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."
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.sql-ledger.com
You might want to peek at OpenGroupware. My colleagues and I have skimmed though what was available and it seems to be the most impressive for at least the customer management side. Though the look of the web interface will not amaze your artist friends, it seems to work well. You can interoperate with Evolution, Mozilla Calendar and some other programs - even Outlook should you want to buy the driver.
I'd strongly suggest not to be impressed by eGroupWare'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 lately but I can't tell if it's a more serious project.
One of my friends is completely sold to the Horde Project 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.
I have run into this problem a few times with my busisness. What did I end up doing? I resorted to the ultimate open source system, pen and paper. I have looked at a few packages for use as an accounting system but I seemed to always run into a problem with this and that, and when I'd try and read the documentation it sucked ass! It assumed you already knew XY and Z to get the package working when you don't really need to know them when it's finaly working. I dislike winblows as much as the next Slashdotter, but I have to say most programs in the windows einvironment install and work out of the box, and the install documentation is written at a level even a drunk person can understand.
---- Fight to protect your right to keep and arm bears! ummmm... ya I think that's right....
It costs you a couple bucks for some Windows licenses. In the grand scheme of your business, it is an insignificant cost.
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.
I have been pwned because my
Have you looked around on freshmeat.net? There are quite a few people providing some sort of business management package. A quick search for "billing invoicing" turned up the Trabas VoIP Billing package as the first hit. Probably a good place to start. I'm sure there is plenty of stuff that will do most of what you want. Is your company comfortable with doing some minor coding on an existing project to get exactly what you want? If so, there are a lot more options.
I think this is a common problem. I run a business myself, with two friends. We've just started, but we're looking into getting things like customer related software in order before doing anything serious about ourselves. I've worked voluntary with organisations and economy before, and I know things screw up if things are not kept track of.
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 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.
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.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
For CRM, we use TUTOS.
For accounting, it's SQL-Ledger. Both the CRM and accounting apps are backed by PostgreSQL.
For office suites, OpenOffice.
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.
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?
*shower*
VMWare $280
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.
open source is cheaper, in th long run.
"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.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You're not really asking for a flame, but I think you're disinsightful.
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.
Simple answer: what you are looking for does not (yet) exist.
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.
I was recently asking this same question, albeit for a home-based consulting business.
The solution that I found was SQL-Ledger. While it is overkill for my needs, I think it might fit your criteria quite well.
That was my last purchase from Intuit. I have removed it from my system and it sits on a shelf.
Don't count on a "web interface" equalling "will run on any platform". I've lost count of the number of "web enabled" applications that only work in I.E. Some vendors seem to think the purpose of a web interface is so you don't have to install new software on your Windows PC (giving them the benefit of the doubt vs just plain laziness/poor qa), whereas it _should_ mean it's platform and browser independent.
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.
Some net apps require Microsoft extensions or are written using proprietary IE calls and absolutely MUST be run on IE. And don't tell me changing the browser id string will make it work. That will eliminate the warning messages but not make things work. I am having to deal with this issue right at this moment.
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)
Open Source doesn't mean free. If you use mySql/ReiserFS in a commercial environment you will have to pay a fee (but you get the code).
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 to the credit card clearing houses using open source or proprietary software. You need a merchant license for this (along with money in the bank too). Software is easy to write, FDIC approval is harder.
But then again, why a VOIP company? Did anyone write a business plan first? Who is your target audience? Slashdot users? Not me, I'm still comfortable with the landline connection to 911/1-800-CALL-WIFE that doesn't go down in a power outage or DOS attack. Can't get that with dialup/DSL/Cable.
My opinion. Enjoy.
It's just the normal noises in here.
Any HTML app that requires IE might as well have a big banner that says "THIS PRODUCT WAS DEVELOPED BY AMATEURS!". It's user hostile. AND Mozilla is a better browser. You can actually do more with Mozilla than IE, since Mozilla has better standards support.
Some 'tards still don't get it.
ofbiz.org
It's not a complete solution yet. But it has an excellent framework and a quite active group of programmers behind it.
You're running a business. Get over the idealism and focus on what you _need_.
.7 version borked the checks and you've upgraded to .8 and that borked the witholding info so now you need to rebuild it -- that's unacceptable. Bite the bullet and focus on your business needs.
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.
"But actually trying to use m4 as a general-purpose langage would be deeply perverse" --ESR
If you are a startup looking to get into the VoIP market, chances are almost all of your customers are going to be running some kind of Windows based computer.
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!
