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."
SQL-Ledger of course ! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:SQL-Ledger of course ! (Score:5, Informative)
And making the bookkeeper do data entry in a web form with no client side scripting to help (ie: for immediate validation, incremental lookup fields, adding rows to data entry tables)? Ugh.
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:SQL-Ledger of course ! (Score:5, Informative)
Some things to try (Score:5, Informative)
I'd strongly suggest not to be impressed by eGroupWare [egroupware.org]'s feature list and cute themes (I know WE've been fooled). Seems like these guys, though talented, are not really working towards stabilizing the tree, so you see frightening changelogs - like code rewrites between 1.0RC2 and 1.0RC3. They forked from phpGroupWare [phpgroupware.org] lately but I can't tell if it's a more serious project.
One of my friends is completely sold to the Horde Project [horde.org] so you might want to try it.
All of these will not solve all your issues but no application does and as these three above are open source, you can do the linking as you like.
Re:Some things to try (Score:5, Insightful)
I run an OSS CRM project (Score:5, Informative)
Here is what HERMES offers at the moment:
Web based CRM including appointments and tasks for customers.
Features that should be out within another month or 2 include:
internal communications system (i.e. communications not involving customers)
Interal appointment handling (i.e. appointments not involving customers)
Appointment and task delegation.
In the mid range, I will offer UI independence via SOAP, LDAP, POP3, SMTP, and IMAP.
In the long run, we want to offer most of what you are looking for. Please understand though, that I have been unable to find any open source packages for handling credit card transactions, so you would probably need to pay for an (expensive) license for such a component.
Subscription management etc. is not a problem-- there are OSS solutions that could be modified to do this with a trivial amount of work.
Anyway, Hope this helps.
I have heard good things about SQLledger, but IIRC, it runs on MySQL, which has a nasty habit of truncating large numbers, so I am not sure if I would trust it. It should be easy to port to PostgreSQL though, I would think.
Re:I run an OSS CRM project (Score:5, Informative)
I have heard good things about SQLledger, but IIRC, it runs on MySQL, which has a nasty habit of truncating large numbers, so I am not sure if I would trust it. It should be easy to port to PostgreSQL though, I would think.
SQL-Ledger [sql-ledger.org] does not work with MySQL. It's a high quality project and works great with Postgres. I use and recommend it.
Re:Some things to try (Score:2, Insightful)
OPENGROUPWARE ON MAC OS??? ANYONE? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:OPENGROUPWARE ON MAC OS??? ANYONE? (Score:3, Informative)
OSS Sofware in general.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:OSS Software in general.. (Score:2)
A simple spreadsheet in gnumeric or OpenOffice is surely faster than calculating by hand. Word Processors are a dime a dozen. I don't believe there is anything like quickbooks (heck, I have one windows machine around just so I can run Quicken) but
Re:OSS Software in general.. (Score:5, Informative)
Has anyone here tried GnuCash?
[Raises hand]
I don't have accounting complicated enough make it worthwhile using accounting software, but I do wonder how it stacks up compared to Quicken
GnuCash is hands down better for a business than Quicken. IMO, it looks much better for business work than Quicken's big brother, QuickBooks. I have some experience setting up QuickBooks and Peachtree accounting systems for mom & pop businesses, and I've run my personal accounting on one version or another of Quickbooks for about 10 years now. I've just changed over to GnuCash at the beginning of the year, as I'm migrating to Linux.
GnuCash is a full-fledged double-entry accounting system with good audit capability (burn a standard General Ledger to CD every end of month, etc), good report features, and by reputation good A/R, A/P, tax, and payroll capabilities (It pleases me that I don't have to explore those myself.) Also by reputation, its customer and vendor tracking is pretty thorough. It also has very good support for online banking and highly regarded multi-currency handling. And since it is GPL, if extensions are needed you could hire a tame programmer to do them (and use the world to beta test his product).
I'd suggest thoroughly exploring GnuCash and using it as a standard to measure other possible accounting systems against. I think it likely that you'd end up choosing GnuCash when all is said and done.
