpenOffice.org. Available freely on the Internet, the
suite offers applications like Writer (MS Word), Calc (MS Excel), Impress (MS
Powerpoint), Base(Microsoft Access), etc. As lot of CIOs across the board that
are keen to curtail on the costs are already looking at OpenOffice.org as a
substitute for Microsoft Office and the trend will only get higher in the coming
days.

6File Sharing through FTP

Another application that is gaining much popularity on the Indian soil is
the FTP or File Transfer Protocol. Through the same, companies and individuals
can upload their works or documents that can be accessed by a wide variety of
people. This is usually done in cases, where the size of the mail is in excess
of 10 mb.

Currently, there are scores of applications in the market that offer similar
functionality but it is hard to beat Filezilla in the same game. In fact over
the past few years there has been a launch of yet another OS, namely FireFTP. In
fact, both of them are quite effective in uploading the documents to a storage
cloud.

7Business Tool

For businesses that are on the growth trajectory, it is very important to be
able to better manage the resources within the organization as well as outside.
Over the years, host of companies have made immense profit by providing tools
and applications that let an organization be better able to do its resource
planning. Known ubiquitously as ERP, these solutions are of immense importance
for an organization on the ascendancy.

While there are the costly applications like Microsoft Navision that are
present in the market, quite a few free software (with limited capabilities and
trial versions) are also available like Compiere, xTuple and OpenERP. These
software applications let the user do quite a fair bit of resource planning on
an enterprise scale. Though, there are scores of issues in terms of usage of
such free software in terms of limitations and capabilities. The onus is on the
company to be better utilize the same and could be a good starting point for new
entrepreneur.

8Audio Conferencing

Unlike web-based applications, telecommunications is still local and any
service offered has to be offered locally. This is Indias own free service
launched by one of the Internets successful early pioneers.

Most of us have paid for WebEx and similar audio conferencing services
provided by carriers and other service providers. Here is a free audio
conferencing service (sabsebolo.com) started by the man who introduced the world
to the big free wave by introducing Hotmail. Sabeer Bhatias service is ad
supported and is surely no match for paid services like WebEx but the fact that
it comes for free and is of acceptable quality means it is worth trying for
internal meetings, if not for business presentations. The service can be
obtained through local number dialing in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai,
Bangalore and Hyderabad

To be honest, the list is certainly not complete. As there are a lot of
additions that can be made in terms applications and software, for instance,
open source alternatives in desktop publishing or data compression. In the end,
as was mentioned earlier much of the free software emanates from the open
source community. Thus it would be unfair if we did not give them the credit to
the fabulous community of altruists working overtime to set us free. As long as
this vibrant community is working, we can be sure of one thing there will be a
lot more lists like this in the coming days.

Shashwat DC

shashwatc@cybermedia.co.in