Cross Platform Applications

A cross-platform (or platform independent) software application works on more than one system platform (e.g. Linux, Macintosh and Windows). Cross-platform software is considered "portable" software.

Productivity through Portablility

The majority of proprietary software today is limited to a single platform. In this model business productivity is severely limited unless all of your computers run the same platform. Microsoft and other proprietary software vendors engineer their products in this way to maximize their revenue (which is great if you're a shareholder, but not so great if you're the customer).

In the real world most companies have computers running several different versions of the Microsoft operating systems, as well as Macintosh and Linux. Workflow on any given project is often limited by the physical contraints of how many computers run the software needed for the given project.

Cross-platform software totally eliminates these physical contraints to workflow. This leads to reductions in your physical and personnel costs and greatly enhances productivity.

Combining Portability and Integration

Today, in addition to cross platform issues, most companies are focused on application integration, which allows for workflow across applications as well as across systems.

This focus highlights the need to move information through or across a set of systems and components. Proprietary software solutions are not engineered to allow integration (remember, they are engineered to maximize the software companies revenue, not yours!).

In fact, Microsoft Operating Systems and the proprietary software that runs on them are engineered for obsolescents. This means that you have to keep upgrading (buying ever newer versions) because the olders versions are no longer supported. Microsoft's Windows 98 and 2000, while wildly popular and widely deployed, are no longer supported by Microsoft.

This ensures Microsoft and the like, repeating revenue from licensing as you are caught in the cycle of perpetual upgrades, just to be able to access and maintain YOUR data. So proprietary software companies effectively hold your company's data hostage, while you repeatedly pay them ransom.

Break Free From The Monopoly

FINI can free you from this extortion. FINI develops open source applications that are cross platform and that allow for and encourage the integrated use of other open source software applications. Imagine being able to seemlessly move the same data through the various tasks of word processing, spreadsheet/numeric tabulation, image manipulation, etc. without ever paying another licensing fee! Proprietary solutions just can't offer you that.