You'd need another database for the non-financial aspects of tending your customers. There are advantages in keeping technical support history, etc, separate from the financial history. At a WAG, I'd bet that one of the Help Desk packages would handle all of the most important parts of this for a VoIP provider. I haven't explored OS Help Desk databases, but I would think there would be some good ones available now.
I think OOo, GnuCash, and some GPL'd Help Desk database would cover most of your software needs. And in Linux, to boot. That will carve your potential licensing and support costs down quite a bit.
Re:OSS Software in general.. (Score:3, Informative)
GnuCash isn't suited for business because it does not really use true double-accounting....Because of that, compared to Quicken it sucks and is totally unusuable for a business.
Please mod parent down into oblivion.
GnuCash is a double entry accounting system.
Quickbooks is a double entry accounting system.
Quicken, though, is a glorified checkbook register program, not an accounting system.
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.
Re:Because Windows... what? (Score:5, Funny)
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 coffee.
Suck it up and join the rest of the business world.
Re:Because Windows... what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Because Windows... what? (Score:2, 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 neve
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.
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.
Quickbooks Pro 2000 was my last Intuit purchase (Score:5, Informative)
That was my last purchase from Intuit. I have removed it from my system and it sits on a shelf.
GnuCash is pretty much there now (Score:3, Interesting)
Quick-books can't properly handle multiple currencies whilst GnuCash seems to have no problems. You may have as many currencies as you want then balance them out at any time with a current or historical exchange rate. QB Profess
Re:Flamebait or not he's right. (Score:5, Insightful)
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 appe
Re:Flamebait or not he's right. (Score:3, Informative)
Any serious SQL based piece of software makes EXTENSIVE use of stored procedures for the simple fact the the stored procedure effectivly sits in a compiled state on the server saving significant time when being run multiple times. As may have become obvious by now MySQL DOESN'T support stored prcedures (or triggers which I could rant on about also). This is no reason in my opinion to claim it MUST
Re:Flamebait or not he's right. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not about the $780 per desktop. Even Microsoft will happily tell you that the licensing fees are a drop in the ocean. However, there are serious cost issues involved with supporting Windows desktops, and anyone that tells you differently is selling something.
That's especially true of a business (like this one) where a large percentage of the employees are going to be doing customer service. They don't need full fledged desktops. A thin client connecting via X to an application server would be far less expensive and far easier to support. A single Linux server (given enough memory) will happily support over a hundred thin clients if those thin clients are just doing order entry and light office tasks.
Not only does the business save a considerable amount of money on software licensing, but they end up with a architecture that is far less expensive to maintain. Software and hardware upgrades are a snap and maintenance is essentially non-existant. If a monitor or thin client fails you simply replace it. Instead of Windows PC technicians you only need a monkey that can be taught which cords plug in where.
On the other hand, it also is possible to mix in a few Citrix servers for those Windows applications that are needed for specialized desktops, so it shouldn't be that critical if there isn't Linux software for everything.
Re:Flamebait or not he's right. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Flamebait or not he's right. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Flamebait or not he's right. (Score:2)
What writeoff? (Score:2)
Re:Because Windows... what? (Score:5, Informative)
The parent should not have been modded flamebait.
Are you running a business to make money, or just to say you used OSS? It seems pretty clear that you don't have a business plan, because if you did, the cost of licensing v. cost of finding something that might work would have become apparent, and you wouldn't have had to ask this question. Forget about technology for a sec, get out your favorite spreadsheet and crunch your finances. Get your priorities in order. Don't make the same mistakes [slashdot.org] my former associates and I did
Look at freshmeat.net (Score:5, Informative)
A common problem I think, not easy to solve (Score:5, Informative)
I think your questions are hard to answer, and even though I have searched a lot for software (not online shopping/CC, we send invoice by mail since we're only doing business inside Norway) I have yet to find anything free and useful.
