What is open source?

Open source software is software which is freely distributable with source code for use by anyone as long as the original authors are acknowledged.

Our Commitment

Ocom software has made a commitment to supporting Open Source development, this includes using Open Source tools and projects which suit the clients needs. We believe there are many open source projects such as the wonderful OpenOffice which offers most of the functionality required in an office suite in most cases. There are also a number of cost benefits to using open source technologies.

We also like to contribute back to the Open Source community, this can be from documentation to fixing a bug and supplying it back to the project.

Benefits

Reduces Development Costs.

No ongoing license fees.

We do not charge a licensing fee per a user nor is there a significant development cost to install the software. All you pay for our services in supporting your organization.

Compare this with a subscription based model.

• The organization pays for example $5,000 a year to use the software and they pay this each year.
• If they want to keep using the system then they have to continue to pay the subscription fee which could increase each year as they are locked in.
• They are limited in the customizations as there are multiple organization using the same piece of software for different purposes.

Below is a chart showing the Cost of the software over a 5 year period using the subscription payment method. We have included an annual cost of $1,000 to maintain the software. As you can see cost quickly raises pass the initial investment of $5,000.

No Per user Licensing fee

The lack of per-user licensing fees can also prove very cost-effective. Consider again our Document Management System, we charge a flat fee for all the work we do on the software regardless of the number of users. Some software is licensed on a per-user basis therefore the cost goes up as the number of users increases.