Your Customer Support department really needs to run the same OS as the customers they are supporting, so they can recreate problems and sound like they know what they're talking about when walking through steps to solutions. Unless all your customers are Open Source only shops, this means at least most of your customer support personel are going to need Windows boxes.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
You mentioned that you needed to process credit cards. Check out my employer, TrustCommerce, which offers a completely open source credit card processing API for connecting to our payment gateway. It compiles on tons of platforms (including Linux), and we have versions for many programming languages: C, C++, PHP, Python, Ruby, Perl, ColdFusion, Lisp, etc. All code is GPL.
OSS does a lot of things well. Things like development tools, operating systems, servers, and, well, I'm stumped past that. I've been running linux for 9 years, and it is all I run at home, so I'm not some MS flunky. OSS also does a lot of things really poorly. Easy installation, self configuration, and interoperation with business software are some of those things. As a startup you can't afford the time it takes to make OSS software interoperate with business software and other companies you will be working with. Start keeping track of the hours you spend trying to install and configure and make your OSS software work in this specific area, and you'll quickly see it isn't free. I'm guessing every piece of software you need is up to par and available right now in the commercial world, for a few thousand dollars. That isn't much considering the time and trouble it will save you.
Your accountants and your tech staff are totally different people right? If the accountants want to use Windows, and your techs want to use Linux, why not?
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.
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.
You are not going to find an out-of-box product that is perfectly made for your business. Use the open-source LAMP combination (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) to build your own application complete with a built-for you database scheme and user interface. That way, you're sure it'll support absoultely everything your business does, and have the ability to upgrade the software should you ever expand into another product line.
Hire a consultant, and make sure you own the rights to the resulting code when you're done.
...we get it all the time, customer wanting xyz because it's the latest buzzword, or their friend uses it or they've been seduced by an evil marketing-droid.
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.
I am NaN
Open Source Java super-integrated shop-in-a-can.
The Open for Business Project sports many features and integrated technologies. Just really impressive stuff, cannot list all the goodies here.
I can tell you that there are problems you may encounter at the moment trying to get all your needs met and integrated in the way you want. At best, you can probably buy a license for some components that are not yet available via OSS.
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.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
SimpleData CRM/ERP business software. Works on IE and Netscape, and runs on open-source amp (apache mysql php) platform. I work for this company and we have already over a 100 company sites using it.
I'd guess so for OS X. It's written in Objective-C, using WebObjects in a GNUStep environment, so the environment is kinda familiar for the Mac OS.
Of course these facts come for the absolute UNDISPUTED source of proven independant facts, Microsoft.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
When I started at my current employer we were an all Windows NT 4 company. Our embedded devices used Dos as well. After discussing the benefits of Linux vs. Windows CE/Pocket PC my manager decided we should write our new software for Linux. Although our software isn't open source, it's a minor step forward (in my opinion). One of our former employees who was incharge of shipping wrote all the databases in Access, which up until now has been a pain in the butt to find an alternative. If you have the time using Apache+PHP+MySQL is a great way to integrate a database for general purposes however it's fairly time consuming. Another alternative is using Open Office's data sources functionality and creating your own forms within the documents. It's similar to Access from what I've played with it, but I'm no Access expert. I do know that you access DBase, MySQL, and several other database types and since OpenOffice is available for Windows/Linux it's something to consider. I haven't found anything good as of yet and the accounting department is pretty reluctant to hand over their software for me to test in Wine. =D
Requiring an Oracle license is one thing ..., not working properly with Mozilla is another (you need IE to use it fully in HTML mode). What other options are there?
If you use Oracle Applications, you might be interested in Oracle's announcement 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)
If you really want Linux on the clients, but can't replace certain Windows apps, invest in a big Windows server running Citrix. It's expensive, but presumably you'll make back some of that cost in reduced maintenance.
... and get together with an MBA, and write the killer app for OS. Put together a modular business package, customizable for a variety of businesses (that's where you make the money). Look at ACC-PAC for inspiration. Most businesses need :
:)
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.
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
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."
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.
What he's ticked about is having to put Windows on every desktop because the client end only works on IE (guh!).
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
I am a consultant that started my own thing just about a year ago. I do a lot of day-to-day Windows stuff, but internally run SUSE on just about everything and my wife has a Powerbook.
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
http://www.invisik.com
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!
Achille Talon
Hop!
Oracle software is not simple HTML, and I wouldn't say it was developed by ammateurs. Some of you guys just click reply without even reading the full issue and offer usless advice. Whats more interesting is that for some reason it gets moded up.