We've really considered doing it ourselves, making a simpe customer registration and management system with a web frontend. Using f.i. perl modules, you can create Excel documents with tabular data, and such. So that might be a thing to do. If you accept a tiny bit of manual work, that is. Of course, that tiny bit isn't that tiny after you've got hundred customers to bill.
But at least, I know that GnuCash [gnucash.org] has some functions regarding invoicing and customer registry, but I haven't really had the time to try it out. The rest of GnuCash is good, though, so there should be a hope. So far we can keep track of our economy, and if it works, GnuCash might do our customers as well, even generating invoices.
Good luck, and I hope this post will create some feedback for myself as well. Feel free to email me if you want to discuss, by the way.
Re:A common problem I think, not easy to solve (Score:5, Interesting)
Every person we have shown it to says something to the effect of "Wow, Why don't you sell this?".
Some of the features are:
Automatic Re-occurring Subscriptions (Discounts/Usage Charges etc are supported)
Automatic Credit Card Billing
Support Incidents/Tickets (with multiple statuses/email notification etc)
Reporting: Revenue/Income/Product growth/Usage etc
User memos/phone logs
Debit/Credit Manager
Fraud Manager
User Output Tracker (Can track a users usage of the site in real-time. Useful for debugging.)
Debt Manager - (Automatic Processes owing accounts through 7 steps "Email Invoice/Snail Mail Invoice/Legal Notices/Collection Agency etc" all without any human intervention)
And much more stuff that is very specific to our system. The point is that you can write a specific app that will perform much better than 3rd party "generic" apps. It is the specific things that will save you time. For example our support request system has a feature that will automatically alert me via Jabber when a support request comes in. It will then analyze the ticket looking for common keywords and suggest a list of "Quick Answers" to respond with. Due to the level integration required with our other systems a third party solution was out of the question. You might find the same.
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:How much is this ideal policy costing you? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:How much is this ideal policy costing you? (Score:4, Insightful)
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
Re:How much is lack of research costing _you_? (Score:3, Informative)
It was a super nice client until they introduced a bug that can't load the JVM properly.
Until, they fix this, I'll be using Opera.
Re:How much is lack of research costing _you_? (Score:3, Interesting)
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 req
We use the following: (Score:5, Informative)
For CRM, we use TUTOS [tutos.org].
For accounting, it's SQL-Ledger [sql-ledger.org]. Both the CRM and accounting apps are backed by PostgreSQL [postgresql.org].
For office suites, OpenOffice [openoffice.org].
Web browsing is Mozilla; e-mail is whatever our employees prefer (Mozilla, Kmail, Evolution, Pine, Mutt, whatever...)
We are completely MSFT-free and intend to stay that way.
Re:SQL Ledger (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:SQL Ledger (Score:3, Interesting)
IANA(Auditor) however
Accounting Software (Score:4, Informative)
It is a closed source general accounting software, but it runs on Linux, and the clients are linux too.
It takes off where Great Plains Classic left, when it got shut down by microsoft in favor of MS Dynamics, and i think its great, rock solid stuff. (passport, not Dynamics)
Also, it is written in COBOL, and uses ACUCORP's ACUCOBOL runtime, for which you need a license. Finally, ACUCORP provides an ODBC driver that works pretty nicely with PHP for web frontends and reporting, and also runs on Linux.
The only gripe I have, is terminal emulation in Konsole, 'cuz the graphics characters come out as A-umlauts and what have you, and i cant seem to find documentation for that issue anywhere.. suggestions?
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.
SQL-Ledger (Score:4, Informative)
The solution that I found was SQL-Ledger [sql-ledger.com]. While it is overkill for my needs, I think it might fit your criteria quite well.
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)
Try a Mix (Score:2, Interesting)
If you need Oracle and Windows to manage clients, then purchase a license for both. You could start out as a free company, and then work out the bugs without licensing issues. Start charging for the service later. As far as business/CRM software is concerned, IBM and SAP both offer professional services for Linux (but you need some money).
Your not going to get free access
Re:Try a Mix (Score:5, Informative)
Your opinion comes from a demonstrably spurious source.
