14.
Re: Business Software Essentials Apr 28, 2008 2:35 PM

in response to:
bizdomainstor
Depending on your business, you may want software to communicate/collaborate with your customers and allow them to work with each other. There are 2 ends of this spectrum. On one hand, you can go with Opensource products which you then install, configure and customize to meet your needs. The software is cheap/free in this case but you pay in maintenance, hardware, etc. The other end of the spectrum is on-premise software. There are several vendors out there including Lithium, Leverage, and Jive; these tend to be for larger enterprises. Another option, and is the middle of the spectrum is SaaS (software as a service) offerings. In this case, check out GroupSwim. It is very inexpensive and does a great job. Other companies also have SaaS offerings including Leverage. The nice thing about SaaS is there is no software maintenance or hardware to worry about. You pay on per user per member basis. Hope this helps.