BusinessWeek: Cost-Conscious Companies Turn to Open-Source Software

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

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 .

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