InfoWorld has our second open-source story of the day: this time it is about German SMEs and their resistance to Microsoft’s licencing policy:
“Let me be very frank — German mid-size companies don’t care much about IT today because they’re being forced more than ever to focus on their core business,” said Lars Kloppsteck, IT manager at Heinrich Berndes Haushaltstechnik GmbH & Co. KG, a manufacturer of cooking utensils in Arnsberg, Germany. “They have two primary criteria: IT must preform; and, above all, it shouldn’t cost much. That’s why open source software is high on just about everyone’s agenda.”
The potentially lower cost of deploying and maintaining open source software, such as Linux and OpenOffice, “is clearly what prompted us to seek an alternative to Microsoft,” Kloppsteck said. “And I know many other small and medium-size companies in Germany are dropping Microsoft for the same reason.”
In fact, one of the main reasons why open-source software, particularly Linux, is catching on with SMBs in Germany is the support they are receiving from distributors, systems integrators and other software service companies, according to Volker Knittel, account manager with Avnet CMG GmbH, a software distributor based in Leinfelden-Echterdingen, Germany.
I’ll be talking more about the affordable computing ecosystem that India needs to build today at BangaloreIT.com. I’ll put up the presentation (it is only 4 slides) here on Sunday.
