This week, Global Graphics published a survey of Chief Information Officers (CIOs) at public sector organizations and commercial companies that shows three quarters (76%) of large organizations currently use free software across their enterprise. And due to tight IT budgets, over half (51%) say they intend to deploy even more free software in 2010. Over half (54%) said they already use more than 10 different free software products.

Click here to view the results: http://www.globalgraphics.com/freesoftware

The survey is based on interviews with 400 CIOs from organizations with over 1000 employees across the US (300 CIOs) and the UK (100 CIOs).

The purpose of using free software is both to save on existing spend and to add new functionality. As an example of the former, 38% of the CIOs interviewed said they wanted to replace Adobe Acrobat with free software (a role gDoc Creator fulfills) while 24% are looking for a no-cost alternative to the Microsoft Office suite.

The other key driver for using free software, cited by 47% of CIOs, is to complement existing desktop applications and extend functionality to users that can’t be provided using paid-for software. Again, that’s something that gDoc Fusion (at a fraction of the cost of Adobe Acrobat) or free-to- use gDoc Creator can deliver.

Clearly enterprise IT is changing: free software is found extensively inside organizations, and new generations of employees now expect business applications to work quickly and easily.

With gDoc Creator we address both these trends. Download them here to see if we’ve succeeded!

As my followers on Twitter (ericworrall) will know, I am passionate about developments in multi-touch technology. Multi-touch refers to input devices that can simultaneously identify multiple touch points on a control surface (e.g. touch screen monitor or touchpad). By tracking these multiple touch points we can start to use what are termed as “gestures” to control software.

For instance, by placing two fingers on the control surface and moving them together (pinch gesture) the application can be made to zoom out. By rotating the two fingers on the control surface (rotate gesture) the application can be made to rotate objects (e.g. images, pages etc.)

Apple’s iPhone comes with a beautifully designed multi-touch interface that supports very natural gestures which are a really powerful way to interact with software on a mobile device. They also extended the multi-touch experience to the track pads on the MacBook range of laptops and many more mobile devices now supply multi-touch/gesture-based user experiences.

At the end of last year Microsoft released the Windows 7 operating system which included native multi-touch and gesture support. This has led to major PC manufactures releasing multi-touch enabled laptops, desktops and netbooks. There are multi-touch enabled monitors and touchpads released almost every week now.  
   
The success of the iPhone proves the advantage of the multi-touch technology for mobile devices but you may think that it’s unlikely to replace the mouse or keyboard in a workplace, and I agree. The thought of aching arms after a day of using a vertical touch screen monitor might not appeal either (although it might burn a few calories). In a work environment I think it’s safe to say that it’s unlikely that you will see touch screens appearing on every desk any time soon. However, I firmly believe we will see the majority of new laptops being equipped with multi-touch touchpads.

I remember getting my first mouse with a scroll wheel. I have to admit I didn’t really use the scroll wheel at first. I would simply drag the scroll bars up and down as I had always done. I am now used to using the scroll wheel and my productivity suffers when I come across a mouse without one. Assuming software is designed with touch in mind I can see great chances for productivity gains in the work place especially when using touchpad based input devices.  

Microsoft classifies the touch experience offered by applications into three categories. They call them the “Good”, “Better” and “Best”. The “Good” level consists of an application that simply inherits the native support given it by Windows 7. For instance if your application supports CTRL and the mouse scroll wheel for zooming then the multi-touch zoom gesture should just work on multi-touch devices. Applications that fall into the “Better”category have been enhanced to support specific touch gestures to make the application more touch friendly. The “Best” applications are designed from the ground up to support a great multi-touch experience.

The interesting thing is that our HCI designer (Riccardo Taffarello) had touch support in mind when he designed gDoc Fusion. This can be seen very strongly in its drag and drop interface, the Flick view and Document view. The support for a multi-touch/gesture based interface is in gDoc Fusion’s DNA. The gDoc Fusion ‘Document View’ allows users to rapidly assemble documents, easily dragging pages between the documents. With gesture support we could allow a user to place a finger on the first page in a range and another finger on the last page, and then drag the range of pages over. In the ‘Flick View’ we could allow the user to flick through the document and mark pages for printing or rotate pages using the rotate gesture on the touchpad. We are looking for feedback. Should we evolve gDoc Fusion firmly into Microsoft’s “Best” category?

Download gDoc Fusion (Download) and have a play with it and see what you think. You’ll quickly see what I mean about touch-based interaction being in its DNA. Let us know if you think we should evolve our product into the multi-touch world?  If you think multi-touch is just a gimmick then tell us.

As a thank you for the feedback we will send the first 100 people contacting us a free copy of the full commercial version of gDoc Fusion worth £200.