Open Source - What's the Big Idea?

One of the great things about using Linux/Open Source in your IT systems is that you can own and totally control the whole lot. You are beholden to nobody and need pay nothing for your software. If you have ever found your company being held to ransom pending payment of this years pound of flesh to the software vendor, despite being ok with what it does already and not needing an upgrade, you will already appreciate the value of this.

The IT departments in large companies have first line support for basic stuff, second line for more complex problems and third line for those few and far between questions and for systems architectural planning. With each step comes a bump up in knowledge and experience .. and a corresponding bump in the cost for each employee. Big companies can do this easily due to their economies of scale. Smaller companies can't usually justify having permanent 3rd or even 2nd line support staff, and they either have to fudge and make do, risking their entire infrastructure or farm the whole lot out on a buttoned down support contract.

The Anvil Organisation Ltd works in a different way, to provide small companies with an alternative choice. It's actually very simple. We simply provide the second and third line support on an ad-hoc, pay by the minute, fixed rate basis. You call for 5 minutes, you get charged for 5 minutes. No "We charge an hours worth to pick up the phone", no complex contracts, we only ask that you pay your bills on time.

So if you already have Linux machines in your system, or you're just thinking about setting some up, and you want somebody available to ask questions or lend a helping hand, give us a call and we can help you out. We won't try and bamboozle you to make sure we get a call the next time this happens. We don't like that sort of behaviour from our suppliers, so why should we do it to you? If you're up for it, we will talk you through the fix, explaining what you are doing. If not, we can log into your system over a secure link, sort the problem and then explain what we did. Our aim is to effectively make ourselves redundant, although to be honest that never really happens. As you gradually learn more about the capabilities of your own equipment, you spot more ways you can can use it to lower your costs and make your business processes run that little bit better.

Customer Testimonials

Please do take a look at the "Articles" written for general consumption by the organisation. If anything in there piques your interest, then by all means get in contact with us.

The article on "Self Hosting" might be of particular interest to Schools and Small Businesses.

Andrew Meredith  <andrew@anvil.org>
Last modified: Wednesday, 20-Feb-2008 18:09:36 GMT