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 | Inc. staff

The Open-Source Advantage

Backcountry.com shopped for licensed software, but decided it could do better with open source. Here's how much the company estimates it has saved.

 
Application Traditional Software Open Source
E-mail Microsoft Outlook
$900 per person per year		 Zimbra
Free, plus $500 per person per year for support
Knowledge Management PeopleSoft
$100,000 a year		 MediaWiki
Free
E-commerce IBM WebSphere
$500,000 per year, plus $300,000 per year in consulting fees		 Interchange
Free, plus $100,000 in consulting fees
Database Documentum
$100,000 a year		 PostgreSQL
Free
Operating System Microsoft
$130,000		 Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Free, plus $50,000 for support

Totals

 $1.2 million to $3 million $380,000

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