Graabein asks:
"I'm part of an effort to startup a VoIP provider. We've decided to use Open Source Software wherever possible. Production is not a problem, we can handle the VoIP network itself, POTS termination, web sites, email systems, all the usual stuff. The business side of things is another matter entirely. We need to be able to handle Customer Relationship data, manage subscriptions, handle invoicing and accounts, have a web shop of sorts, online billing, credit card transactions, and more. Whatever system we use has to be able to handle national standards for accounting, or at least be possible to modify to do so. We've looked at Compiere, but our business types are not impressed. Neither am I, for that matter. Requiring an Oracle license is one thing (database independence is 'in development', but it has been for a long time, with no discernable progress), not working properly with Mozilla is another (you need IE to use it fully in HTML mode). What other options are there?"
"Our business types are full of suggestions for supposedly excellent and well suited systems, however they all have in common that they require Windows on the client. If we choose one of those systems our OSS policy is pretty much moot and OSS has been relegated to (some) servers in the computer room and that's about it. I don't mind running these business functions on a Windows server if that is the best system for the job, but having to run Windows on every client in order to access the data is simply not acceptable.
We want Linux and OpenOffice on every desktop. We want to be able to access customer data from a variety of clients, even including Windows. The same goes for Accounting data, HR data, QA data, you name it. Do we have to write our own system from scratch? I'm not sure that is very realistic."
Because Windows... what? (Score:2, Insightful)
It is also a business expense which makes it tax-deductible, so the actual cost is even lower than the price you pay up front for those licenses.
Suck it up and join the rest of the business world.
Changing attitudes is 95% of the battle (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Some things to try (Score:5, Insightful)
How much is this ideal policy costing you? (Score:5, Insightful)
Your internal IT should never ever never be a gating item for letting your business department do what it needs to do. If the chairman of the board likes MS Word and just doesn't "get" Open Office, then the amount of his and your time that you burn trying to show him the light will forever outweigh the cost you would have paid to get him a Crossover license and a copy of Word and keep him happy and concentrating on what he is supposed to be doing.
Re:Because Windows... what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Flamebait or not he's right. (Score:3, Insightful)
WindowsXP License $180
Quickbooks Pro $300
Not risking a business to save $760, priceless.
In the end you'll get more out of doing it right the first time than you will by screwing up your accounting/etc and hiring someone (or wasting someone's time) to fix it.
Re:Open Source is not CHEAPER (Score:4, Insightful)
Open Source developers do business as well. Many developers run their business of OSS, or create OSS outside of their work time. Of course, when someone CREATE a business package, they'll have to know what to do with it. But I would agree that in some cases, the searching user would need some insight in what a product needs to offer.
What would customers know? Do you advertise on your enterprise site that you use this-and-that Inc. Accounting Software? Besides, OSS isn't insecure by default, by all means. And, in many countries, like Norway (mine), you own your own information. If a business f**ks up handling your information, they're up in their knees in lawsuits in no time, if users want that.
Bottom line, Open Source is Open Development, not Open Access.
Ask for quotations.... or pay the price (Score:5, Insightful)
There are a lot of fancy applications on the net, none of them any usefull for your purposes (and please prove me wrong, I'd though I had been pretty thorough)
Having looked at the same problem for my own small business I'd say that if your business is essential to you, you either start asking for quotations for companies that can deliver a solution to fits your purposes or find a stock application that does most of what you need. (and does it in a way that most members of staff understand it)
Look at the price, and see if its matches your needs and budget.
As you are setting up your own business, you should NOT be fooling around trying to recreate the wheel; you will need al your energy to focus on your business and hope that it doesn't go belly up.
One sure way of doing that is having a dozen incompatible systems hide all your major business information from you, your customers, and your staff.
Re:Some things to try (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Mozilla Runs on WIndows (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, if it will only run on I.E. in Windows (wine/xover office notwithstanding), what's the point - may as well run a Windows app.
If a company goes to the trouble of making a web interface, it ought to be done "right", so any web browser that follows http/html standards can run it. It's not _that_ hard to do.
Re:Because Windows... what? (Score:2, Insightful)
Bite the bullet with WINE (Score:5, Insightful)
You will likely need windows for some things, unfortunatly. Fortunatly Wine works very well for a lot of window programs, and since you are looking for which one you use, you can demand Wine compatability from the start.
Don't be a jerk instisting on all open source, you have a buisness to run, and that means spending money once in a while. Don't waste your money (except by sending it to me....), but don't be too frugal either. If you can only get what you need from a pay software, buy it and get on with your buieness.