MySQL and ReiserFS are both made available under the terms of the GNU General Public License. [gnu.org]
The GPL allows people to do absolutely whatever they want with software obtained under it, including using it to run their business in a commercial environment. The GPL does not allow one to distribute the product which was obtained through the GPL in a non-GPLed product, or to distribute products which contain GPLed products under a non-GPL license.
MySQL AB and Hans Reiser make their money by offering alternative commercial licenses which will allow you to distribute the work you derive from their work under a non-GPL license. This only means you have to pay them if you want to release software which links to the code they wrote
Easy. (Score:2)
You're set. As open source apps start filling the gaps switch over. No, Citrix isn't cheap but it works. It works very well.
Open for Business (Score:2, Informative)
It's not a complete solution yet. But it has an excellent framework and a quite active group of programmers behind it.
Business reality vs. FOSS idealism. (Score:5, Informative)
You need an accounting system that an auditor from a public firm will write an unqualified opinion on. In general this is going to mean a commercial product -- Solomon, Great Plains, Quickbooks, etc.
You need a payroll system that always works. Flawlessly. Many companies outsource this. Explaining to folks that the
You need a business plan that the investors technical people will sign off on. Betting everything on untried and little-used systems isn't going to get you there.
So for a lot of things: buckle down and do what needs to be done.
For the other 90% -- use open office, linux or bsd desktops, open groupware or even openexchange (suse). There are plenty of Linux/BSD/Apache/whatever storefront systems. Work on it. For the accounting/finance/etc folks -- get a windows terminal server and use rdesktop for those windows apps.
Re:Business reality vs. FOSS idealism. (Score:2, Interesting)
Use open source wherever you can, but for some of the apps, you might need commercial ones.
The commercial Accounting/Business management CRM, etc solutions that are out there are still years ahead of anything open source - they might be your best choice - and there are some available that will run on an open source OS (even for the desktop)
(i work for a company that has such a product...)
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: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.
Somebody has to say it... (Score:2)
Hate to rain on your parade, but... (Score:3, Informative)
Open source credit card processing (Score:5, Informative)
Don't force OSS into the wrong shaped hole (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Freeside? (Score:5, Informative)
I played with it for a while but the bosses where I work went with anther, Windows-based management system, that has as yet proven too difficult and unstable to actually put into production.
I suggest (Score:2)
Make your own... (Score:4, Interesting)
Hire a consultant, and make sure you own the rights to the resulting code when you're done.
Open for Business Project (Score:2, Informative)
The Open for Business Project [ofbiz.org] sports many features and integrated technologies. Just really impressive stuff, cannot list all the goodies here.
SimpleData (Score:3, Informative)
Some Easy Solutions... (Score:5, Informative)
Oracle Apps will support Mozilla (Score:4, Informative)
If you use Oracle Applications, you might be interested in Oracle's announcement [eweek.com] that they're going to be supporting Mozilla.
That takes care of half of the problem.
-ez
Karma: Whore (you look at your article scores after posting)
When will some OSS developers get a clue... (Score:5, Informative)
Accounts Receivable/Customer relations
Accounts Payable/Supplier relations
Inventory
Payroll/ HR management
This ain't rocket surgery. It is painfully dull, boring and potentially stupidly lucrative.
As one person I suggested it to said: "Thom, that would be great but involves two things that geeks hate: writing accounting software, and cold calling."
Most businesses that need this desperately are small to medium sized businesses that are currently using a few thousand dollars worth of computer hardware exactly the same way they would use a two hundred dollar typewriter.
When I started where I work, inventory was typed out in MS Word, and printed out once a year, with additions hand written throughout the year. We're currently paying someone several thousand dollars to write an inventory database for us in Filemaker. Why wasn't this done years ago? THEY DIDN'T KNOW IT COULD BE DONE!!! If you want to make a good living, and can write accounting software, cold call businesses in your area, and tell them:
"I can make the computer work the way YOU want it to work, not make you work the way that off the shelf software wants you to work."
You will make the sale, and you can reuse your code on the next project.
