Proprietary software solutions has dominated the business application domain for years. This route is considered by many as a risk-free option however, change is coming.
Open source software offers a serious alternative. Businesses are taking advantage of solutions where the code is developed openly and collaboratively. In the open source world, businesses are not bound by the talent of just the vendors employees. Instead, the community expands across the world and as a result, experts can contribute and improve the code no matter their location.
It is therefore not surprising that in today’s software ecosystem, 70% of code is open source.
Why should I swap to open source software?
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Freedom
Open source software (OSS) provides complete freedom for users. If your open source software is missing a feature or functionality, businesses can easily extend the application to better fit their needs. You are not restricted to your vendors roadmap or locked into a particular vendor. You have the freedom of choice without license restrictions.
Another benefit to OSS is that interoperability with other applications is easier to achieve. Building this bridge between different solutions, empowers Users to integrate across applications seamlessly.
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Cost effective
The total cost of ownership for open source products is significantly less than their proprietary counterparts. Their permissive licenses mean that anyone can download the source code and get started right away. Expenses for customisation, support training and other professional services should be considered, but these are optional and the skills sets are usually commonly found. With the removal of costly license fees your operating expenditure will be greatly reduced.
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Accelerated innovation
Open access to knowledge fuels innovation. When you download OSS you become part of a community which values sharing knowledge and are passionate about building solutions to problems. Access to such forward thinking and innovative minds comes at no extra cost. Through participation and contributing back to projects, you in turn help to keep up the momentum. This doesn’t mean that you need to start learning how to code though, contributions can be simple such as reporting bugs or implementing documentation.
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Better quality software
Open source produces better quality software than proprietary solutions and promotes a more transparent way of working. “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow” is its well-known mantra and highlights one of the software’s key strengths. The nature of open source code means that it can be improved on by anyone and the quality of the code can be reviewed by the community.
If a bug is found to exist, it is efficiently diagnosed, triaged and resolved by the community, all within a relatively short time frame. Proprietary software differs in this regard as access to code is limited to very few. It relies on code remaining ‘hidden’ not only to malicious individuals but also yourself. There is little to no transparency around flaws or bugs.
SuiteCRM is one of the world’s most popular CRM applications. Our feature-rich enterprise-ready alternative to Salesforce enables your sales teams to sell, market & service smarter by providing all the benefits of CRM at substantially lower costs, with the freedoms and flexibility of Open Source.
You can download and host SuiteCRM on your own servers, you can put it in a public cloud, a private cloud or you can access it as software-as-a-service. It is the ultimate freedom, allowing you to stay in full control over your business data. You can try SuiteCRM for free here.
Help support the SuiteCRM project by becoming a sponsor today!
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