Small Business Software Sourcing Tips

Unless your small business is directly related to computers - such as an Internet store or a design business - chances are you don’t think about what software to put on your computer until a minute before you need it. Then you are fumbling along, making whatever choice is the first one to present itself.

In today’s global marketplace, businesses are discovering that they have no choice for their computing needs if they want to stay ahead. They must have maximum performance for minimum cost. It wasn’t so important a decade ago, but with today’s global communication infrastructure and the rise of vitalized services, you often find that you are competing not just with the shop across the street, but the firm across the globe as well.

This is why so many small businesses are standardizing on open source software. Regardless of whether it runs on Linux, GNU, BSD, Open Solaris, or commercial systems like Red Hat and Novell, open source software is the only option that provides such stunning performance for little to no cost. A larger business can afford to shoot from the hip and run a proprietary system and software package, and fix the problems they will inevitably have when they come up. But as a small business owner, you have to be fast on your feet and watch every penny. Here is a guide to the “new guard” of software for basic needs:

Web Server: Apache - Fortunately, Unix and Unix-like systems are where the Internet was born, so the Linux-native Apache web server is the solid standard throughout the industry. If your needs are slightly smaller, lighttpd might be an acceptable second choice. The rest are either too small, too expensive, or too insecure to bother with.

Database: MySQL - We’re talking about non-desktop databasing here. There’s a host of database software for the web out there, and the majority of it is either open source or based on an open source platform. Oracle is a solid second option - sometimes you have to go commercial, and Oracle has an unbeatable support history and even offers their own custom Linux distribution free for perfect platform integration.

Office Suite: OpenOffice.org - OpenOffice.org has risen to prominence as the “MS Office killer” as well as the successor to StarOffice. The OpenOffice suite is standard throughout every platform, freely portable, supports file formats both famous and obscure, and hosts components from word processor to graphics to slide point presentations to databases - all blended together to work seamlessly! For a second choice, you’re probably looking at either Trolltech’s KDE KOffice suite, or even smaller with assembling programs piecemeal such as ABIWord for word processing and GNUCash for accounting.

Graphic Design: Gimp and Inkscape - There was once a time when Adobe ruled this roost, but open source has not only caught up to it, but surpassed it on every front. For those who have needs extending beyond the simple tool supplied by their office suite, Gimp is now ahead of Photoshop it seems for general graphics editing and Inkscape shuts out every competitor for vector editing. Krita is coming up on this category, and you’ve probably used it if you’ve run KDE. Whether you are designing an ad banner, a business card, a banner for your blimp, or a magazine ad, if you can’t draw it with one of these three programs, you can’t draw it on a computer at all.

Accounting: GNUCash - The GNUCash package has pretty much become the most established open source accounting program. There are lots of contenders tying for second place, but PostBooks is emerging as a solid choice. PostBooks is scalable for a much larger business, while GNUCash is adequate for middle-sized businesses. Another well renowned, sophisticated and established contender is one of my favorites, Quickbooks. You’ll have to pay for Quickbooks but it’s good value for money. Here’s seven points you should know on small business accounting software.

Web Browser: Firefox - Firefox has emerged as the world’s most popular web browser on every system under the sun. Second place is - you’re kidding, right? Second place belongs to Firefox as well.

Remember that a small business is starting out with a vision and a spirit of pioneering - in some cases you will be bucking the industry trend with some of these categories. But if you did what everybody else did, you’d still be working for somebody else, wouldn’t you? Using free and open source software will give you an edge on every front, and will always be your smartest choice.

You can also see here how to easily prepare business documents and spreadsheets.