Why don't I do it? I have a job I like more, that pays enough to keep me in all the toys I want.
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: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 t
Re:When will some OSS developers get a clue... (Score:3, Funny)
Yes... Now where would we find an experienced devloper with an MBA [kerneltrap.org]? Hmmmm.
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 collab
A few things to consider (Score:5, Informative)
We use Quickbooks 2003 for accounting. Works well, fairly easy to use for my non-accounting brain. What I did to accomplish this was to run a Windows 2000 Server basically as a terminal server to allow either one of us to use Quickbooks on our boxes. I had the firewall forwarded so my accountant could get into it as well. They key is not to use the box for anything else, no web browsing, no e-mail, no nothing. Keep it patched, toss on a copy of Symantec antivirus, install the free version of SFU and you can back it up over the network on yer linux box. Seems to be the best way to "Windows-enable" your linux network.
I also run Mozilla mail against SUSE OpenExchange Server with great success and happiness. OpenExchange has an excellent web interface to mail as well as document management (with revision control), knowledgebase, contacts with contact history type functionality, job and project tracking (admittedly difficult to use), and internal instant messaging. Can sync yer Palm to it as well, or toss on Outlook with IMAP if you really have to. It's quite an excellent product and the pricing is quite reasonable considering what it can do. Doesn't need huge system resources either. I run it on dual a PIII-866 with 256MB right now--512MB would be quite sufficient. (swaps a bit with 256)
OpenOffice.Org runs on the SUSE desktops and the PowerBook has genuine MS Office X. She gets into some complex Excel formulas and macros so decided to go MS on that one. I have NO problem recommending OpenOffice.Org to anyone doing office tasks. If you gotta have support, go StarOffice from Sun--just as good, only a few bucks.
I haven't really gotten into any of the PHPProjekt-type wares. Seem to be a lot of functionality, but not much of it done up really well, and much less of it useful in and office setting. That groupware "killer app" is still lurking out there somewhere, if it's not the SUSE product.
Linux on the desktop is definately do-able. I do it here. My wife's old PC with XP crashed a few months ago--bought her the PowerBook and never thought about the Windows box again. All of your major tasks can be done on linux. I have an IBM X31 laptop and SUSE Pro 9.0 support all my hardware, including wireless network card and even some funky IBM stuff. I'm sure RedHat would be fine as well, especially on desktop systems--your preference.
The community will get better with accounting-type programs. I think it will probably still be a few years until something surfaces. The Win 2000 as terminal server should suffice until then, and it's not too expensive.
Good luck in your efforts, let us all know how you end up!
-m
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!
sql-ledger (Score:3, Interesting)
XRMS: Another CRM choice (Score:3, Informative)
I'm actually in the process of installing xrms as a CRM from a support standpoint, not from a sales one. It has a nice user database, a basic ticketing system, and a fairly polished interface for a new app. It was one of the few that spanned both worlds (support vs. sales) with any finesse.
There are several developers involved that are happy to take suggestions and plan out new features.
My opinion (Score:3, Interesting)
Just remember that your ultimate goal is increasing profit, which is often helped by reducing expenditures but not always if it forces you to use something that's of lower quality. Most Linux projects have Windows ports, and chances are you're already running Windows, and your new PC's have it preinstalled accounting for $50 of the cost.
Don't shut out proprietary software but don't shut out Open Source either. Use whatever will lead to the best profits. You'll probably want at least one good Linux server for general purpose use. There are many good groupware related websites you can install on it for your intranet. OpenOffice works as well as MS Office for most tasks, sometimes better. If you use Microsoft Access, there aren't any OSS alternatives for running your preexisting Access apps, but you can find and download the little known free Access Runtime which works for most of them.
So to summarize, Windows desktops for compatibility, OSS software running on top, Linux servers wherever you're not locked in to Windows, and the free Access Runtime if you need Access but wish to use OpenOffice.
