Open Source software consultancy for MS Windows operating systems

Open Source Software Consultants | OSS software license consultancy Leeds

FSI offers Open Source software consultancy and software license consultancy, offering installation, technical training and support for open source business and enterprise software that can run can on your existing Microsoft Windows clients. If you are about to embark on setting up your IT infrastructure for the first time we can also advise on which open source products are best for your purposes and help you to set up your servers and clients with the best-value, high-performance options available.

If you are looking to introduce new software functionality to your business, there are literally thousands of rugged and powerful Open Source software packages available. Whatever your needs there are many OSS alternatives that are suitable for implementation in an SME or enterprise environment. In truth, you will be mostly likely spoilt for choice, and require an Open Source consultancy service just to help you weigh up the alternatives.

Open Source software applications are often as beefy and sophisticated as their proprietry counterparts and usually at least as stable and straightforward to use. Moreover, the software licensing cost-savings available are highly attractive. If your business is not presently leveraging the potential benefits of OS software, then it may be a good time to re-evaluate your software estate.

Take an appraisal of Open Source Software...

If you would like to integrate Open Source software within your software estate then we can offer impartial advice on the benefits and risks of introducing available solutions. For instance, while many software packages might offer significant reductions to your Total Cost of Ownership and provide excellent productivity and efficiency benefits, others may be unsuitable due to existing software dependancies, conflicts with existing applications on your desktop build, or requirements for retraining. We can advise you on what is the best way forward.

Harness the benefits of Open Source software...

Migrating some of your existing software estate across to Open Source software packages need not present a significant cultural shift or re-training challenge. In fact, by keeping it simple, you can make significant savings on your IT outlay, by making minimal changes to your existing software estate. If you are interested in converting to free or nominally-priced open-source products, but have been put off by the enormity of making a complete migration across to a Unix infrastructure, then switching to a selection of carefully chosen Open Source packages, to run on your existing proprietry OSs, is the ideal way forward. By opting for this solution you can run your business efficiently, effectively and safely with an attractive reduction in TCO (Total Cost of Ownership). And what's more, once you do this, the headache of software licensing might be significantly reduced.

To give you a rough idea of the sort of savings you might expect to make, consider for instance the bottomline outlay involved in procuring and rolling out large proprietry database systems, bespoke CRM systems or project management tools. Any of these might easily run into tens of thousands of pounds before you even consider implementation, training or support. Identifying a freely available Open Source alternative and running a feasibility study on it might only cost a few £100 by comparison.

Discuss your OSS requirements...

If you would like to arrange a preliminary consultancy, email os@foursquareinnovations.co.uk outlining your requirements. The first 30 minutes is free.

Consultancy is charged at £75.00 p/hr.

FSI can also install, upgrade and support all software necessary and even provide training to your staff, so that you can get the most out of your new OSS packages. We can even provide research and evaluation of industry specific applications that match your business requirements. Research, installation and training are charged at £350.00 p/d. Service support packages are based upon the number of clients and software packages supported.

If you are unsure about the viability of implementing Open Source for you business we can even run a feasibility study for you.

Benefits of Open Source Software:

1. Significant potential reductions to Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) to a wide range of business areas.
2. Overall reduction in the amount of licensed software requiring software asset management.
3. Sophisticated and user-friendly functionality.
4. Faster install times.
5. No significant cultural shift, change to working practices or other detrimental impact should be caused by such a project.
6. Open Source alternatives, while often being as stable and as sophisticated and powerful as their proprietary alternatives, are also frequently more light-weight. This equates to a reduction in the burden upon disk space, memory, maintenance and performance.
7. No drastic platform migration required; all the OSS packages used will be available to install manually or deploy remotely onto existing Windows operating systems. Suitable applications might also be added to core builds.
8. Competitiveness: Numerous organisations and enterprises are gradually making the shift across to open source software and taking advantage of the contingent cost-savings.
9. Open Source software is either freely licensed or drastically cheaper than proprietry alternatives.
10. Intelligent Business Software: there is a good range of CRM and ERP Open Source software available from turnkey solutions to ready-to-go off-the-shelf packages
11. Service support: Numerous open source products are available here. These include partitioning and ghosting packages and many others.
12. With open source audio and video players (e.g. VLC), the file type compatibility problems that prevent certain media playing could quickly become a thing of the past.

Related information: How enterprises can save money on software licensing article

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