Commenting on recent Australian Bureau of Statistics figures, Alistair Cloke, solutions marketing manager for Microsoft Australia said: -It's good that business is continuing to invest in IT, it shows that in a tough environment they are willing to invest because of the business advantages.
However, Cloke points to the figure of three percent of businesses having their back-end applications integrated with Web technology, and claims big businesses need to encourage small businesses to go online.
-Big businesses can help small businesses through some of the learnings that big businesses have, and their interactions," Cloke told ZDNet Australia. -The easier large businesses can make it for smaller businesses to interact with them via the Web, the better."
The payoff for big business is the automation of processes such as raising invoices and reconciling accounts. This increases process efficiencies, according to Cloke. He said the benefits to smaller businesses include improving customer service, expanding both the hours and field of operation.
-We need to communicate particularly to smaller businesses," Cloke said. -We assume, because of the business that we are in, that everyone knows the benefit of the Internet and transactions on the Web, and that's simply not the case. The focus is on telling business managers what's possible. Getting to those non-IT managers and telling them how various aspects of their business can be improved."
We agree with Microsoft's analysis that IT should form the basis of business profitability and growth. We will likely substantially disagree with the implementation, however. Whereas Microsoft is most likely to exhort possible customers towards its own offerings, and implore: 'Spend, and spend big!', we would suggest that companies around Australia save themselves, and our woeful balance of payments defecit in IT software technologies, much expense, and utilise Open Source software whereever possible.
Open Source can deliver to your bottom line right-here, right-now, with greatly reduced cost of licencing, but it can also improve your medium and long-term business prospects, by reducing your TCO, and substantially altering the locus-of-control of your IT investments, in _your_ favour and not the vendors.
If you have a need for Open Source examples of business software you are looking to purchase, search ZDNet's Linux software archives, google.com or freshmeat.net If all else fails, you have my email address.