Mixed Environment! (Score:3, Informative)
OSS For Critical Internet Infrastructure (Score:3, Interesting)
Ever since I started getting those threatening postcards from the Business Software Alliance [bsa.org], I have been determined to do whatever I can to get Microsoft out of my business. It has not been easy at all. In fact, I wonder if my extreme hatred for Microsoft has clouded my business judgment.
My work has not been all for naught. I have easily and painlessly jettisoned Microsoft from all of our critical Internet infrastructure. No more Microsoft http servers, smtp servers, file servers, etc. This is where open source excels. It does not make much business sense to use Microsoft for stuff like this.
Another huge open source success is the use of Postgresql instead of Oracle or SQL Server. It was easy to re-program our proprietary apps to use Postgres. We save a ton of money by never paying for an Oracle license. Unless you can't live without DB clustering or other advanced features, Postgres is the answer.
My efforts to get rid of our proprietary point of sale/order entry system have taken me down a long, complicated road, and I have decided that the best solution is developing a completely custom system. This has cost a ton of time and money, and in two years has still not resulted in a functioning alternative or the decomissioning of a single Microsoft server! One day, though, I swear it will pay dividends. My stubborness here has so far been a big can of worms. But who knows, even massive, expensive fiascos like The Big Dig can one day "go live" and everybody is grateful.
OpenOffice is a no-brainer, unless you need to exchange documents with other firms, or you need some of MS Office's advanced features. My employees initially revolted (they were just not used to it). But OO is surprisingly feature-rich, if not intuitive or robust. Of course, even though OO has been a GREAT success story, it is still deployed on Windows machines. However, I now have a migration path to Linux workstations.
I do not even have any desire or plans to get rid of all the Microsoft boxes. We will still use Quickbooks for the back end accounting. We will still do desktop publishing using BSA-approved software (although the GIMP has replaced Photoshop in our non-print work).
The one shining beacon of hope for me is that, even though I have not significantly reduced the number of Windows machines at my business, I have significantly increased the number of FreeBSD and Linux servers, and I have not ever upgraded my Windows NT 4.0 workstation licenses!
My advice is to use OSS whereever you can, and proprietary software whereever you must. Always make technology decisions that give you the option to migrate to OSS if the option presents itself.
OSS does not address many business needs (Score:5, Interesting)
What sort of needs does a big business have? Well, they all need to manage human resources [peoplesoft.com]. Most need to track items in their warehouses [motek.com] and perhaps training for their employees [plateau.com]. The industrial sector will have many additional needs [techassist.com] to track equipment, schedule resources [primavera.com], control work authorizations, and safely take equipment in and out of service. Running an enterprise call system also takes more than a PHP app [techexcel.com].
There are dozens of other highly generic needs that I haven't mentioned, but all take extensive effort to set up, customize, and integrate into a business environment. And these things are *mission critical*: millions of dollars can ride on the availability of the software. Open source can eventually get here, but it will have to (first) be written, (second) creep up through small business, and (third) be vetted and pushed by consultants who can make money from long-standing service contracts.
I'm not trying to be pessimistic about open source, but there are many unmet needs here. Don't expect to run a serious business without proprietary software. In fact, be as objective as possible when evaluating software needs for your business... pretend that you have to defend every decision in front of someone who doesn't care about the distiction b/t free and non-free software. Someone who only thinks in terms of money, growth potiential, implementation schedules, and risk. If OSS can't stand its ground here (even with the price advantage), drop it. Don't jeporadize your business, and (if you're working for someone else) don't give your boss a bad taste of what OSS is all about.
Stallman--as much as I support the guy--completely misses the real world when he says that "any business based on proprietary software deserves to fail". Deserving or not, any medium or large business that is not based on proprietary software will fail.
I hope open source can one day address these needs, especially for small businesses and start-ups, but I'm not too worried even if it can't. If Linux becomes good enough in other aspects, these proprietary apps will be made to run on Linux too (and some of them already do). "Mostly" free is good enough for me.
simple tip (Score:5, Insightful)
Sivaram Velauthapillai
What do Sun/Apple/Redhat/Novell do? (Score:3, Interesting)
But in this discussion, I'd think it'd be very informative to find out how Sun, Apple, Oracle and other publicly avowed Microsoft dislikers run their business? Surely they, more than anybody else, has a business strategy at all levels to use non-MS products for their business operations, preferably their own.
