Free Software challenges Adobe & Microsoft

The report published by Global Graphics follows a survey conducted in January 2010 of 400 Chief Information Officers (CIOs) from 300 organisations in the United States and 100 organisations in the United Kingdom. The organisations covered a ‘range of commercial and public sectors’ and each company consisted of 1,000 plus employees. The report highlighted that:

• Half of CIOs are already planning to use free software for corporate-level implementations in 2010 and even more say they plan department-focused projects this year
• Senior IT executives deploy free software to drive down software licensing costs. Product standardization and smarter desktop management are also seen as key advantages
• CIOs are also seeking new ways for free software to boost productivity; about half say it enables them to complement existing desktop applications and nearly four in ten think they will use this software to replace or complement reader products

Global Graphics will hope that the results of the survey lead more and more big businesses to introduce free software into their organisations in 2010. The company offers a number of free software solutions, most interestingly a free PDF and XPS creator and viewer called gDoc Creator. The software quickly and easily allows users to create, view and print quality PDF files.

Results of Global Graphic’s Survey of 400 CIOs

Will Information Technology budgets remain under pressure in 2010?

• Yes, tighter than 2009 – 34%
• Yes, same as 2009 – 31%
• Yes, but better than 2009 – 33%
• No – 2%

What are the Ten most popular free software products?

• Adobe Reader – 78%
• Java – 65%
• Flash Player – 61%
• QuickTime – 16%
• Open Office – 12%
• Google Docs – 10%
• Skype – 7%
• Microsoft Save As PDF – 6%
• McAfee Site Advisor – 5%
• Windows Defender – 4%

What are the biggest benefits of using free software products?

• Reduced Software License Costs – 80%
• Enterprise wide standardisation of products – 58%
• Reduced desktop management overhead costs – 52%
• Cased software asset management – 37%

Free Software used across an Organisation:

• 88% of organisations use free software in individual departments
• 76% of organisations use free software at enterprise wide level

The results detailed above have been extracted from the ‘Enterprise free software deployment: Adoption, usage and benefits’ report published by Global Graphics.

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