The software that’s being made available free to help with home working during the COVID-19 crisis

Last week we reported that Zoho was making its Remotely suite free until July to help people and businesses cope with the current COVID-19 unpleasantness.

Since then many other companies have announced similar schemes to make their products available free to help businesses and individuals with isolation and home working.

This is a round up of the ones we know about, if there are others you're aware of feel free to add them in the comments.

Office software

Serif has made its Affinity apps on Mac or Windows completely free for three months, with a new 90-day downloadable trial and no obligation to buy, to help students, photographers, designers, artists and other creatives affected by the crisis.

Accounts Payable automation solutions provider Yooz is offering its software for free during the quarantine/isolation period, to ensure continuity of payments for businesses. Users not already on the platform can sign up on this link.

Boxcryptor has extended the free trial period of its business solutions Boxcryptor Company and Boxcryptor Enterprise that allow organizations to encrypt their data in the cloud.

Panintelligence is offering its business intelligence solutions for free to support and empower organisations during the crisis.

Communication and collaboration

RingCentral is providing free use of RingCentral Office for video conferencing, calls and collaboration for the next three months to NGOs, schools and other organizations.

Employee software firm Eko is offering its all-in-one employee platform free of charge to businesses across all industries for a period of three months in a bid to help them to enhance communications with their work forces during the height of the outbreak.

Thoughtexchange has opened up free-to-all, no strings access to its platform which allows leaders to connect with every member of their team or community and crowdsource anonymized answers to open-ended questions in real-time.

Cloudflare, Google, Microsoft, Box, GoToMeeting, and Cisco have joined forces to help small businesses via The Open for BusinessHub. This has been set up to provide small businesses with services to enable remote work for free.

Video conferencing software company StarLeaf has introduced a free version of its software, allowing people to just sign up and host meetings. It’s available worldwide and across all devices, requiring only an internet connection and an email address to get started.

DH2i is offering its DxOdyssey networking software, completely free-of-charge, to anyone needing to access their work computer, applications and information, from home.

CounterPath has extended its collaboration service for virtual meeting rooms to Bria Teams, Bria Solo and Bria Solo Free users for 60-days in order to support work-from-home strategies.

Social media marketing platform Socialbakers is helping non-government organizations manage social media communications during the COVID-19 pandemic by providing a six months free access to its industry-leading platform.

Olive Communications is offering free of charge Virtual Consultancy sessions to UK businesses in need of a rapid deployment remote worker solution. Olives team’s will identify the most cost-effective solution for the short, or long term without compromising on quality, which can be up and running within 48 hours. It's also offering free of charge Microsoft Teams for six months.

Community tools

ServiceNow has announced four new community apps to help its customers, including government agencies and enterprises, manage complex emergency response workflows. These apps are available for customers to access free of charge through September 30, 2020.

Cloud-based phone system CircleLoop is offering free business telephony to any UK school, healthcare provider or charity facing remote working challenges due to the outbreak.

OneLogin is offering its Trusted Experience Platform for free to educators who are moving to a virtual learning environment in light of health concerns.

Cira Apps has made its CiraSync Enterprise Edition suite available, free of charge, to any emergency organizations that can use it. The product automates syncing of Office 365 shared contacts and calendars to smartphones.

UK VoIP company Liquid 11 has set up a system to allow volunteers to create a free community support phone service for isolated or vulnerable people.

Support tools

Employee experience company Qualtrics has launched a new, free online tool for any business to test how prepared it is for mass remote working.

To give IT teams better visibility into remote worker experience, the ThousandEyes solution for network experience monitoring is now free for 90 days.

Security software

To help reduce the burden on IT and security teams and enable organizations to maintain their visibility and defenses, Senseon is offering new customers six months free use of its 'Endpoint 360' feature. Endpoint 360 protects travelling and remote workers no matter if they are on or off the corporate network, and whether or not they are using a VPN.

Cyber security platform SentinelOne is making SentinelOne Core available free of charge from Monday, March 16 through Friday, May 16, 2020, it uses AI-powered cloud native technology to autonomously identify and defeat cyberattacks and is deployable in seconds.

GreatHorn is providing 60 days of free, unrestricted access to its email security platform for businesses using G-Suite or Office 365.

Tempered is offering free VPN services for 90 days and will aid in the process of deploying VPNs by provisioning, segmenting and setting up the solution for customers.

To ensure that people know how to protect themselves online while working remotely, KnowBe4 is offering a complimentary course on internet security. Topics such as passwords, malware, keeping identities safe, and email and attachments safety are covered. To access the course visit this link and use password homecourse to log in.

Cybersecurity vendor Link11 is offering its cloud-based DDoS protection services free of charge to government and local government organizations, NHS and public health bodies, and education organizations.

Safe-T is offering its Secure Application Access solution free-of-charge for a period of three months to organizations affected by the coronavirus. To start using the solution, organizations simply need to deploy a lightweight server on their premises and connect it to their relevant services and to Safe-T’s secure access cloud.

Acronis is making its Cyber Files Cloud, the company’s secure, enterprise-grade file sync and share solution, free to all service providers through July 31, 2020, in order to keep data secure while working remotely.

CyberArk is making its Alero secure remote access solution available free to existing users of its other products.

Banyan Security is offering a 90-day free trial of its remote access product to allow businesses of all sizes to offer remote workers fast and secure access to corporate assets.

Gurucul is offering a free 30-day cloud service to secure data for remote workforces, including expert assistance from the Gurucl team at no cost.

Thanks for reading, now wash your hands!

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