A Complete 6-App Arsenal for a Business User--Free

by Sam Dean - Mar. 07, 2008Comments (17)

Someone was recently asking me which open source applications I would recommend to a business user who doesn't want to spend any money for a full set of individual applications or bog down a business with expensive licensing fees. In this post, I'll round up six free applications for doing everything from word processing to online meetings--with panache. You'll find a few open source applications here and also some freeware offerings, because I'm a firm believer that if a freeware app wins, it wins.

AbiWord is a free, open source word processor noted for its lickety-split load times and an interface very similar to Microsoft Word and other commercial word processors. You can get it for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, and a very dedicated group of contributors has kept its feature set up-to-date for years. Find more info here.

Google Spreadsheets is a free online offering from Google, and I find it to be more than good enough for most of the spreadsheet tasks I'm involved with. I won't go as far as saying that it has all the richness of Excel--not even close--but I get in and out of it quickly, work online, and the interface is intuitive if you're switching spreadsheet apps.

PostgreSQL happens to be my choice among company-wide open source relational database applications, although I know a lot of the open source community favors MySQL. It has great support for large data sets, supports ODBC, and even a fairly large organization can centralize on it. For individual and small workgroup database applications, I like the free, web-based offering DB & Reports from Zoho which lets you work online fluidly. Click here for more info.

IrfanView is a freeware graphics software offering with a rabidly loyal user base, and I'm one of the very loyal users. For high-end tasks I reach for Photoshop, but IrfanView loads much faster, and can do everything I need. You can perform batch processing tasks on graphics files, play movies and audio, work with screenshots, edit images, create slideshows and more.

Splendid CRM is my application of choice among free, open source CRM (customer relationship management) products. It's hosted on the Web, so it’s available on demand no matter where you are, as is true of Salesforce.com and other CRM applications. You can build out data on your contacts, upcoming meetings, sales leads, sales campaign targets, and much more. Reminders are handled efficiently, as are reports, and you can do spiffy Gantt charts. The current release of Splendid CRM integrates with numerous databases, including SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005, Oracle 9i, Oracle 10g, IBM DB2 Express-C 8, IBM DB2 Express-C 9 and MySQL 5.

Yugma is a freeware online meeting application that I use every day. It lets you add participants in an online meeting very much like you would buddies to an instant messaging buddy list, and you can show your desktop as moderator or share your desktop with others.

What open source and freeware apps would you recommend for business use?


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17 Comments
 

Is this a blog about open source software, or is this a blog about free software? Because 3 of the 6 packages you show here are not open source at all.


1 Votes

As I mentioned up top in the post, when freeware applications warrant discussion and recognition--especially if they top their open source counterparts in terms of capabilities--they'll be discussed alongside open source apps on OStatic.


Sam


0 Votes

I agree with the above list except Yugma. I have always had trouble with Yugma on my mac. It has a loyal user base and people swear by it but its just a pile of crap IMO.


Checkout the screen sharing in Leopard. But you'll need to retire that PC before you can enjoy it!


0 Votes

Interesting report about Yugma. I've had nothing but smooth sessions with it. Another freeware online meeting tool that I've had success with is Yuuguu http://yuuguu.com/


Sam


0 Votes

There are a ton of web-based apps too, in addition to Google Spreadsheets, that are not pure Open Source, but at the end of the day, they may be BUILT on Open Source, or they may be offered for free. I would love to see more. I love Open Source, but I feel that there are a ton of other options that may not be Open Source that are fine to use. Not everything needs to be Open Source to be good.... It makes sense for several apps to be, and they can duke it out with the closed source or freeware/shareware/web-based counterparts....


0 Votes

Dimdim is another great online collaboration/meeting tool. Check it out - http://www.dimdim.com and it is Open Source.


0 Votes

You're talking about a business user, but you're pointing towards postgresql, which most business users won't see.


You're list is interesting but I would change it somewhat, for a business user the 6 open source apps would be:


1. Openoffice it will give him his wordprocessor, spreadsheet and presentation software and he can use it cross platform. Abiword is nice as well, but it's only one of the three a business user needs.


2. Document management solution, it could be either knowledgeTree or Alfresco. Both are excellent for managing documents and keeping them accessible.


3. Zimbra, a solution he can use for his email etc. It's webbased with offline capabilities, scheduling etc. is incorporated. If he doesn't want to take this road he could also sign up for one of the providers like google apps, Microsoft live something or yahoo.


4. CRM, SplendidCRM is nice, but depending on your infrastructure i would prefer either VtigerCRM, Concoursuite or sugarCRM.


5. For plannings etc. use openproj, it can be used on any platform and isn't as elaborate as MSproject but will do fine for most projects.


6. Tikliwiki for quick note taking, to do etc. One could also use something like rememberthemilk or one of the other webbased solutions.


Now this is a list that a business user can actually get stuff done. Most business user I encounter hardly do any image editing, or have direct access to databases. And the nice thing is most of it is cross platform..


0 Votes

Rvanderblom, nice list, although I'm not as big a fan of OpenOffice. My use of productivity applications skews heavily toward word processing, and for that I prefer AbiWord. However, your list is nicely positioned for cross-platform use, and includes most of the applications any business user would need. I would add a good graphics application to the mix.


Sam


0 Votes

I think Wikis are great for collaboration. However, the current implementations are just a pain to set up and maintain! Unless there is a pressing security reason not to, I dont see why one would not use Google Sites or some easier web-based solution.


0 Votes

SamDean, for heavy wordprocessing I even prefer something totally different, Lyx or just plain Latex, because it forces me to focus on the subject.


I'm not sure to what business users you're catering with this list, but most hardly do any graphics related stuff. Pictures etc. are not in the setting of a normal business.


Though if i would have to chose one it probably would be gimp (It's a dog to get used to but when you get used to it, it can do wonders)


As for the list being cross platform it's pretty simple to me. I don't want to be tied into just one platform, but instead prefer to use the one that suites me best. (I've got to say that my main platform is Linux, with 10% windows usage).


As an aside try not toe mingle freeware to much with open source as most people already have to much trouble distinguishing between the two


0 Votes

After playing with Lyx, I do have to say that it is impressive. Thanks.

Btw, maybe some business users never deal with graphics, but I do all the time--putting logos in documents, taking screenshots and cropping them, making brochure-like materials. For all that stuff, IrfanView is incredibly good for a free offering, and from the perspective of being fast-to-load and quick to use it's better than Photoshop for me most of the time.


Sam


0 Votes

what about a email client that can talk to the corporate exchange server and get all calendar and resource scheduling and address book and all the everything?


0 Votes

Isn't SplendidCRM really SugarCRM anyways?


0 Votes

Thanks for this post. I'm familiar with many of the apps listed, but a few were new to me and I'm just about to need them (particularly CRM and online meeting software) so the timing couldn't be better. :)


0 Votes

SplendidCRM is just a bad fork of SugarCRM, true (ported to a junky MS .Net framework - how's that open source???)


Also, SplendidCRM is utilizing the OLD Sugar OS license...now that Sugar has gone GPL v3 - no upgrades of Splendid will be easy given their "copy Sugar" model...


So, yeah, good luck with SplendidCRM deployments for the long haul...


0 Votes

Use OpenOffice. ABIword is just word is just for basic processing and too limited at the moment. It does run on linux though...

0 Votes

Use OpenOffice. ABIword is just for basic processing and too limited at the moment. It does run on linux though...

0 Votes
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