
Your business may not have the budget to run expensive, server-based enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), human resource management (HRM) or accountancy packages, but open-source alternatives are available, and many of these will serve a small office happily from a NAS. A NAS can even facilitate containerised apps like Kubernetes. A good range of APIs are available for NAS devices, and apps can be installed to handle version tracking or overall project management. Web and server developers can use a NAS as the perfect development platform for server-side applications. In IT departments, virtual machines can be very useful for testing unknown applications, running software in very specific environments, and even for observing the effects of malware strains in the hands of security researchers.