P.S. buy Crossover as your wine implimentation, those guys put a lot of support into wine and should be helped. (Or alternativly you can get WineX, but they focus on games so I doupt you care about their advantages)
Re:Mozilla Runs on WIndows (Score:2, Insightful)
Some 'tards [buymusic.com] still don't get it.
Re:Flamebait or not he's right. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How much is this ideal policy costing you? (Score:4, Insightful)
What will your customers be using? (Score:4, Insightful)
While I applaud open source and use it myself wherever I can personally, and in our offices, we still all have Windows machines on our desks.
If 95% of your customer base (and honestly the number is probably higher) is using Windows to either use your product, learn about your product, or do things like manage their accounts it is foolhearted to not have that technology available yourself.
Our servers and backend systems all run Linux, and yes it does save us money, but don't handicap your business' already statistically slim chances for success by not using a platform most of your customers will!
Re:How much is this ideal policy costing you? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, it's a valid business strategy. But you have to know when your strategy is not going well, and change it. Before you even get to the IT section of the business plan, you know you need certain internal systems. The business can run without OSS. It cannot run without accounting software, or whatever it is that the original post (which is not in front of me) said. So I suppose you *could* say "It's more important for everything to be OSS, I guess we will just live without a [blank] system", but I'm not sure that's a valid business decision anymore.
Buying into proprietory, closed systems is a significant risk and can result in not only large financial outlays now, but again later, eg; When the product is discontinued and the tax laws change. Software with only a Windows client is almost as bad as no software at all.
It's also the model that's been working for something like 30 years now. While I prefer open source as much as the next guy, you can't just dismiss something as "almost as bad as no software at all" when the world has been running that way just fine. Make open source win by showing it to be of a higher quality than closed -- not by trying to debate why closed source doesnt work. The evidence is against you.
What does accounting have to do with VoIP? (Score:4, Insightful)
I can totally understand the desire to be in total control of the software on your mission critical VoIP system, and Open Source makes a lot of sense. But forcing accountants who know zip about it to use Linux is foolhardy; the time wasted fumbling with an unfamiliar system will dwarf any savings (financial and spiritual) gained by using some open source thing.
Sometimes the customer must be guided... (Score:4, Insightful)
If it fits in with what they need to do and will give them more bang for their buck then go for it. However, sometimes they don't realise that solution xyz has problems efg and that actually solution hij would not only alleviate those problems but cost them less to have supported.
Hopefully they will eventually come around to the fact that they didn't know what they heck they were doing when they specced xyz, that you are indeed the expert and ask for your assistance, net result? Everything will be right as rain.
Now if they won't budge on wanting xyz, and it will be a PITA to support, you have to ask yourself:-
how much will it cost me to offer that support?
and: how much business (on top of the current project) will I see as a direct result of taking them on?
If it will cost you more than it will bring in, it's time to either outsource it or let the customer know you can't do it for the price they want. They'll probably thank you for your honesty and come back to you when everyone else says the same.
Linux Clients + Citrix (Score:2, Insightful)
Why? (Score:2, Insightful)
It seems to me that you need to figure out why you want to use OSS because if you hinder the business unit's ability to interact with clients (internal and external) you're not going to be in business long enough for it to matter. Find the right and best product for the job regardless of whether it's open or closed.
Re:What will your customers be using? (Score:5, Insightful)
While it is certainly true that you want to support the platform most of your clients have (English), the converse of deliberately turning away everyone else (Spanish) is false.
Let's say you 5% of your potential customer base will use something other than Windows. You have 10,000 customers this year. By requiring your customers to use Windows, you've just lost 500 customers. You've also lost 500 others that they recommended to your competitors instead. If that lost revenue is greater than the cost difference of support their systems, you're stupid.
Frankly, in this day and age, with well defined HTML, CSS and ECMA standards, requiring your customers to use Internet Explorer is insane.
What OSS is about? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you think you have no time for any of this item or no bucks to pay for someone else to workout on what prevent you to use it, you may be happy with a commercial package you will pay someone to install with the great advantage to open an incident report or bug report when you will be stuck with it. Or open a design change request, hoping the software vendor will consider it in any coming release of his product.
There is no such thing like a free lunch!
Re:How much is this ideal policy costing you? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Because Windows... what? (Score:3, Insightful)
So, I'm going to start a business with 5 employees, including myself. I have a $5000 IT budget. I am the only one in the office with any computer experience, which is as follows:
- About 15 years of 'practical' computer experience.
