Top 10 most recession-proof technologies

5. Green technology

Iain Thomson: Green technology is a bit of a misnomer, since the reasons for buying it have little to do with saving the environment and everything to do with cutting costs.

If power was still cheap green technology would cease to exist. IT managers would be happy to run computers all day long even if they weren't needed if it meant less work. The coming power crunch however means this is no longer the case.

Green technology is all about saving money, with a side benefit of helping to save the planet. As such companies are going to be investing in it to reduce the costs of running an enterprise.

As an IT manager this is how you need to sell it to your board. Don't go in there and witter on about the plight of the lesser spotted grebe. Tell them it cuts costs from the bottom line and funding will be yours.

Shaun Nichols: I would also add the huge influx of government funds that it currently going into both deployment and research for green technology. In times of economic crisis, government contracts are some of the best sources of money, and as the recent Obama stimulus saga showed, governments are pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into green technology right now.

There's also the bright long-term outlook for the industry. This recession isn't going to last forever, and when it does finally end we will still need to find an alternative for coal and fossil fuel energy. Companies that invest in green technology now will be better equipped to take advantage when cash starts flowing again and it becomes a very lucrative industry.

4. Remote support

Shaun Nichols: Now, we're not just talking about outsourcing call centers, which is a cost-saving measure that has been in use for years. There's also a slew of new services and demand making remote IT support an appealing domestic proposition as well.

First off, there's the growing sophistication of remote IT support services. These allow IT experts to remotely access hardware and diagnose or even fix a whole slew of problems. This makes life much easier and more efficient to independent IT consultants who work with a number of different SMB's spread out over a broad area.

The growing number of companies cutting back on in-house IT staff also brings up the possibility for more remote support work both for established IT consultants and newly-unemployed staffers alike.

Iain Thomson: I have no doubt that remote support will do well in the recession, but I have my doubts about the rosy picture you are painting.

A case in point. I know of a company that decided to replace a system of users calling a help desk with a web-based system. If a problem occurred then staff were told to access a departmental web site to get help. It doesn't take a genius to see that if your computer fails to work at all then getting to a web site for help is not an option.

There are three groups of people every smart employee cultivates: security, human resources and IT. If you have a computer problem invariably the quickest way to sort it out is to go up and hang around the IT department until they sort it out for you.

Remote access is a good idea in theory, and a sure fire money saver. I just have doubts about its efficiency.

3. Telecommuting

Iain Thomson: For at least the last decade telecommuting has been easy for a lot of industries.

The white collar workforce largely spends its days sitting at desks and working the phones or using computers. These things could be done at home, rather than using ruinously expensive workplaces, and the recession will make this a more attractive option for employers.

As budgets tighten and companies look to cut down on fixed costs then reducing office space requirements is an obvious solution. In the past this has been tried by some but there seems to be a core of management that believes the work just won't get done unless they are there to supervise.

However, all the evidence is that people are more, not less, productive when they work from home. Staff like it because it eliminates the commute to work, allows them to save money by making their own lunch rather than paying through the nose for a sandwich from a shop and lets them work in a place that they feel comfortable with.

We'll never eliminate the office entirely but telecommuting is going to get a lot more common in these difficult times.

Shaun Nichols: As I'm currently writing this article from my apartment, I'll go ahead and speak the praise of telecommuting. Not only does it more often than not improve productivity and morale, telecommuting is also a good way to save bucks.

Even though petrol prices are down from their outrageous levels of late, commuting to and from work is still a major cost for anyone that doesn't live close enough to walk into the office. And for those who have small children, there's the added cost of a day care bill and stress of lost time with the family.

There's also the cost savings for employers. By having fewer employees physically present in the office, companies can save money on everything from electric bills to paper and ink costs to coffee for the break room.

2. Software as a Service (SaaS)

Shaun Nichols: Now being referred to under the trendy "cloud computing" moniker, web based enterprise services or "software as a service" (SaaS) look to be one of the few enterprise IT niches to be doing okay.

Because web-based services are purchased through subscriptions, they are far cheaper over the short term than outright purchases of big software packages. Additionally, because the subscription cost is often based on the number of users, the cost of SaaS can go down if a company is forced to make staff cuts.

The combination of those two factors make SaaS very appealing at a time where decisions are being made based on month-to-month financial figures. The market seems to agree, SaaS champion Salesforce.com recently recorded a record financial quarter and its first billion-dollar year.

Iain Thomson: Salesforce.com really did a lot to popularise SaaS but there are now plenty of services out there, some free, some paid for, that offer web-based applications.

It's a feature of the maturity of the internet that allows these kind of service to be so popular. In the bad old days of dial-up access these kinds of services would be impossible but high speed, reliable connections make them viable and extremely profitable.

Yet this also could hold them back in a way. Relying on web-based applications is all well and good so long as they are reliable. When they fail then the businesses that use them are essentially crippled. You only have to look at the howls of rage when Gmail went down recently to see this in action.

So SaaS will do well in the recession. I'm just wary about entrusting mission critical applications to it.

1. Open Source

Iain Thomson: Microsoft may not have realised it yet but the recession will mean doom for its business model.

In the old days of fat software budgets then IT managers could get buy using the 'No-one ever got fired for buying Microsoft' line. But in the times ahead then the attractions of free, or nearly free, open source software are going to become much stronger.

This is helped by the new generation of computer graduates coming into the jobs market. They have been raised on open source, learning and honing their skills on software they could get for free. They are both skilled but also passionate about the open source model.

In an enterprise setting open source software is rarely actually free, but it's certainly less expensive than the commercial alternatives. Yes, you may have to sign up for a service contract but the supply of open source engineers is only increasing and they tend to be more skilled than someone who answered multiple choice questions to get their MSCE.

Open source also usually doesn't have such high hardware requirements too, something crucial considering the cost of upgrades.

Shaun Nichols: There's no better way to save money than to use stuff that's free. While not all of it is free, particularly enterprise deployments, open source software tends to come at a lower cost overall even when you do have to pay for it.

Take your average workstation for example. By replacing Windows and Office with their open source counterparts, you'd save hundreds of dollars for each individual user. For server deployments, there's the lower cost of purchase and installation coupled with the added flexibility from having an open-source architecture to tweak and develop on.

The one major drawback, of course, is that most no-frills open source systems lack the support infrastructure and familiarity companies such as Microsoft offer. If your IT staff is not very familiar with deploying and maintaining the chosen bit of open source software, the entire company could be in for a major headache when problems arise.