Clearly, Apple, Sun and so on use MS in various parts of their organisation. They'd be unable to develop their products without MS systems, but across the organisation as a whole, what do they use for all of the problems you describe?
I've heard stories of Sun types pulling out Windows laptops and getting tuts from the techies in the room, but that was a few years ago, prior to StarOffice...
So, anybody know what these guys use?
We're doing the very same thing. (Score:3, Interesting)
From what I have expierienced, even with finacial and CRM software is that it in the end even isn't worthwhile looking at commercial proprietary software.
My strong advice:
Get an OSS expierienced programmer who is realistic and can ask you the right questions. He absolutely has to be capable of understanding the needs of pragmatic business solutions and your need to also evalutate proprietary products even if he's grown to be very sceptical (like I have). He should also be able to recognize where the bottlenecks in your business are and if the software which screenshots you like so much
We are using OSS all the way through, exept for the businessguy who hasn't gotten around to ditching his Win2K Desktop - which he almost is as anoyed about as the rest of us, since managing all those emails is a major suck with outlook. (Yeah, I know, sounds insane, doesn't it?)
All the rest is done with either solid OSS solutions - in this case InterChange for the e-Commerce plattform - or custom Code in Python.
Compiere gives me the creeps aswell, but just the other day I've checked with the GNU Enterprise team, and after pocking them with questions on IRC for 90 minutes I'd say their foundation work seems the way to go for me. Take a look for yourself:
( http://www.gnu.org/software/gnue/project/what.htm
Just now the business has it's model sorted out and we're making the transition from a bunch of patched and modded gluecode scripts to a front line ERP/SCM/CRM system and we are going to join the GNUe folks, contribute to the project and use the gnue-common stuff to build the precise things we need. It may be a struggle at times, but all in all the crap we've put up with in proprietary systems we've shurely had enough of.
I don't know your field of business, but _if_ you choose to use proprietary software I'd suggest you do thourough evaluation of in-the-field qualities and take a VERY close look at true TCO.
Remeber: THIS is the area we're the software vendors move into serious bullshitting territory in a way that in comparsion one could think the MS Desktop devision is a trustworthy non-profit organization!
Bottom Line:
If you have good and solid, non-quirky fanatics-free OSS coders and experts at hand I'd suggest you trust them with your money, otherwise be _extremely_ carefull before you buy yourself into a lock-in with a crappy line of software products. You can't imagine what proprietary rubbish people sell for money.
BTW: If you happen to reside in germany or benelux, I'd be happy to have a talk and look if I can maybe be of use and able to toss you a pitch. Feel free to drop me a line if you think I can help you.
(Here's my public mailbox: r_i-t_s-c_h-r_a-t_s-c_h @ g-m_x-_-. d_-_e without the Hyphens, Spaces and Underscores)
Re:Mozilla is utter crap (Score:2)
Re:Open Source is not CHEAPER (Score:3, Informative)
"Also - what will your customers feel that you have their PRIVATE info on open source processing software???"
umm, do you just completly fail to understand how software works, or are you a moron?
It's not like you can read source, and thus know what the clients private data is. What OS buys you is that you can be sure that the code handles the data properly, and if not you can have it fixed.
If a closed system is mis-handling data, you have no way of finding that out.
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.
Open Source Not necessary (Score:3, Informative)
What he's ticked about is having to put Windows on every desktop because the client end only works on IE (guh!).
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:Mozilla Runs on WIndows (Score:2, Insightful)
Some 'tards [buymusic.com] still don't get it.
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 cha
Not necessarily (Score:5, Informative)
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:Mozilla Runs on WIndows (Score:3, Insightful)
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Re:Do you want free software? (Score:2)
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.
Re:Real world vs. fanboy fantasies (Score:3, Interesting)