|
Open-source is moving into business. With quality matching and often surpassing their commercial counterparts, more and more businesses are choosing open-source for all aspects of their operations. The following list is by no means comprehensive, and there are hundreds of other high quality applications out there. The list is no particular order as each application represents a different aspect of doing business.
Read more after the break!
1. Keeping track of your money – The children of Compiere (Compiere, Adempiere and Open-Bravo)
Back in 2000 Jorg Janke, a German software architect with years of ERP and Oracle experience got real fed up. Thank God he did, because by doing so he created the basis for some of the most inspiring and comprehensive business applications around. Based around a genius dictionary powered application model, it is technically one of the most impressive applications out there. When it comes to functionality, it matches some of the most successful commercial counterparts and with the right consultants it can be used everywhere from the smallest companies to businesses with hundreds of people employed.
Each of Compiere’s children and Compiere itself has taken slightly different paths, and each can fit some? businesses better than the others.
Adempiere is perhaps best known for its vibrant and free community, flexible and high speed development process and a huge set of features; Open-bravo for its smooth GUI, a comprehensive set of “feel-good” features and built in presets; and Compiere for its rock solid offering for those who need and are willing to pay for the extra safety.
2. Keeping track of your customers - The Sugar and the Tiger
 When it comes to keeping track of your customers, leads, deals and communications there is really no better application than these two. Both based on the SugarCRM open source project, the two application have a common goal but slightly different ways of getting there.
Both provide all the tools you need, like lead tracking, pipeline management, e-mail campaigns, meeting-management, activity tracking and sales force automation; while SugarCRM packs this into a smooth commercially powered offering, vTiger vigilantly defends the fully open-source model. Depending on what you need, and your technical skills, both are great CRM tools easily matching and usually beating the commercial offerings out there.
When it comes to storage there are plenty off applications I could mention; Storage Tree, OpenDocMan, or Quotero, but when it comes to document management there is really nothing like Alfresco. Alfresco is by far the most sophisticated document management system out there. Providing the basics such as full-text-search, fine grained access control and a decent web interface; it truly makes itself useful by covering the complete array of ways to connect to your computer. Every thinkable standard is covered from FTP to CIFS (samba/windows sharing), even allowing you to connect using the Microsoft SharePoint protocol. As if this was not enough, it is fully integrated with the OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office™ products, making this perhaps the most useful storage tool available today. The system suffers under a slightly complex user interface, but the kind souls of the open-source community have helped release this with add-ons such as DoCASU that makes the application more user friendly.
 Though not perfect, there is no escaping that OpenOffice.org is miles ahead of everyone but Microsoft Office™. Covering all the things you would normally need Microsoft Office™ for, you can create and edit all the popular file-formats. The writer and spreadsheet applications are excellent, while the presentation tool leaves something to be desired. In total it covers everything the avarage user would need. The applications are easy to understand, and with a common user interface across platforms it is excellent for businesses that move between operating systems.
5. Selling things on the web – Magento
 Magento is a relatively new kid on the block, but is perhaps one of the most stylish and feature-rich web shops. Its look and feel makes you sure that you are buying something from a high class establishment. As it is easy to use and growing in popularity, t the user- and developer base has grown large. Although offerings such as ocCommerce and Zen-Cart are very valid alternatives, Magento is simply a generation ahead.
6. Making sense of it all/predicting the future – Pentaho
 First a little disclaimer – Pentaho (and I am sure their corporate HQ will disagree with me on this) is not for the faint hearted. Being one of the most comprehensive open-source BI packages out there, it is quite a challenge to figure out. Being born out of a combination of the excellent Jasper reports and some creative ideas it allows you to gather the data you need to make decisions based on fact rather than gut. Great strives have been made from the initial betas and today its quite useful even out of the box, but the true power of Pentaho becomes clear when you really get into the nitty-gritty of it and start using the powerful extraction and analysis tools.
7. Keeping your house in order – Zimbra and E-groupware
 Two very different, yet very similar applications; e-groupware and Zimbra both attack the exciting groupware market. Zimbra has a core focus on being an Exchange replacement, while E-Groupware is more of a one-stop-shop with project management, tracker applications, the exchange functionality and document storage. I really wish for a hybrid of the two.
8 Making the call – Asterisk
Asterisk is the most widely used open source telephone server. Powering countless businesses, PBX providers and VoIP operators around the world, it puts the power of a $100K PBX/VoIP solution into the hands of anyone who has the guts to install and figure it out. Anything the world-class PBX system used by the big businesses, Asterisk can do better. With everything from advanced call handling, call-center functionality, smart queuing, and interactive automated voice prompts even the smallest business can bother users with endless “press one for” choices. Although traditionally a tough setup, applications like FreePBX and TrixBox have made it a lot easier for those of us with a little engineer inside us. It also does a great job of bridging the world of VOIP and regular lines to help businesses make the transition from physical to virtual phones.
 Before reading this item, you should consider how much of a geek you are. If you consider yourself a true geek: program something for yourself. If you are a half-geek: go for the Drupal section. and if you just like things that work, check out Joomla.
Drupal is perhaps one of the coolest CMS systems out there. Powering great sites like the new whitehouse.gov and hundreds of other high-profile websites, it is one of the most flexible CMS systems available. The flexibility may be a little tough to handle for those who can't actually figure out what a node has to do with the latest press-release you want released.
This is where Joomla comes in. Joomla's greatest strengths are its easy plain spoken administration and its tremendous library of beautiful templates, making the creation of professional looking web-pages a breeze for any business that can play within its limits.
Both of the systems have thriving communities and the number of plug-ins and add-ons is so large that you can find something for every need. The communities are also very helpful when it comes to helping out both the beginners and the more complicated issues such as SEO and performance.
10. Tracking development – Trac
As I know that many of the people that are reading this post work with some sort of development activities, either within software, design or project management, I added this section on tracking development. To manage these processes, especially when you are part of a bigger team, you need a good tool. This is where Trac excels. Tracking issues, updates and material changes (be it code, design or simply a word document), Trac allows you and your team to rapidly communicate about what’s going on. The built in wiki and timeline helps making sure that everybody is on Trac. Plug-ins are plentiful, supporting several of the best known methods within effective project management (i.e. the SRCUMM and getting things done strategies). Although both SourceForge and gForge provide many of the same tools, the openness of Trac puts it on this list.
About the author:
Runar Lie is a 24 year old entrepreneur who has been working with open source for the last 9 years. He is the founder and CSA of Office123, in which he uses some of the above mentioned tools to deliver an online business solution called Office123.
|
3. Storing it –