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October 2008 |
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Open Source in Today's Economic Climate 
Wild times! Since I last wrote an introduction to our newsletter the bank my family uses was shut down and sold. This made news as the largest ever bank failure ever. The entire world financial system appeared to be on the brink of collapse. One of my favorite countries, Iceland, is broke and many others, my own included, are facing skyrocketing deficits. The U.S. stock market had its worst week ever (and for that matter its single best day ever) and has had what can best be called a difficult year. It appears that we are either now in or heading into a potentially ugly recession. I expect that we'll see a painful cycle of lackluster earnings, budget cuts, and layoffs from many of the largest IT consumers across the world. I expect that we'll see two major trends in IT purchasing through this cycle. The first is the tried and true play of tough times: do more with less. The second is a flight to high value, low-risk, rapid ROI IT projects with an emphasis on driving costs down through operational efficiencies. While I'd prefer a more robust macroeconomic climate, these trends serve as accelerants for companies such as Likewise that can drive high-value/low-risk projects. Our flexible business model works very well in this environment. For the truly budget constrained, we have a robust solution to authenticate Linux, Unix, and Mac systems that is Open Source and free of any license fees: Likewise Open Fall 08. We can provide enterprise support and consulting for large organizations or mission critical environments that require these services as part of their Likewise Open deployments. In addition to Likewise Open Fall 08, we have also launched Likewise Enterprise 5.0, with important new features that build upon Likewise Open’s robust authentication. Of special note we have introduced Likewise Identity Service (LWIS), an advancement in enterprise-class authentication, and the Likewise Administrative Console (LAC), built on Mono, which gives Non-Windows administrators a way to manage all of their systems natively on the system of their choice. For Mac administrators, we have introduced a new and unique way to support any policy created in Mac Workgroup manager and integrate it with Active Directory with no changes to the AD environment. Thanks again for your ongoing interest and support of Likewise Software. Please feel free to drop me a note at any time. I'm curious to hear your perspectives on the IT spending environment and how we can best provide value to your organization. And thank you for the many kinds e-mails of support and encouragement that you have sent. Warm regards,  Barry Crist CEO |
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