It's pretty amazing to think about what a company can now get for $10 a year:
A complete, web-based IT infrastructure for its business
A custom corporate portal/intranet for its employees
Corporate e-mail service
Corporate instant messaging
Calendar software and services
Web-site design software
Web-site hosting
And, by incorporating some other free Google services, the company also gets:
Word-processing software
Spreadsheet software
Web-site analytics
All the necessary storage, data backups, security, maintenance, and related services are included in the $10 price.
Other than some cheap PCs, a printer, and maybe a bookkeeping application, that pretty much covers all the information technology that most companies on earth require to run their businesses. (And I'll bet the bookkeeping app will arrive soon, perhaps through a partnership with Intuit.) So, if you're a small business or a school or a nonprofit, that's your new annual IT budget: ten bucks. Why spend more?
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Your new IT budget is $10
You might enjoy this post from Nicholas Carr's blog. Quoting a selection from this item:
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Other "free" or $5/month tools - we use many in HCI - Maria
Blogs
b2evolution
Nucleus
pMachine Free
WordPress
Content Management
Drupal
Geeklog
Joomla
Mambo Open Source
PHP-Nuke
phpWCMS
phpWebSite
Post-Nuke
Siteframe
Xoops
Customer Relationship
Crafty Syntax Live Help
Help Center Live
osTicket
PerlDesk
PHP Support Tickets
Support Logic Helpdesk
Support Services Manager
Discussion Boards
phpBB2
SMF
E-Commerce
CubeCart
OS Commerce
Zen Cart
F.A.Q.
FAQMasterFlex
Guestbooks
ViPER Guestbook
Hosting Billing
AccountLab Plus
phpCOIN
Image Galleries
4Images Gallery
Coppermine Photo Gallery
Gallery
Mailing Lists
PHPlist
Polls and Surveys
phpESP
PHPSurveyor
Project Management
dotProject
PHProjekt
Site Builders
Soholaunch Pro Edition
Templates Express
Wiki
TikiWiki
PhpWiki
Other Scripts
Dew-NewPHPLinks
Moodle
Noahs Classifieds
Open-Realty
phpAdsNew
PHPauction
phpFormGenerator
WebCalendar
Extras
Language
Side menu appearance
Email notifications
Installations overview
The low cost is great for the entrepreneur who needs these tools, but is a tragedy for those entrepreneurs trying to enter the market… From an economic perspective, as Google develops and deploys “free” products, they are driving the cost function down to zero – that prevents competition from entering, due to “no profits” for the new comers – but this game looks permanent? Google has such deep pockets, they can take loses at unprecedented levels and keep the competition away – one reason the stock price remains in the stratosphere… What would it take for new start ups to get into the game? Or is this the way is should be? Is the cost of using Google, that you do not have peer to peer and thus no privacy? Is that the price for using “free” tools? Something to think about….
Use Box.net for file storage (free up to 1 GB) or Mediamax.
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