Open-source helps smaller businesses customize applications

IDG News Service - Small and midsize businesses increasingly want to customize their business applications, and some software vendors are making sure they can, mainly through open-source initiatives, vendors at CeBIT said on Saturday.

Superoffice ASA, a developer of customer relationship management software for small and midsize businesses, decided to open its source code to a developer network that can build new applications and modules on top of the software, said Superoffice spokeswoman Tanja Heyde. Developers, who have to pay to join the network, can exchange applications and programs and discuss projects with other developers, she said.

Superoffice also plans to introduce a similar program for customers who can then access the source code to build their own applications, she said.

Abas Software AG, a developer of enterprise resource planning software for smaller businesses, said its customers are free to choose from a range of add-on capabilities and customers and developers can also write their own applications to customize the software, said Marion Schafer, marketing manager at Abas.

Abas' customer base clearly prefers the open-source environment. Schafer said 80% of Abas customers run the software on Linux servers. Another 19% use Unix, and just 1% use Windows servers, she said. "The atmosphere is positive for Linux in Europe. It's stable and the price-performance is good," she said.

Smaller businesses are sometimes drawn to open-source products in part because they can often take advantage of development done by larger enterprises, said Olaf Jacobi, CEO of Collax Gmbh. "[Smaller businesses] would like the same software that the enterprise has," he said. Because open-source developers at large enterprises create new applications and then share those applications with the community, smaller companies have the opportunity to use the new applications, he noted.

Still, he said the big Linux vendors, like Red Hat Inc., don't cater to smaller businesses. Most smaller companies don't have highly skilled Linux administrators who would be able to choose among the many available business applications running on Linux, he said. Collax aims to help smaller businesses by choosing the best available applications and packaging them together, he said.

Other vendors agreed that ease of use is very important for smaller companies. Superoffice designed its software to have a clear and easy-to-use interface and also offers training designed to instruct one person at a company who can then train colleagues, said Heyde. "[Smaller businesses] need an easy product where you don't need a long training," she said.