Startups ... Use Freeware Please !

My advice to Startups ... dont use Microsoft. While most tech Startups are already wise to this, I see non-tech Startups starting life on Microsoft platforms (or other license based platforms). Dont do it. All the old reasons for using Microsoft - easy to develop, easy to deploy, easy to use, better user interface are just that ... old. Today's freeware/shareware is just too compelling an option to ignore. It is free, can be customized, is massively scalable, is "cloud computing" compatible, has excellent support forums and does not cost the moon as you scale.

Most non-tech Startups start by installing Windows OS/MS Office on their PCs and then put Small Business Server on their servers. And the first application they build - either for customer use or for own use - is usually on a Microsoft platform. They reason that freeware is cumbersome and not intuitive. But times have changed. A Linux/Open Office combination on your PC is just as easy to use. And you can save documents in the open document format which makes every document compatible with MS Office. A freeware based software application today is indistinguishable from a Microsoft based application.

There are two broad challenges in using Microsoft platforms.

1) Total Cost of Ownership - for small volume users, Microsoft products are cheap. But as volume grows Microsoft platforms cost exponentially higher. By the time realization dawns it is too late to migrate out of Microsoft.

2) As Microsoft shrink wrapped software becomes obsolete, so does your software application. (While I cannot claim to be able to see the future and predict accurately, I think there is consensus that the era of "pay upfront, buy software licenses based on the number of PCs/processors" is certainly over. ) At which time you will have a software application that is obsolete. And if you have software that your customer uses, your customer most likely will be paying on a pay per use basis but you will be buying from Microsoft upfront. And while your customer will pay you less when they buy more, Microsoft will charge you exponentially more as you buy more leaving you with a completely unviable model.

So dont get into the trap ... do freeware now. Once a company goes down the path of freeware, employees become familiar with it making it possible to use freeware on a sustained basis. There are people who say "no large enterprise runs freeware - they all use Microsoft". To which my answer is "Ask Google".