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Free software is better for business

This blog describes how Spinning Planet Limited migrated from proprietary software like Microsoft to free software like Linux. The funny thing is I didn't think anything of it until I was chatting with a friend who said it was quite an achievement and many businesses could benefit from our story.

As an Internet marketing and web development company we need lots of advanced software for creating professional web pages, multimedia content and running our business. I went through our proprietary software archives last week and was shocked at the amount of software we used to use. Here's an example but it's less than a quarter of the complete list:

Operating Systems

• Windows 98SE
• Windows 2000
• Windows XP

Office Software

• Microsoft Office (Outlook/Calendar, Word, Excel, Power Point)
• MYOB

Multimedia Software

• Adobe CS3 (Flash, PhotoShop, etc)
• Corel Graphics Suite (Photo Paint, Corel Draw, etc)
• Lightwave3D animation and 3D graphics software
• Maya animation and 3D graphics software
• Nero CD authoring software
• CoolEdit Pro Audio editing software
• Adobe Premiere Pro video editing software
• Windows Media Player
• Windows Media Encoder

Utilities

• NoteTab Pro advanced text editor
• Partition Magic hard disk partition management software
• Norton Ghost hard drive backup software
• CyberDefender security suite
• Real VNC remote desktop management
• WinRar archive management

Internet

• SecureCRT SSH software to securely connect to a shell on servers
• SecureFTP SFTP software to securely transfer files to servers
• Internet Explorer web browser

Step One: Do you need to change?

The first thing you need to do is validate why you want to change. Here's some of our reasons:

1. To streamline business processes such as staff training, standard operating procedures, better security and maintenance.
2. Didn't want to pay thousands for extra licences that would have been outdated in 12 months.
3. Not happy with the way Windows was getting bloated and prone to viruses which had literally cost thousands in downtime.
4. We'd noticed that software was being moved to the Internet which offers many benefits.
5. We could see that the latest and best developments in software were coming out in Open Source or web based "software as a service (SaaS)" software first which provided far more opportunities for our company.

Step Two: Identify Essential Software

So for us it was a "no-brainer". All we had to do was identify the software we absolutely needed to run Spinning Planet and find replacements. For example I've used the Corel Graphics Suite, MS Office, Outlook and the Outlook Calendar for over 15 years. How was I going to do without them? Trickier still, the software had to work on Linux, Windows and Mac because that's what my team were using at the time.

Thunderbird email, Google Calendar and Google Contacts
If you don't have the thousands of dollars it costs to setup, secure and maintain a Microsoft Exchange server then you probably aren't sharing calendars or mail. We researched lots of Open Source Exchange type systems but ended up opting for a simpler solution:

1. Google Calendar allows me to share my Calendar with staff and clients and I can sync with my Web 2.0 apps like Facebook, LinkdIN, etc.
2. Google Contacts allows me to sync contacts on all my devices (phone, laptop, work PC).
3. Thunderbird Email allows me to access all my emails via IMAP which means I can access my mail from anywhere in the World. We also have a shared Support email account that all staff can access.
4. Thunderbird also has Templates which allow me to create multiple templates such as client quotes, follow-ups, etc which has really streamlined and improved our communication with clients.
5. Thunderbird also has many free Addons that can extend its functionality such as the Stationary that makes it create business formatted emails like Outlook does.

Google Apps
Presently we use Google for our Documents, Presentations, Spreadsheets and even config files for routers and servers because:

1. Staff can easily share docs with each other or even clients through the web
2. We can securely access our documents from any Internet capable computer or mobile device such as an iPhone.
3. The documents have fantastic revision history.
4. Documents are stored on Google's servers which avoids the risk of a disaster.
5. Multiple staff can work on the same document at the same time.

Step Three: Migrate Slowly

I didn't want to shock my team into using new software that they weren't used to so we gradually migrated over a 24 month period. Here's how we did it:

1. Choose the easy software to migrate first. We moved from SecureFTP to Filezilla because it worked nearly exactly the same way.
2. Let a staff member trial software before the rest move to it. This way you have a "go to" person who can answer any questions. For example, I was the last person to move from Outlook to Thunderbird and I would just ask our Sys Admin questions like "How do I change my Stationary?"
3. Try and migrate all the software before you migrate to a new operating system like Linux. That way, there will be less interruption to the team and your business. As an example, when my Windows XP finally died from a virus and I moved to Linux I was immediately productive because I knew how to use all the software and my mail and many other resources like passwords, docs, and mail were stored in the cloud.
4. Sugar coat the software and make things easy to find. One thing I noticed is when my Linux guys would get on a Mac computer they didn't know how to navigate or what software to use so what I did is create a Windows style "Start Menu" on all computers with the same menu structure such as an Internet folder that had the Firefox web browser, Filezilla SFTP client, etc. You can also skin apps like Firefox and Thunderbird to look like Internet Explorer and Outlook if you think that will help - it did with me ;-)

Conclusion

At the moment the majority of Spinning Planet is run on Open Source software. Our graphic design is still done on Mac using mostly Adobe CS3 but eventually that will be replaced by Open Source software but I will need to create training material for that to happen. Perhaps even introduce an "Open Source web design for the Internet" course to the local Uni.

I could go on for days about the differences between proprietary software but really what it boils down to is an actionable reason to move. To help your transition here's a list of the software we use. Most of it works on Linux, Windows and Mac:

brynn :-)

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Brynn

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