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As reported recently by multiple news sources, the City of Barcelona has announced plans to replace Microsoft Office with LibreOffice on thousands of its computers.

Changes planned by New Zealand's coalition government to increase the minimum wage to $20 over three years will present challenges for the small and medium-size business (SMB) sector. Extra financial pressure means SMBs need to identify funding sources to absorb the change—but simply passing costs onto customers risks lost sales, decreased revenues, and a weakened competitive position that may ultimately jeopardise the existence of many companies.

A mail merge is a terrific way of quickly generating bulk personalised letters—and mail merges are fully supported in LibreOffice. To make the process super-easy, we've created an address data source template that you can use in combination with our three-part mail merge video tutorial. In a matter of minutes you'll be creating your own high-quality business mailouts.

For businesses looking to create professional-grade diagrams and charts, LibreOffice Draw is a fantastic, no-cost replacement for Microsoft Visio. Draw is included in the LibreOffice suite of open source business applications, and with Microsoft Visio costing close to US$600.00—for installation on a single PC only—it's the perfect alternative.

As a startup founder, the software you choose in the initial setup phase will have a critical impact on costs, efficiency, and innovation—especially as your startup grows into a viable business. Open source software offers compelling benefits compared with proprietary software, and can help put your startup on the fast track to success. In this blog post, we'll look at the specific advantages.

In previous blog entries, we've highlighted how Microsoft Windows-based ransomware (such as CryptoLocker and Wanna Cry) severely affects business bottom lines. Thanks to a recent article in industry publication The Register, we now have a clear picture of the specific costs incurred from these infections.

With Vodafone New Zealand announcing the shutdown of their email hosting service, businesses have until November 2017 to look for alternatives.

Apertura Designs is available to assist your business with switching from Vodafone email accounts to FastMail.

FastMail email accounts include:

Back in 2013 we blogged about Adobe's switch to a rental model for their original Creative Suite design product, resulting in the re-branded Creative Cloud line. As noted in our original post:

Apertura Designs is pleased to announce today a new offering in our business product portfolio. SuiteCRM is the world's leading open source Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution. Powerful, flexible, easy to use—and with all compelling benefits of open source—SuiteCRM is the perfect CRM product for businesses of every scale and industry.

When implemented correctly, SuiteCRM:

Since we first blogged about Dell's move to offer Ubuntu-powered computers, their lineup has gone from strength to strength. 2017 marks a high point, with Dell releasing powerful, high-end desktop and laptop systems to outstanding reviews. These new products are intended for professional use—such as digital content creation or engineering—and feature high speed storage, substantial processing capability, powerful graphics cards, and ultra-high resolution displays.