I’m not sure if it’s because small businesses love spending money, or if they’re cautious about it, but I’ve found that they are frequently only willing to use the most expensive options available.
Software office suites, for example. Those workplace staples; word processors and spreadsheets. Probably half the small businesses in the country could have all, or nearly all, of their needs in that category met by free software, such as Open Office, but most of them won’t even consider it. They don’t need a spreadsheet; they need Excel. They don’t need a word processor; they need Word. If a business needs to generate PDF versions of documents, they don’t need a PDF creator; they need Adobe Acrobat. .
At least as far as they are concerned.
The cheapest business version of MS Office is about $150. Acrobat, if you don’t get a free copy included with Office, is $300. In a few years those versions will be obsolete, and you’ll be looking at another $2-300 per desktop to upgrade
On the back end, Microsoft’s server software offerings are quite expensive, especially once you add in the per-user licensing. A copy of MS Small Business Server 2008, for a 10-user office, will cost that small business $1500, plus the cost of the server to run it on (another $1500 or so).
Three thousand dollars for a server, for a 10-person office. $150-500 per desktop for software, every three or four years. (The new versions of MS Office don’t have upgrade-pricing discounts.) That’s a minimum of $4500, and you still haven’t bought PCs for the desktops (another $5000 or so) or printers.
Now, this is not to say that Adobe Acrobat and MS Office and MS Small Business server are bad pieces of software. They’re not. They are loaded with features, mostly easy to worth with, and stable. There’s nothing at all wrong with them, and many small businesses have real, business or technical reasons to use those particular products.
Still; $3000 on software alone to fit out that 10-person office. That’s significant money to most small businesses. I mean, if it fell out of your pocket and went missing, you’d probably notice. And many small businesses don’t have a particular need for the premium product.
I could get that office basically the same functionality–all the functionality that most small businesses actually use–for $0 in software cost. It’s not even a challenge. Hook a small Network Attached Storage box ($100-200) up to the LAN for shared storage and you don’t need a server at all.
For most small businesses it’s a no-brainer. Spend $4500 or $200? They’ll go for the $4500 almost every time. Use Open Office instead of MS office? Won’t even consider it. Web based email or Thunderbird instead of Outlook? Ditto.
Is it a prestige thing, like not wanting to be seen driving a certain brand of car? Is it not being willing to take a chance on anything but a known quantity, that ‘everyone has heard of?’ An unwillingness to believe that free or inexpensive software can be any good? (There must be a catch!) I don’t know, though I suspect a little bit of each. I wish I knew; I’d love to be able to save some people a lot of money.