SiliconRepublic.com Ireland's Technology News Service

Before embarking on a recent business trip overseas, I reasoned that the best way to field test a new ultra-slim laptop I was reviewing was to drag the thing with me.

I packed my bag, checked my passport for the thousandth time and printed off the airline ticket at the office. But my delight at this inspired epiphany shifted to rage when I switched the machine on to find it had no word processing software. I was in a bind, I needed some way to write reports and had no time to be running around looking for software. As I struggled to suppress a howl of anguish, a colleague chirped, “Why don’t you download Open Office?”.

Anything sounded better than nothing. I found a wireless connection, did a web search for Open Office and within five minutes I had downloaded a word processing tool as perfect as anything I usually used. Problem solved.

A few weeks later, a colleague had to make a presentation in the boardroom. She nonchalantly strolled into the meeting, tapped quickly at the keyboard and had an entire presentation up on the screen using Google Docs. No messing with laptops, no apologising because the projector didn’t work with her machine. Just straight to it.

These experiences illustrated to me that there is a fundamental shift in the way we access software tools and this strikes at the heart of the traditional software business model.

Until now, most businesspeople would have their productivity software – word processor, database, spreadsheet etc – bundled on their laptops or they would buy it off-the-shelf and pay extra for licences.

However, go online today and a plethora of free, alternative software is ready for download, including everything from calendaring, email, presentation tools, voice over internet phone calls (VoIP) to picture and video editing tools.

For example, Zoho.com contains 21 different types of business applications for free, ranging from planners to invoicing tools.

Driving this revolution are tech giants like Google and Sun Microsystems. However, the model – which owes its origins to the open source movement – is providing a rapid route to market for a host of new software start-ups.

Firms that leverage income from providing support to businesses which use the software have coined the genre software as a service (SaaS). According to Gartner, this will be a $11.5bn business by 2011. Players like Google, however, can leverage revenues from its online advertising model or through alliances with other software players like Salesforce.com.

It is fair to wonder what impact this will have on software doyen Microsoft, which dominates the business market with its Office suite. In fact, Microsoft is rumoured to be working on its own web-based Office alternative, codenamed Albany.

“Sun Microsystems is a big proponent of the free software movement,” says Stephen Ennis, technical director with Horizon Technology Group. “Sometimes businesses find it hard to get their heads around why a business like Sun is supporting open source but its view is straightforward – the more that use it, the better it gets.”

He says businesses are increasingly dabbling with open source technology. “Technical managers are downloading it and evaluating it ahead of making the crucial decision to roll it out across the organisation.”

Examples of Irish organisations that have deployed Sun’s StarOffice in a meaningful way include AIB, which has rolled it out across 7,500 computers and Beaumont Hospital, which has delivered it to 800 workers.

“I use Google Docs the whole time and when I bought my computer I didn’t install any software on it, I just downloaded what I needed from the internet,” says tech consultant and blogger Damien Mulley. “I use it primarily for word processing and spreadsheets and I actually find it better to use than Excel because I can put the spreadsheet into a blog or web feed and all calculations go into the web feed automatically.”

On the question of whether firms like Google or Zoho will make money from offering their for free services for free, Mulley says: “I think businesses will still pay to a degree, in terms of support and offline functionality. Many will, however, be slow to move to something they’re not used to. But the advantages are obvious. Google Apps, for example, allows you to host a web service.”

Business users are opting to buy laptops without any previously loaded software and there is a burgeoning business in Linux-based computers, says Alex French of Bitbuzz, an internet company where most of the staff work daily using free software.

“Most of us use Neo Office, a Mac version of Open Office. I’ve never had a problem with it and it enables me to seamlessly exchange documents like presentations and proposals with people all over the world. We also use Google Docs as a way of storing back-up documents instead of having them on a local server. It makes it easier for everyone to get access to documents from anywhere on the internet.

“One of our guys who was in Melbourne recently got access to 90pc of his office tools over the internet,” says French, who also uses Mozilla Thunderbird as an email client.

As a route to market, the free software model is already yielding a rich harvest for Sligo-based software company PollDaddy.com, which provides a web poll service to individuals and businesses. Over 350,000 people worldwide use the company’s software. “Around 96pc of our users would be using free accounts,” says David Lenehan (pictured), chief executive of PollDaddy.com, which he founded with Eoin Gallagher.

The company’s client list is a veritable who’s who in the media and technology space, including RTÉ, Fox News, Wired Magazine and PC World.

“Our professional accounts with SMEs and big business take in enough money to keep the company moving. In the long term, we intend to keep it going as a free service for individuals. We’re looking at new ways to bring in revenue but want to choose a different route than using advertising, which is too obvious.”

Gallagher’s approach is synonymous with the DIY ethic driving many new software start-ups. “We don’t have any salespeople. We just built an application people wanted and they came to us in their droves.”

John Herlihy, general manager of Google Ireland says the advent of online business software will lead to greater balance in terms of the tech haves and have-nots. “I think web-based software will really help to bridge any digital divide between wealthy and not so wealthy economies.

“We believe passionately in open standards and choice. We know companies may wish to use Google Apps in conjunction with other existing software. So, for example, we’ve built in features like dual delivery for email where Gmail can work in parallel with existing messaging infrastructures.”

Asked does he believe the free software movement could lead to a clash of the titans between Google and Microsoft, Herlihy says: “As a company, we believe in choice – we’ve always focused on the user. User first, revenue later. With Google Apps, it’s no different.

“What we’re saying to the user is: you have better and better choice. And the beauty for businesses of all sizes is they are benefiting from the competition between all providers of web-based software.”

Earlier this week, Google struck a deal with business software player Salesforce.com to use its Google Apps service as a platform for software as a service (SaaS) delivery.
Robin Daniels, senior manager in charge of product marketing at Salesforce.com, said the deal will effectively mean teams of business executives can collaborate and share in the creation of mission critical documents, without having to download or install hardware or software.

“It also means the traditional days of working between businesspeople – where they had to keep multiple versions of document files – are numbered. Five people could work on building a presentation using Google Apps and using the same version and it will stay on the internet. All they need is a browser.”

Necessity is the mother of invention for Irish teachers

While businesses and start-up businesses have everything to gain from the prevalence of free business tools on the internet, unlikely beneficiaries of the movement in Ireland are primary and secondary schools.

According to Seaghan Moriarty of Digilogue, a former primary teacher who has worked as webmaster for the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) and the Irish Primary Principal’s Network, under-funded Irish schools are using free software to deliver courses.

“The reality is there has been no funding for ICT in schools since 2002. I know a teacher who has done a Master’s and has a PhD in ICT and won worldwide awards for her work in the classroom.

“She has given up on ICT having had to make do with a Windows 98 machine to teach courses. The reality is that kids in classrooms seven years ago were getting more stimulating ICT education than today. Teachers feel let down and are very frustrated,” says Moriarty.

While 98pc of schools claim to have broadband, this has been provided largely by the ICT industry in Ireland, which under the Telecommunications and Internet Federation stumped up €18m of its own cash.

Moriarty says inventive school teachers and students are using tools like Moodle.org for a virtual learning environment, as well as tools like Picasa for managing photographs, MySQL to do databases and free Flash players to do animation.

“OpenOffice and StarOffice are in fact a necessity in schools which don’t want to pay licences for word processing and presentation software because the money’s not there. That’s a reality. They can’t afford to buy products like Photoshop so they look for freely available tools.”

By John Kennedy