OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE AND LEVERAGING OF BUSINESS EFFECTIVENESS IN SMES: A Case Study

摘要

This research investigated the issues that impact on an SME adopting e-Business. It was found that many barriers may exist for e-Business adoption in an SME. One of which is limited financial resources to purchase internet technology required for e-Business adoption and development. However, open source technology has grown in popularity for a number of years, with governments, business firms, military and educational organisations incorporating open source software. This paper provides an overview on open source technology which could be adopted for e-Business architecture for the development of e-Business applications. Furthermore, it provides two action research case studies on SMEs adopting open source software for the development of e-Business capabilities. It was found the projects were successfully developed and implemented for each case study company. Although successful, the research team found that more research is required in open source software for the development of e-Business applications.