It's no secret that the UK's car industry is suffering badly in the economic downturn. Whilst giant US car manufacturers face bankrupcy and the UK government considers providing emergency credit to  Jaguar-Landrover, other industry players must look at innovative solutions to remain competitive.

Nestling in the heart of Surrey, Trident Honda first considered Open Source software when they were faced with an eye-watering £75,000 to 'update' their existing Citrix MetaFrame infrastructure.

The company's FD, in particular, has been instrumental in the company's move away from proprietary lock-in and expensive bespoke hardware to software freedom and  commodity thin-client terminals.

Sirius provides ongoing technical support for the new, Linux-based infrastructure. Staff still have access to Honda's mission-critical extranet using IE6 and specialist Windows-only software such as ADP Autoline.

Trident have slashed their licensing overheads by more than half in the first year, reduced their vulnerability to Windows viruses and drastically improved network uptimes.