In an era of budget crisis and wondering whether jobs will continue to flow, we all have to look at our spending. Microsoft technology is excellent, and despite the occasional spanner in the works, reliable......but this comes at a price. Over the last few years I have watched the developments of IT strucutures within business and education adapt. One of the main reasons for this is the competition Open Source Software brings to the industry. Most of the internet is already running on Open Source solutions, linux and apache underpin a lot of what we do. Wordpress (and my personal favourite, Joomla) have changed what it means to have a website, pushing us away from a static web to dynamic information, shared globally and constantly evolving.

There is a massive collection of Open Source software thriving on a committed devloper base that offers real benefits to any IT platform, and at a reduced cost. As an IT Consultant, my main goal is to get best value for the customer, and I am not a hardware supplier so it makes little difference. if the right tool for the job is a Windows solution then that is great. Windows 2008 is a superb product, but in the last year or so I have 'opened up' (excuse the pun) to other ways of doing things. This isn' a case of one or the other, I use Linux more all the time and I still run more core business on Windows platforms. Why? Because I know how to make it do what I need it to do. Having said this, I use Blender for my 3D needs and I use backtrack for security needs. For me, open source just means more choice, and more variety of the tools I need.