Friday, October 17, 2008

The Price of Free

In a previous post called “Everything Internet,” I asked the question; “How much of my job can I do online… for FREE?”

There’s a problem with that question, and so the answer, as it turns out, is – not much. As the IT Director of a Church, I have to keep 70+ staff members and oodles of volunteers working. A more appropriate question would have been; how much can I help them do online… for FREE? My conclusion, after doing some research, is… not much.

While there are many online apps; more often than not there’s a price to pay. The price will vary from app to app, and is not necessarily monetary in nature. Take email for example - Gmail has become a popular choice for people who want an online email service; they have a good product, and it’s free… or is it?

Currently the free addition of Gmail has spam filtering, 25GB of storage, Google Talk, and search abilities. While this is all good for personal email, it falls short in the enterprise arena. If you want central administration, archiving, and security (and we do want it), you’ve got to pay. Microsoft’s Hotmail is another good choice for personal email. Once again, Hotmail doesn’t stand up to the “corporate” test. If you move up to OfficeLive there’s quite a bit of goodies to choose from - with varying prices of course. Another, more elusive, cost is in the area of privacy. With any system there’s a chance that private data can be, well, not so private. In the case of an internally controlled and secure system; it’s usually human error that causes leaks. With services like Gmail; you don’t really know who’s reading your mail. At one point Google was scanning email for keywords and presenting advertisements to the end user. I’m not sure if they are still doing it; but I don’t like the idea; and I’m sure most people share my perspective, especially concerning business data.

When it comes to free applications – the tools we use on a daily basis, such as word processing, spreadsheets, and presentation software – there’s some real potential. StarOffice, provided by Google, simply can’t cut it for most of us. The real cost you get from switching to these free apps is in usability and simple change. The free apps are just not as powerful. Plus; the years of usage and training people have, goes out the window.

I’ll take a step back here and say that it is possible to benefit from these not-so-free solutions, and many people are doing just that. It all comes down to TCO and practicality – If the solution provides what you need, and you can justify the costs (financial or otherwise), it is likely a smart move. If you can lessen the management of local hardware and software, and still provide an adequate platform for end users, you may just have a winning solution.

When it comes down to it; no one can get by on offering free services alone. They can’t pay for all of the powerful equipment and highly trained staff it takes to make “free” without some kind of income. So; we’ll all continue to do what we’ve been doing – research, evaluate, and use what it takes to get the job done.

Chances are that we will never escape the fact that we have to pay for things… at least for the things that really work.