When you have a database that your business depends on, having it not fully suported is not an option.
VENI, VIDI, VICI, DIXI
if you're referring to bookkeeping, then try sql-ledger.. i run mine on it!!
-- I am. Therefore, I think!
SAP
* Gives you all the functionality you asked for (and more).
* Server app runs on linux.
* Client UI runs is cross-platform (Java).
It's definitely not free but you said you're willing to pay for the platform..
I've investigated this same issue for a while and I would like to weigh in with the little I've gleaned: First, an observation: Separate notionally the idea of open source and the idea of running on linux/unix / not windows. Essentially, for the enterprise you need a robust Database product, easily achieved opensource via PostgreSQL or MySQL with a plethora of interface design tools available. Perhaps you would consider this bookmark: http://www.dbexperts.net/ Here you are not compromising anything by going opensource! Implement your own CRM in this environment. Open source is not there yet with an accounting package that you want to run your enterprise on. That does not mean you can't run your accounting on Unix/Linux and thereby eschew the Microsoft Domain. Until October 2003 the Silver bullet for enterprise accounting was Appgen. Alas they are in play. Refer to this website to get the latest dope. http://www.aaxnet.com/product/appgn.html This address is for a dedicated VAR who has been tracking the progress of the AppGen product. Worthwhile to click to his homepage while you're there. He speaks gospel. Finally, you need your office product, and since you are on slashdot I am confident you know about openoffice.org. I kind of wish they would make an open office "lite" commensurate with ThinkFree Office in code size, capability etc. because the full open office suite can be overwhelming for some management and clerical types (and even geeks who would rather use other tools to do the esoteric stuff.) Finally, for groupware, I find that although it is a content management system per se, Plone specifically and Zope generally can be used to inplement groupware via opensource. Otherwise use http://www.share360.com/index.cbml which keeps you off microsoft but accesible via Microsoft community. There are probably some great project management products coming online based on opensource. Til then you could demo this product for project management: http://www.webintellisys.com/index.html Hope this stimulates you to fulfill the goal of weaning the backoffice crew from Microsoft SQL, MAS 90, Solomon etc.
taustin: Then you don't want to run a business, you want to preach a crusade. And the two are mutually exclusive.
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?
Depending on your timeframe, xrms might be a good choice for a CRM package. It's nearing a 1.0 release and eventually will integrate with many of the other apps mentioned here like SQL-Ledger. It's based on PHP running with MySQL or several other databases..
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.
In the Portland, Ore area and like card games? Check out: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/portlandgames/
There's a lot of good open source software out there. You might find several useful to your company. But I haven't found any really complete OSS business solutions that don't rely on proprietary software. Like that Compiere makes me wonder if it was made by Oracle just to attract customers.
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.
Nope. There's a port in the works, see this page. But, it's not in a useable form yet. We've been looking for a solution for our small-med size company ( LitigationDynamicsInc.com ) but have yet to find a single solution that be used to track our customer base and let the sales guys on windows see the same calendaring and customer data that the production (mac/pc) folks need to see. Everything seems close but no one project has everything yet. Ideally there'd be something that worked with ical, outlook, web, and palm and ran on macosx. Opengroupware is that product, but it's not quite there yet from the standpoint of running on X. I was able to play with it on a linux box, but it kept losing a connection to the database :P
PHPprojekt is close also and does run on 10.2+ but the developers are staunch in their refusal to support US-format date and time entry which is a deal-breaker for us.
I don't know what no one has really talked about using both. If you want linux on the client use rdesktop to connect to a windows box with terminal services for the software you can't use on Linux or try CrossOver Office the other alternative is to have Windows on the client and use WinAxe or another X server to conenct to Linux. If you don't like thoes ideas you can also use Open Source Windows software
The problem with that is that YOU will end up spending an inordinate amount of time & resources (as opposed to not spending any time at all, with a package solution)...This guy's business should not be wasting time building up their own interface to an SQL database. That defeats the whole point... Also, building your own SQL interface is not as easy as it sounds. The people who will be using it (business types) won't know SQL so it has to be easy to use, check basic errors, etc.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
IMO, browser-based interfaces lack in the usability front. They are simply not rich enough.
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.
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.
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.
Ever since I started getting those threatening postcards from the Business Software Alliance, 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.
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.
