Are you a pirate?

Not the gun-toting, eye patch wearing variety. I am referring to "white-collar" pirates, the kind with illegal software on their computers. The Business Software Alliance (BSA) estimates a piracy rate of 60% in the Middle East/Africa region and 59% in the Asia Pacific region. (Source) I would guess that the rate in small businesses could be far higher.

What is the risk to you? In South Africa, conviction in a criminal case could lead to a penalty of R5,000 and/or 3 years in prison for EACH illegal item for your first offence and that jumps to R10,000 and/or 5 years in prison thereafter (Source). In Australia, the maximum penalty for individuals is extremely high at $93,500 and/or 5 years in prison and for companies that amount jumps to $467,500! (Source)

That's just criminal proceedings, there could also be civil suits filed and we have not even considered the cost of a damaged reputation. The BSA is very serious in tracking down offenders and rewards are offered for information on defaulters - as much as R100,000 in SA and $5,000 in Australia.

So what do you do? Well software is quite expensive. Prohibitively so for some small business owners, and everyone needs to have Office, right? Well no, not really. What a lot of small business owners do not realise is that Office probably has far more features than they really need and there is a great new concept that the Google revolution has brought to end users. Free stuff!

Office productivity software from Google and OpenOffice may just meet your need and your budget. These are just two examples of such software, search for more. The only requirement to run the applications is that you have a good internet connection as most of these services operate on thin-client type technology, where the processing and data are not actually held on your computer.

These solutions would probably be just fine for most micro-businesses and would probably stand up to some small business requirements as well. Keep checking back as I look out for other freebie or low cost software that will suit your business.