Infoworld recently published the winners of the Award "Best Open Source Software" for 2008.
Infoworld The Award, also known as BOSS seen as the main winners:
- Compiere ERP and CRM , Best Open Source ERP
- Alfresco ECM , better implementation of Enterprise Content Management
- Liferay , the best Enterprise Portal Server
- Pentaho , better business intelligence platform
- SugarCRM, Customer Relationship Management best
- JasperReports , better reporting tools
- dotProject , Best Project Management Software
- Hyperic HQ , the best platform for Application Monitoring
and other software areas Office Automation, Collaboration, Developer Tools, Networking, Storage and Security, which you can see here: http://www.infoworld.com/slideshow/ 2008/08/168-best_of_open_so-1.html
The important point that emerges from this ranking is what today every company, large or small, can implement the high-level software, without having to invest significant resources in commercial licenses.
From management, to software for the control of management and enterprise reporting, have been consolidated in the world 'Open Source' of highly efficient solutions that require an investment by the firm only for activities related to advice and training, thus excluding a charge for the licenses in these economic times is a lot.
From my own personal experience I can say that the software implementation as Hyperic HQ for Application Monitoring or for the Squid Proxy Server management, was very convenient from the economic point of view, an optimal and achieve similar goals that we obtained with commercial software.
One of the advantages that these 'Open Source', is allowing companies to evaluate and test the product completely before starting a project specific target an investment budget.
Another element of evaluation, as long advocated, is that the software solution of choice is important but will be increasingly important aspects of counseling and support services companies will give businesses in terms of cultural evolution and strategic.
Even for the management software on the market today on proposals to allow companies to choose whether to implement open source or commercial products, with specific attention to evaluating what it really is more strategic for the company and only later consider aspects of licensing or not.
Open Source Software in fact should not be considered only for the appearance of 'free' license to use, but also compared with commercial software, in an objective comparison of the technical, functional, and overall costs of the project.