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I'm biased though. I'm a lead tech at a GoldMine VAR. So don't just take my word for it. Please do your own research

For simple rolodex, it's mass overkill. But if you're looking to REALLY automate your sales force, it's the shit.

There's the main Goldmine (Corporate Edition or Premium Edition) app for people in the office or for remote guys syncing through low-speed connections.

You have:

• e-mail functionality
• SMS integration
• calendaring
• fairly sophisticated report generation (plus you have the options of Crystal Reports (which comes free with CE and PE) and SQL Server Reporting)
• Human-readable filtering, grouping, SQL queries, DBase-style queries
• fairly elaborate import and export functionality
• leads management, document management, knowledge management, project management
• automated processes
• Call scripting

And more. There's tons of functionality, of which I've only scratched the surface. And NOBODY uses it all.

Moreover, it's designed to be a networked/shared environment BY DESIGN. Not hacked in like so many other options out there.

For people with higher speed connections, there's virtual desktop/web-client functionality through the iGoldMine product (based on GraphOn). So you can publish not only GoldMine, but other apps (Office, etc).

For mobile users (handheld/phones/etc), there's things like W-Systems' MA HREF="http://www.w-systems.com/www/web/products_wMobile.asp">W-Mobile offering. Presents a nice clean interface for the data, and the upcoming version will actually allow full e-mail functionality.

For just being able to dump a list of appointments to a mobile device, there's options for syncing with Palm devices, Windows mobile devices. And for more elaborate integration of data, there's a product called CompanionLink that'll add options like Crackberry, etc.

With Premium Edition, there's even full-blown SIP/TAPI integration (CE has rudimentary SIP functionality, thought the TAPI link is the same).

And until you start getting into the hundreds of employees, even a modestly powerful server (think low-end desktop but packed with 2-3GB of RAM) is overkill.

If you're looking for real, full-blown helpdesk, you're probably looking at another FrontRange (the guys who make GoldMine) product. HEAT.

We don't deal a whole lot with HEAT. The sales cycles on it are really long, and while we DO know how to install it, some of the other FRS VARs are much better with it than we are. Basically HEAT is THE solution if you're looking for the real-deal solution though. And yes, there's intergration between the HEAT and GoldMine products.

There's actually a third GoldMine product. GoldMine Enterprise Edition. It is, however, a VERY highly specialized product. Essentially it's setup is something similar to PeopleSoft, etc. Out of the box, it doesn't really do anything, and it takes time (and some expensive labor) to build the interface specifically to meet a given company's needs. Unless you have tons of money to burn and highly specialized needs, this solution is HUGE overkill and even FrontRange themselves will warn you that your needs could be met more economically with other products.

We actually use GoldMine itself as a poor-man's helpdesk. Our phone system logs the calls. We just fill out billable history items once we're done. When we get ready to do billing, we just run a filter fo

Where I currently work, we use FrontRange (used to be Bendata) HEAT. We're actually using v5 for right now and will be upgrading to v8 over the weekend. We're severely behind. It's been in place for almost 6 years now and we've logged over 113k calls in the software. We're not using it to it's optimum performance though. The software is pretty decent though. It allows you to break down trouble calls to go to different groups (say hardware, desktop support, developers, etc.) and allows the help desk to set priorities on trouble calls (say, a pri 1 for a downed server, but pri 3 for just a regular trouble call). Also allows users to keep track of their time that they spend on a call. It may not be the best software, but it's been getting the job done for us. I'm pretty happy with it.

Check out ITSM by Front Range Solutions. It is a scalable modular package. It was built from the ground up to be ITLS compliant. It can be customized to meet your needs however great. There are a number of large enterprises using it, some on a global scale. It has a famous "little brother" called Heat. Last time I checked however, Heat was not ITLS compliant, but nearly so. If you are going to move toward ITLS, then you should alsoget involved with the Help Desk Institue. The white papers on best practices and the local chapters can help you answer the tough questions about what to do. You are not only changing your software but your IT culture. You need to know what the best practices are, and how to use them or your IT culture will cause you to slip back into your old ways like a smoker who tries to quit with out help. Upper management has to be in lock step with IT and have a "no shortcuts, no exceptions" policy to get you there. If not, after the dust settles, you are just left with a very expensive version of your old system.

Front Range HEAT is being phased out and they are pushing their new Service Management platform, Front Range ITSM. My company is partnering with them and we had a tech demo of it. Seems pretty nice and flexible. Last week, one of your Remedy Devs went to training on the platform and seemed to be impressed. Find more here.

I work at an 80 million dollar Independent Software Vendor called FrontRange Solutions. You might have heard of products that we make called HEAT and Goldmine.

Over the past 6 months, the company has gotten rid of over 30 employees in the Colorado Springs area. I think that we even made f*ckedcompany.com over these lay offs.

The majority of those long term salaried employees, many of which were married, were replaced in Silion Valley by single, male, green card holders or guys on work visas. These guys will all put in massive amount of hours just to stay in the USA.

We are sourcing most of our development work to the most expensive place on the planet and not a single person we have hired out there is married, and only one is female. Mostly because our new CEO, Mike McCloskey, is located there. That guy has some serious credibility issues.

I'll be the second to mention HEAT, by Frontrange. It's got its drawbacks (stay from the Java client, iHEAT), but it seems to do what you're looking for. Caveat: I'm looking at it from the perspective of a developer who uses it as a client, not from the side of an admin.

I work for a small city govt... ~500 users. We use Frontrange Software's Heat helpdesk package to track user support requests. They come in thru our Lotus Notes email interface to an auto ticket generator gateway that's part of the Heat package.

Name any closed source package that is far superior to all OSS equvilents. Can't, do it. Why? 'cause there are none.

Goldmine. I hate to have to say this about Goldmine, since it's a big piece of shit, but I've looked long and hard for an OSS solution that even comes close, and haven't found one.

Dreamweaver, arguably. In my experience, Dreamweaver is the best at what it does, and it's a big piece of shit. Just like Goldmine. Heh.

That said, I'm as much an OSS zealot as the next guy, and I would LOVE to see something come out that kicks the ass out of Goldmine. I've found alternatives to Dreamweaver that suit me fine, but I'm still looking for something to kick Goldmine into next year.