- About 5 years professional experience as a desktop jockey and, later, as a Windows sysadmin.
- I've installed a half-dozen UNIX (mostly BSD) servers for very, very small web sites, but never as a file/application server.
- I've tried Linux on the desktop a few times, but gave up after a week of fighting with any number of typical desktop Linux problems (hardware support, package management, etc).
So, how am I going to spend that $5000? Should I become embroiled in trying in vain to set up FREE Linux/BSD desktop and server machines without any real experience? Network shares, proxies, client applications, network printing -- that would take weeks. Should I hire someone to do it for me at a ridiculous cost, not to mention the support costs for when something goes wrong in my 5 station LAN? How many operations that size have you seen that can afford IT support costs @ even a measly $70 an hour? Or, should I just eat the software costs of Windows, have the entire small LAN running in a weekend by myself, and essentially forget it all exists? True, buying Windows means I can't afford the same hardware horsepower, and I may be stuck using a PC as a server (instead of a 'real' one), but I can fix 95% of it myself.
This happened in countless scenarios that I've personally witnessed (after having been brought in to take over the maintenance once the business gets busy enough). This constant "linux is cheaper" chant is completely, yet unsurprisingly, ignorant of several factors above and beyond the actual purchase price.
Re:How much is this ideal policy costing you? (Score:3, Insightful)
Just to play devil's advocate, how do you know that? What if it was OSS, but the maintainers decided to drop support, and stop development. Sure you could take it over yourself - do you have the resources? I'm kind of guessing that as a newspaper you don't. So maybe you'd need to hire a company to do the required conversion work for you (to make it run on OSX). Do you have any idea how much that would cost? You never know, if you flash that much cash at the QPS guys you never know, they might see the light and help you out.
I'm not trying to make any kind of clever point, but the way I see it, something being OSS gives you _more_ options when it comes to support, but it's not a silver bullet - you could still end up in trouble if support is dropped.
Re:When will some OSS developers get a clue... (Score:3, Insightful)
This and the fact that most geeks do not need the software is why it will not be written anytime soon. No one wants to do the boring drudge work involved to make it usable. Just look that the ever-increasing number of half-finished OSS projects for proof. Onces the sexy code is written, development slows, documentation is neglected, and developers move on to the Next Big Thing.
Re:I hate to say it, but . . . (Score:2, Insightful)
Sorry, but I just don't buy the idea that using something other than microsoft windows automatically makes you a religious crusader, and I reject your assertion that using something other than microsoft products, and running business, are "mutually exclusive" -
Amazon.com is running a fairly successful business on Linux. IBM, Oracle and Novell are are moving to linux on the desktop, but taustin is itching to set them straight, because according to him, their current direction is "mutually exclusive" with running a business.
taustin, perhaps you should contact the CIOs of those firms and have a word with them about the impossibility of running a business on Linux?
Re:Flamebait or not he's right. (Score:3, Insightful)
At the risk of starting a flame war, I think you should have suggested PostgreSQL, especially for billing software. It has a cleaner implementation of standard SQL and transactions that I think would appeal better to billing software types. It might have supported the functions they used, although you don't say what they were.
I converted an Oracle project to Postgres relatively painlessly. In particular, the language used for stored procedures is very similar and can almost by translated algorithmicly. (Actually I wrote a quick and dirty translator for some of the more routine things.) While Postgres might not handle high-volume mainframe stuff as efficiently as Oracle - the data is unclear on this - certainly it's more than adequate as a replacement for anything running on an "aging win NT sql server".
Re:Mozilla Runs on WIndows (Score:3, Insightful)
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Browser-based interface not always the best choice (Score:5, Insightful)
They work fine on the web because they are a compromise: I give you a site with a rather dull interface , but you get to it without installing custom software AND ALSO you are presented with a familiar and simple user interface (click links, scroll pages, fill up form fields, submit info), so you can catch on quickly with my site, because it work quite similarly to other sites you have visited before (an important aspect that some flash-based and some overworked DHTML-based sites seem to overlook).
Of course, the software used internally in a business has both more demands and less limitations.
