‘Open source’ decision making

I have been thinking about the big consumer technology brands, and about ways in which they reinforce themselves in to our daily lives. Chances are that most business professionals spend much of their day staring at the Microsoft brand, running MS Office programmes — MS Excel, MS Word, MS Outlook etc and of course MS Internet Explorer.I assume the majority of home computer users (which continues to increase across all ages) adopt their employer’s choice of platform at home. i.e. Microsoft PC users at work tend to have a Microsoft PC at home. A product of human comfort no doubt, and I’d definitely be interested to read any market reports you may have seen investigating the relationships between work technology systems (or products) and the influence on consumer choice (please email me). But, as we all continue to increase our awareness of the consumer choices available to us, and as we all continue to become more high-tech and computer savvy, the big computer brands really do need to understand that a bad IT experience at work is now influencing our purchasing choice at home. Even more so as working hours and locations become even more flexible for some.

By day, I have to work from a Microsoft windows running PC and I hate it. I am tired of receiving ‘would you like to report this fault’ messages. Grrr! At home, my computer of choice is an Apple Powerbook, soon to become a MacBook Pro, and I have never had it so good.

I have just switched from Safari to Firefox. But not because of a bad experience. My change in application is simply because of the Firebug tool. A simple plugin that has made updating and amending the news page of our corporate site so much easier. As you know, Firefox is an ‘open source’ application, and along with the many other open source applications available, it’s continuing to gain momentum — really taking on the Big Brands.

Open source applications are appealing to the new internet savvy user, evolving with demand, responding to need and improving userbility at a much quicker rate than the mainstream software houses appear to. Marketing and brand campaigns cost a fraction of what both Apple and Microsoft put behind their advertising, with open source effectively using web 2.0 (blogging and social media) to reach their prime target audience.

Have a look at Open Source Projects: 15 To Watch — and whilst many users don’t care as to the origin of open source applications, nor its brand, the continuing popularity is a sure fired sign that choice is now over influencing what was once predictable brand conscious decisions.

DD