I summarize in this blog post the questions, challenges and objections that were mentioned during a conference about open source/FLOSS that I gave to about 20 IT directors of Small Businesses (100-500 employees).

There is a market area that can accommodate for the most part, three groups. Small business, Schools and non-profit organizations. Small business counts for up to 70% of all businesses in the U.S. All three of these areas use similar software, especially in the offices.

Zaragoza, Spain-based eBox Technologies announced the availability of version 1.0 of its Ubuntu Linux-based eBox server distribution.The open source eBox 1.0 features LDAP, DHCP, NTP, DNS, and email servers, among other features, and provides a new development framework for building add-on modules, says the company.

Why is it that many corporations and small to medium businesses cannot or will not take a step back and look at the competitive advantage and cost savings Linux and Open Source software will give their business?

Two primary factors are at play in the continuing adoption of open source business applications. First is the emergence of Web 2.0 user-driven content and video sites. Getting more bang for the software buck is also a powerful motivating force, according to Jim Connolly, director of software development for financial technology company Kettley.

Linux and other open source applications are finding increasing acceptance in the global marketplace in small and large companies alike. Statistics on the growth of a few open source programs—like Apache, a web server; Linux, an operating system; FreeBSD, an operating system; and PostgreSQL, a database server—show this to be true.

The jury is out on whether smaller shops can actually work with open source operating systems.