When it comes to IT, there is a multitude of low-cost, creative ways to make resources available. Which ones are worth considering? Is there a more efficient development approach? How can you effectively combine resources with other government districts? The clear need is to evaluate low-cost resources that save money in the short term and provide proven solutions that are advanced and secure enough to avoid long-term pain. This article delves into practical examples you can start using today to save money, speed development and deliver higher-quality solutions.

For the past 10 years, many technologies we've been using reached wide-scale adoption and essentially became commoditized. It's baffling how many private and public organizations continue to invest large amounts of money for technologies that have reached mainstream status. These technologies aren't necessarily offering the best value for the investment anymore. They simply help run the institution. In these cases, consider other options to cut costs by using reliable low-cost or free solutions.

Open Source Software: Community-Driven Solutions

Commoditized software often comes in the form of open source technology projects. I'm not saying all open source projects are commoditized technologies, but many open source software (OSS) projects spring up because a group of talented developers are tired of paying for services that can be cloned easily.

Good open source projects have strong communities behind them, and in some cases, build better features and offer better support than the technologies they set out to reproduce. The key to picking an open source project is not basing it on the product's current features, but by the strength and viability of the community behind it.

The community can be measured by the speed of innovation (i.e., how quickly product releases reach shippable status), the support forums (i.e., how mature and active the discussion forums are), and the number of active installations currently in production environments. If support, service and commercial product businesses have been built around open source solutions, you can feel comfortable that the project has some legs and will be around for the foreseeable future.

SaaS Gains Momentum

Some commoditized software morphs into a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. New and existing vendors are packaging solutions that don't come with a sticker price, but instead a subscription fee. Many of these solutions have free programs available for a limited number of users (great for small to medium-size municipalities or districts) or with limited feature sets, which in some cases are all an organization needs.

It's even more important to analyze the viability of SaaS vendors, since the technologies are relatively closed compared to open source solutions. When evaluating SaaS solutions, it's important to understand a vendor's funding/cash position, subscription base and the openness of its platform, in case you want to migrate to a different solution later.

Comparing Platforms: Proprietary, Open, SaaS

In today's market, where the cost and time to build software have been greatly reduced, almost every common function of an organization has an open source or SaaS option to support it -- from office productivity and collaboration platforms to customer relationship management.

Henry Thiele, director of technology for Illinois High School District 207, recently replaced a Novell-based e-mail solution with Google Apps. "Every teacher in the district has a District 207-branded Gmail account. When we moved from Novell to Google Apps, we gained a ton of features without having to spend a dime," he said, "not to mention mailbox storage went from 254 MB to 7 GB."

These are by no means the only options, but all are definitely worth considering as low-cost alternatives. Open source software and SaaS often provide 80 percent or more of the proprietary solution's functionality, which accounts for 99 percent of what's actually required.