I am back

April 22, 2005

I was offline during few weeks busy with getting an engagement and participating at an industry event. I also spent some time for studying SugarCRM and Compiere, an open source enterprise applications for SME. I was very impressed of both but on different reasons. SugarCRM excited me by its full demo system available on-line. I had no opportunity to install Compiere, but detailed features and architecture descriptions makes very strong impression to the guy who is at the top of the notch ERP systems consulting. Compiere core was originally designed and written by Jorg Janke who appeared to stay closely to the origins of SAP solution and spent some time with development and localization of Oracle Applications.

Open source enterprise applications waked my old thoughts about own business. Recently I had a meeting with distributor who is too small in terms of staff and revenue but needs really advanced ERP features and proven architecture for a low cost. Sounded like no sense until I recalled Compiere with its Oracle 10g database, Java interface and advanced functionality. Why not? So now I am asking myself question is it wise enough to find some partners and a few young employees (who actually could be same persons) and jumpstart into business with Compiere implementation and customization while continue to work full time with my current employer. Tough question that needs careful investigation and analysis.

Hey you! Yes, you! What do you think about this? Welcome to the Comments section!

All You Need Is Open Source

April 7, 2005

SiliconBeat published a list of applications which are used by SpikeSource to run its business. According to SpikeSource’s policy all applicaitons are open source.

They run their whole website using OSS. Features include:
- discussion forums - PhpBB
- trouble tickets - OTRS
- Naming directory - Open LDAP
- Web Server - Apache
- Servlet container - Tomcat
- Database - MySQL
- Search - Nutch

They use OSS on intranet. Here is the list:
- MoinMoin wiki for capturing processes, policies, feature requirements, evolving design etc.
- Bugzilla for bug tracking
- Subversion for source code versioning
- Intranet Portal - JetSpeed
- Web email client - SquirrelMail
- Naming Directory - OpenLDAP
- email server - Courier-IMAP

Desktops:
- Operating System and desktop - RHAT, SuSE
- email client - Ximian Evolution
- desktop productivity tools - Open Office
- Browser - Mozilla, FireFox
- Source code editor - Eclipse

Customer relations:
- SugarCRM