It has less limitations because you can install wathever software you want (you have tech support, and don't depend on the end user failing to install the latest plugin). You don't have severe bandwidth limitations. You can standarize on a single platform for your clients, and on a single screen resolution (or, if it is not single, at least can be a known and definite set). You don't need to engineer your application to be run in a restrictive security sandbox, so you can have full control of the devices attached to your computer. For instance, you can make the application print an invoice as part of a transaction, without explicit user intervention (no "print" dialog), automatically selecting certain parameters (paper size, margins, resolution), not allowing the user to mess with them. The application you build can also have a steeper learning curve, because you won't have casual users (potential customers that have to figure out how things work on their own, and that you'll loose if they get annoyed), but permanent users that are your employees and can be trained.
The user interface of business software has higher demands too. If you fill in an online purchase form twice a week, you can put up with a clumsy user interface. But if that is your job, and you process purchase orders from 9 to 5, you'll need something better than the average HTML form. For instance, when a customer tells their name over the phone, you type the first three letters and a list of those customers that meet the citeria is instantly displayed for an easier selection. Also, you might want your text to be spell checked as you type when fou fill a text area. If you have used both SQL-Ledger and GNU cash, or PhpMyAdmin and mysqlcc, or any web-mail and any mail program, or groups.google.com and any newsreader then you should know what I'm talking about: even the best engineered web application falls short to almost all rich GUI applications.
Of course, in the future web interfaces might evolve to become richer (XForms, for intance), but until then, selecting a web-based architecture for internal business use certainly can hurt productivity.
Having said all this, I must also point out that it depends on what you call "a Browser-based application". I have taken for granted that the original poster meant a HTML-based application as opposed to, say, an application consisting in a single page containing a java applet or ActiveX control.
Re:We use the following: (Score:0, Insightful)
Meetings with huge groups of people are monumental wastes of time & energy.
I can't even count the number of "show & tell" staff meetings that I wasted my time on over the years. At one meeting, where the attendees were mostly contract staff, we estimated that one droning staff meeting cost about $50/minute with no discernable value.
Re:How much is lack of research costing _you_? (Score:3, Insightful)
You have created a false dilemna. You suggest there are only two options: non-OSS or nothing. That simply isn't true. All your talk about egg timers and burning money is also unwise. It is fairly obvious that the original poster should not just grab QuickBooks while s/he is at Walmart because it is convenient. Nor should a startup jump in with PeopleSoft or SAP or GnuCash, or anybody without a reasonably thorough investigation. Two or three days of waiting for Slashdot suggestions is a minor effort in the larger research.
The original poster is leary of building from scratch. I think that should be re-considered. Every off the shelf solution involves considerable "business process re-engineering." In other words, you have to force your business to work the way the software was built. Universities adopting Peoplesoft have found that they could not pay their faculty "9 over 12" because Peoplesoft wasn't built that way. Professors accustomed to working 9 months, but receiving paycheck all year long suddenly are forced into larger paydays for 9 months, then nothing for 3 months. Don't like it? Pay a lot of money to have the system modified, or do it yourself.
Ask Chevron how much in house programming it took to get SAP to allow vendor payment authorization the way Chevron had always done it before. Ask Fisher Price how many in house programmers it takes to get Keenan/Arbor to handle sales promotions that Keenan/Arbor didn't envision when they built the framework. Ask your local utility how much work it takes to tie your billing and provisioning together. See if they've even achieved it! It's pretty tough when you don't own the source. Oh yeah, and watch what happens when your vendor of choice releases an update to one of the modules. It wipes out all the "fixes" and customizations you have added. Don't cry to them. They can't possibly support every customer's customizations.
Now go ask Verio how five programmers can build a system from scratch that includes ordering, provisioning, and billing with global currency and pricing support in an amazing way that fits the company perfectly, while 200 hired experts struggle on to get a name-brand shrink-wrapped solution out of the planning stages. Granted, five full-time developers isn't cheap. But I can guarantee that no matter what you choose, you will need a team of developers to make it work. And when the solution is not homegrown, that team has to include highly paid outside "consultants."
Build your own system from scratch to fit your company. Don't build/rebuild your company to fit your system.
Oh, and about needing it to work on clients of many platforms... One word: Mozilla. It's a super nice client. From custom XUL apps to n-tier web apps, Mozilla is awesome! And it runs on more platforms than I can name. Of course, there aren't too many proprietary systems out there that have taken advantage of the platform advantages of Mozilla, but did I mention that you can build you own system?
Or... you could just outsource the whole thing to India.
Re:Because Windows... what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's look at the situation.
You're not qualified to administer a Linux environment. You probably don't want to bet a business on it without additional training or help.
But you do have experience with running a Windows environment. So you'll be able to handle that. Your choice will be pretty easy to make.
