The Open Learning Centre

As the recession puts pressure on tech spending, many companies are turning to open-source software to handle more IT tasks.

Among the many recent Open Source articles on Business Week, this one explains clearly the major benefits FOSS is bringing to the table.

After the tech bubble burst, E*Trade's technology chief, Lee Thompson, needed to find a way to do more with less. In 2001 and 2002, the online stock trading company shrank its tech budget by one-third. "We had to go through and figure out every penny that we were spending…and make alternatives to reduce those costs," says Thompson, vice-president and chief technologist of E*Trade (ETFC). So he began using software that can be downloaded at no cost via the Internet. By the end of 2002, he was saving $13 million a year thanks to use of these freely available applications known as open-source software, and the fact that he could run that software on less expensive hardware.

Read the full story here on Business Week.