Best Open Source Alternatives To Enterprise Apps

PeekAB00 writes "With 2009 IT budgets getting chopped down John Perez came up with this list of 25 best alternatives to enterprise applications (e.g DimDim over Webex, SugarCRM instead of Seibel, Zenoss over HP OpenView). John's list is somewhat eclectic. I am curious to hear what other enterprise (let's be frank ... expensive) apps I can replace this year with open source ones. I am particularly interested in back-up and email archiving suggestions."

Comments

NOT all open source

[lophophore]

Uhhh, a lot of the solutions mentioned in TFA are not open source, but they are cheaper than their more expensive competition. i.e. Basecamp, dimdim, etc. are not open source..

OTOH, SugarCRM, asterisk, open office are open source, free in both senses.

Anyway, an interesting list...

Re:the most cost effective applications on the mar

[blhack]

I don't know about now...but I used to monitor bugtraq and it scared me into never, EVER using phpBB.

Re:Can't take recommendations seriously

[jlarocco]

Interesting. Tell that to Flickr, Facebook, Wikipedia, Google, Nokia and YouTube. Or, how about Slashdot and Digg - capable of bringing down moderately sized web sites with the click of a million mice?

Yeah, but none of those are very important. If a transaction fails when you're updating your Facebook profile, nobody gives a shit. I mean look at what happened to Slashdot when it got 24 million posts.

I would bet money that none of those companies use MySQL for their paycheck processing software.

I don't dislike MySQL, but I wouldn't consider it an "enterprise RDBMS".

Re:Can't take recommendations seriously

[ChrisA90278]

When they say the MySQL will not scale like Oracle they are mostly right. The exceptions where MySQL works are when you design a application around MySQL and use just one installation of MySQL per application. When you do this and it works what you are really doing is using mySQL is a fancy kind of file system.

With Oracle you can build an enterprise database that holds _everything_ and all you applications can access the same database. There are some great advantages when you do this

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[account_deleted]

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Re:the most cost effective applications on the mar

[HangingChad]

You're pretty much on your own on these 2 things when it comes to so called "free" software, and the TCO ends up being more expensive than a paid application.

That is not true generally, although it can be if you really go out of your way to implement something badly.

It's a MS talking point and it conveniently overlooks that most of the time with proprietary software you're paying for a steep license fee AND pay for support or a support contract separately. We use majority OSS here and the TCO blows away proprietary alternatives.

If we need support on an OSS choice we choose to purchase it, so far we haven't needed any. The other bogus argument frequently raised is that there's a productivity hit on time you spend researching solutions for OSS issues. That's another one that never happens in reality and also ignores the hours proprietary admins spend pouring over knowledge base searches.

Most for profit companies are squeezing their workforce so hard for profits these days that service in many companies is worse than what you get from OSS.

Not enterprise at all!

[swordgeek]

I keep hearing about 'alternatives to enterprise software' and invariably the same mistake pops up over and over: Alternatives to enterprise software are non-enterprise software!

Seems pretty obvious, right? Let's look at what is commonly meant by "enterprise," at least by those who live in that world.

I want software that has been thoroughly documented, tested, and proven. It NEEDS a decently long track record! It NEEDS a formal support mechanism behind it.

If I buy something like backup software (with a support contract of course), The vendor has to be able to tell me, "It will work _this_ way." Not "it should..." or "we thought it would..." But hey, bugs happen, right? When I discover a bug that affects my enterprise, I have to be able to go to the vendor and say "fix this" and have it done. When something breaks in the middle of the night, I need to be able to get definitive technical support within a pre-specified time frame.

Enterprise software is only marginally about the compiled code you get on a CD. It's primarily about support, robustness, and guarantees of quality. It's about strict patch release management, and conservative changes.

If you want to run (say) Amanda instead of NetBackup, that's fine--it's a decent piece of software as far as I've seen; but understand that by itself it's not an enterprise tool. The support mechanism around it is what makes it enterprise software (or not).

It's a simple cost analysis--how much will your company lose if software "x" dies, and how much of an increased risk is there in using freeware vs. buying a commercial product from a given vendor?