I don't find it too bad. Perhaps not idea, but workable, because individual users can be configured such that they only are presented with, say screens that deal with order entry. So user "sales-charley" might only be able to enter orders for Company-X, while "sales-anna" might be able to deal with more companies, but only be able to run quotes, not enter sales. Or whatever. It's up to the admin (and there can be subordinate admins who only deal with certain aspects of things) to set up individual users.
As for an auditor? Good question, that I'm not sure about.
A witty saying is worth nothing - Voltaire
While I know a completely OS env sounds great, don't tease yourself. If this is a business, only use OS where it can/should be used. Otherwise do what is needed.
Business is about money, and OS isn't always the best choice.
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 Professional is really not suitable for anything more than very simple stuff, it is closed and not extensible.
What sort of needs does a big business have? Well, they all need to manage human resources. Most need to track items in their warehouses and perhaps training for their employees. The industrial sector will have many additional needs to track equipment, schedule resources, control work authorizations, and safely take equipment in and out of service. Running an enterprise call system also takes more than a PHP app.
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.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
Beyond personal taste, I think the only criticism an Auditor could really level is if the package failed its accounting. Open source is by its nature more accountable.
IANA(Auditor) however
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.
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.
Whatever you do in the end, don't make the same mistake that tech-oriented people always make. Namely, putting the technology ahead of the business. There is no point of using OSS just because you want to. What comes first is the business. What is best for the business? If it is Windows, that's what you should go with. If OSS works out better, that's what you should use. Also, don't forget that you can have a mix. For example, you can use some Windows software for the business process tasks (say CRM or something) but use linux (openoffice,etc) for basic desktop use. Depending on what you need, you can pull your customer data from the Windows database (say MySQL, or MS SQL Server, or Oracle) into a linux application (this depends on what your final business software allows).
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
Funny, Java seems to be working both in Mozilla 1.6 and Firebird .7. Maybe you need to upgrade your version of Java?
If you think that you won't spend any time at all with an off-the-shelf solution, think again.
The cost of adopting said solutions to your business workflow will easily be a multiple of the package price.
In an OSS environment you can use windows apps.
Set up one Windows server with Citrix Metaframe, install the needed Windows applications and share them seamlessly to the users desktops using Citrix. There is a Citrix ICA client available for Linux and it works well.
This should solve your problems without having to change the user environment to windows.
Hah, tell me about it. It's a battle I fight everyday at work.
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.
Join the Free Software Foundation
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?
ooooooh! What does this button do? - DeeDee, Dexters Lab.
We - a small group of freelancers that I've managed to gather - are building an ERP infrastructure for a small local E-Commerce business, with Billing, Supply Chain Management and some other stuff joinging the mix almost right on site with one of our clients. :-) really is worth it.
l )
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)
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
We had a related problem, although in a smaller way.
Our core business software requires Windows on client machines and MS SQL Server. Since, the database is SQL, we can query it to extract information directly while sending all inputs through Windows front end client. In order to make the information in the database available to our Linux intranet webserver we built a SOAP layer between the MS SQL Server and webserver.
The SOAP layer consists of a SOAP server, written in Delphi. The SOAP server comprises a core and .dlls that handle requests for different services. A dll can be written to execute specific queries and return the results or provide a generic SQL functionality which is OK for small result sets.
At the webserver end, we use cgi programs, written in Kylix or Python, which call method made avaialble by the SOAP server and its modules. For Kylix, we have a SOAPSQLQuery component that can be used rather like and other Delphi/Kylix dataset components.
This means that we can use information from the database to provide access to information via web browsers on desktops running Windows or Linux.
The SOAP server is now used for all database access, irrespective of the OS of the querying machine, to provide flexibility for the future. For example, Word and a Word add-in that gets name and address info for letters can easily be replaced by OpenOffice on Linux and a Java component because the actual database access is performed by the SOAP server and the SOAP interface is constant and simple to use.
I used to work for a real estate company in Central Illinois and I Feel Your Pain. The brokers/agents all used weird proprietary apps for different things that wouldn't work together (Win9x era, so they all used different .dlls, with the same names) and would freak out at the idea that they couldn't use their expensive new toys. The local board had the MLS setup so it was accessible only through an expensive front-end to telnet (basically), not a web browser. Then we merged with another company and eventually changed which national company we were franchises of, which led to a whole new set of expensive crap being shoved down our throats.
Then there was working with the agents themselves. I can deal with people who are scared of computers, unless it comes to randomly downloading stuff and opening every e-mail attachment, but the ones who made Annette Benning's character in _American Beauty_ seem rational...
"Bugger this, I want a better world." - Jenny Sparks