Small businesses in IT looking to broaden their horizons in regard to their operating system (OS) use may be interested in the latest announcement made by an internet giant.

That is because Google has released its Google Chromium open-source OS for people to start their own personal work on, with the corporation looking to make it available for free at the end of the month.

The project will be known as Chrome upon its completion but it is believed the editing of the software will bring about a whole new approach to computing.

All applications are designed by Google to run in a web browser, while all user data is stored on Google's servers for safe-keeping.

On the company blog, Google stated: "We are doing this early, a year before Google Chrome OS will be ready for users, because we are eager to engage with partners, the open source community and developers."

It follows the recent release of Windows 7, which has hugely impressed its users and critics, particularly in comparison to the ill-fated Vista which preceded it.

In a recent survey of SMEs for Connect, the two most important benefits of outsourcing were guaranteed response times and allowing in-house IT staff to concentrate on more strategic issues.