Every day we get more stories about how credit is tight and how business is going to suffer, and many of us are left wondering what we can do about it. Here at Trivas we have always believed IT should make a real, positive contribution to the business. Now, more than ever, you have to be able to extract every ounce of value from you computer systems, so we've put together a list of free software you might find useful.
There's a lot of free software about. We discuss Open Source Software on another page. There is also a lot of free commercial software available. There's usually some restriction - either basic functionality or a limit on the number of users, but if the restrictions fit your need there can be big savings to be made without compromising quality.
Of course, the business cost of IT systems doesn't stop at paying (or not) for the licence. Installation, configuration, maintenance and ease-of-use are vital – together with the gain your business will see - so you need to plan carefully and make any investments wisely
Some other thoughts...
- Please don't make false economies in areas like hardware support for servers. We always prefer to see a proper hardware support contact on server hardware because of the impact on a business if a server is unavailable for any length of time.
- Backups should be regarded as 100% essential - a hardware failure can happen quickly and often without warning. And don't forget to do regular trial restores just to make sure everything is working properly.
- Don't skimp on security. The dangers are growing daily and the cost to your business in time, money and/or reputation can be sizeable.