Of course - plenty of buisnesses consist of people without any IT experience on any platform. These folks will either need training or hire help. And in this day and age, finding help with Linux is not so hard.
The pitfall small businesses run in to is thinking that since they've used Windows at home, they can also manage to run a reliable Windows-based infrastructure at work. And sure - they may get it running at first. But they inevitably run in to a situation where they need to hire help. So much for avoiding the cost of hiring IT experience. This is the scenario that I have personally experienced (and been hired to handle) numerous times.
Don't be foolish (Score:2, Insightful)
Business is about money, and OS isn't always the best choice.
simple tip (Score:5, Insightful)
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Re:Mozilla Runs on WIndows (Score:2, Insightful)
The cost of adopting said solutions to your business workflow will easily be a multiple of the package price.
Re:Mozilla Runs on WIndows (Score:3, Insightful)
A small group of people who believe it's very much okay to write things that simply don't work in other browser. There's no consideration for Accessibility, Usability or standards. The HTML is a huge mess, doesn't conform to anything, has a mixture of upper and lower case tags, properties with single quotes, double quotes, no quotes. Heavy use of IFRAME, heavy use of JavaScript, pop-ups, no consideration for colour blind users, no ability to change font size.
Re:Because Windows... what? (Score:2, Insightful)
You haven't been looking at the High School(s) in your area, have you? There are MANY 'geek' kids that will be:
1) More than mature enough to handle a job such as this
2) More than knowledgable enough to handle a job such as this
3) More than willing to work at $30 (or less) an hour
4) More than willing to work as above for the EXPERIENCE later in life.
Give up. You are making a mountian out of a mole-hill. We have several businesses in our town of 17k people (and a few, even smaller, surrounding towns) setup with a linux server/windows workstation or linux server only situation and they are doing just fine. We even have one office (of a charity, which probably helped sell the idea, but still) with a couple linux workstations and a small (and very old) linux server doing filesharing, printer sharing, internet, backup (to CD's using arson), etc. Sure, it took them a day to find where the icons were, and because they weren't used to it, we had to tell them that "Mozilla" is the web browser, but they picked up quite quickly on the rest of it. They use a simple OO spreadsheet to keep track of donations and write any letters they need.
Of course, the company I worked for donated most of the labor, but nothing I've mentioned in this post is so hard that a high-school kid couldn't have taken care of it.
Of course, you'll argue that a high-school kid can't work during business hours, and you'd be right, but there are plenty that have just graduated and are going to whatever college is local to you (or that are even living at home with the parents) that would fit the bill.
I guess my point is that GOOD help is not as hard to find or as expensive as you'd like everyone to think.
Re:SQL-Ledger of course ! (Score:5, Insightful)
Use Int64s.
$92,233,720,368,547,758.07 to -$92,233,720,368,547,758.08 should be enough range for most folks. Most governments, too.
Re:When will some OSS developers get a clue... (Score:3, Insightful)
Absolutely! Once geeks realize that OSS is not just a toy but a means to make a good living, we will see the latent OSS revolution take place. For this to happen, however, we must truly collaborate and strike out on our own.
If you look around, most of the best OSS is that written by people who are being paid for their efforts one way or the other. Always remember this: OSS is not about a free lunch. It's about meeting needs in the most efficient way possible.
For core OSS business software, we need an organization like Apache that serves as a highly professional center of collaboration, funding, and outside contribution.
Re:When will some OSS developers get a clue... (Score:3, Insightful)
The fundamental problem here is that many (most?) geeks view OSS as just free software / free lunch / hobby. Sure, nobody wants to do the drudge work, but there's big money in that drudge work! Consulting / development of OSS can be a very lucrative business, but most geeks are afraid to try! As a result, all the OSS business software sucks terribly. Let me be even more to the point: this is holding back the entire OSS revolution.
Remember: Open Source Software is not about a free lunch. It's about meeting your needs as efficiently as possible!
What we need is professional, Apache-style collaboration on a single complete and modular OSS business software solution. It must be designed with modern software architecture and not cut any corners whatsoever. That means professional n-tier design and not crappy, monolithic, web-based PHP/*SQL nonsense. Think J2EE but using entirely FOSS. Right now, the only project that is anywhere close to moving in the right direction is GNU Enterprise (www.gnuenterprise.org) but it needs a lot of development help before it can become usable. The other option is JBoss, an OSS J2EE solution, but it still requires the Sun JDK as the OSS JDK's are all way behind. J2EE is also massively complicated with a steep learning curve and kinda fails the KISS principle in my opinion.