Leading from my last post about using skype to run phones, it seems to me as if these days business infrastructure can be almost entirely run on open source or free products.  I am quite tempted to give these options a go, but I do use a lot of software and services which are only available to windows…..

Operating system

 

Ubuntu, is user friendly version of Linux, an open source operating system.  I reckon that using this would be fine as long as the user had limited software requirements (i.e. they did not need any software only available for windows)

Office

Open office (and for that matter Google Docs) provides functionality to cover about 99% of office functions such as spreadsheet and word processor. I think that using Open Office would be sufficient for the needs of any worker who only needed to communicate within the company, as outside the company their could be compatibility problems with MS office users.

Email and Calendar

Instead of using microsoft exchange, it would be possible to use Gmail and Google Calendar.  Google in fact has a service called apps for you domain which offers enterprise services at a fraction of the cost of building an infrastrure using MS products.

I think the Gmail is great as it allows POP mail to be received into the gmail client, giving a single online email store.

Phones

 

As mentioned in a previous post, Skype can be used to build a phone system of sorts.
 

Are there any businesses out there that have gone entirely open source?

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