Open Source in the Enterprise
Heavyweight Internet Group is of course involved heavily in Oracle
database administration, setup, management and tuning. The other half
of our business involves Open Source integration, and development
using various technologies such as the LAMP platform, Linux, Apache,
MySQL and
PHP. We also make heavy use of Open Source technologies to run the
enterprise, and thought it might be illustrative to talk about that.
There are a whole host of technologies and applications we rely on
from day to day to run our business. When I actually sat down to
write this months newsletter, I was rather shocked at how long the
list was. Here’s a peek into what we use.
Sales + Marketing
For starters we use the spectacular SugarCRM (http://sugarcrm.com
{http://sugarcrm.com}) for sales and customer relationship
management. More than an addressbook, it manages opportunity lists,
open tasks, calls, notes, leads, and accounts. You can keep track of
prospects at every stage of the sales process from prospecting,
qualification, needs analysis, value proposition, and id-ing decision
makers to perception analysis, proposal, price quote, negotiation, and
deal closed. There is also a dashboard which displays excellent color
graphs of sales stage, opportunity size, and breakdowns by month and
lead source. For a business like ours which has run for years on
paper, and disjointed organizing methods, this application has had a
tremendous impact.
Invoicing
Invoicing we manage with an application called phpaga. Still under
development, it already offers a host of features such as HTML or PDF
invoices, quotes, varying billable rates by project, and by resource,
as well as various graph reports. Definitely worth a look.
(http://phpaga.net {http://phpaga.net})
Web Content Management
Next we use PostNuke (http://postnuke.com {http://postnuke.com}) to
handle website content management automatically and easily. The
formating is not perfect, but it works quite well for our needs. We
have also started using Moveable Type (http://www.moveabletype.com/
{http://www.moveabletype.com/}) for managing our new weblog Oracle +
Open Source (http://oracleopensource.com
{http://oracleopensource.com}). All of these solutions use Apache
(http://www.apache.org {http://www.apache.org}) as a webserver, and
MySQL (http://mysql.com {http://mysql.com}) as a database for basic
website needs. Though this tool is not strictly open source, it has
fairly loose restrictions on usage, and comes with source code, so we
include it here. Of course you need a browser to view all
this great content, and though we dabble with Galeon, Opera, and even
IE from time to time, we primarily use Firefox
(http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
{http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/}) because it is fast, and
secure, saving all of our computing environment from the trouble of
spyware, adware, trojans, and other malware.
Desktop Publishing
Next we have started using OpenOffice (http://openoffice.org
{http://openoffice.org}) which provides fairly consistent
compatibility with Microsoft’s Office suite of tools. To be fair we
also occaisionally use the Windows versions too, as client comfort is
ultimately our goal. We’ve also begun using Scribus
(http://www.scribus.net {http://www.scribus.net}) for some
applications, which provides Quark-type document publishing, and can
generate nice PDF files as output.
Email, SPAM + List Management
Email lists we’ve just installed some new management software for
called phplist. (http://phplist.com {http://phplist.com}) It provides
support for multiple lists, and easy subscribe/unsubscribe which we’ve
currently been doing manually! For email itself we use Postfix
(http://www.postfix.org/ {http://www.postfix.org/}) Not email
solution would be complete if it couldn’t handle spam. For that we
use a whitelist solution called ASK (http://www.paganini.net/ask/
{http://www.paganini.net/ask/}) Not always perfect, it became an
absolute necessity when our junkmail started reaching into the
hundreds a day. Now we receive about one spam a week, from the odd
spammer that bothers to do an active reply.
Operating Systems
Of course no enterprise would be complete without an operating system
and we use Mandrake Linux 10.1 (http://www.mandrake.com
{http://www.mandrake.com}) in most cases, including the desktop (KDE
and GNOME) and on our mail + webservers. When we need to remotely
administer Windows machines, as is necessary from time to time, the
Open Source Cygwin tool comes in very handy. It provides a proper
command line interface, and openssh implementation for secure remote
logins. Most of the other standard Unix tools are there as well, such
as Emacs for editing.
Telephony
If you think you’ve heard it all, think again. Our enterprise phone
PBX uses the superb Asterisk PBX and VOIP gateway solution
(http://asterisk.org {http://asterisk.org}). This allows integration
of traditional trunks from the phone company as well as VOIP lines
over our internet connection. It supports standard telephone
equipment, IP phones, and digital softphones all of which we use
actively. We also use Skype (http://skype.com {http://skype.com}) to
coordinate with technologists, partners, and clients overseas.
Monitoring + Backups
No enterprise would be complete without monitoring and backup
solutions. For monitoring we use Nagios (http://www.nagios.org
{http://www.nagios.org}) for monitoring our own, and our client
systems, including web, mail, disk usage, load averages, Oracle
statistics and much more. It notifies us by email whenever there is a
problem. We manage our backups with rsync and rsnapshot
(http://www.rsnapshot.org/ {http://www.rsnapshot.org/}) two great
tools that are fast and efficient whe combined with a secure shell
like OpenSSH (http://www.openssh.org/ {http://www.openssh.org/}). For
site statistics we have some integrated information which comes
directly from Postnuke mentioned above, but we also use Webalizer
which provides fancy graphs broken down by month and year for
detailed information directly from the webserver logfiles.
Development
Lastly we use a few tools for project management. Since we coordinate
and manage the efforts of a number of developers we use CVS
(https://www.cvshome.org/ {https://www.cvshome.org/}) for version
control. This allows everyone to be making changes to the code at the
same time without stepping on each others toes. We also have a trouble
ticket system called OTRS (http://otrs.org/ {http://otrs.org/}) which
helps us manage change requests, and bugs in these various
applications so the developers know what to work on and what has the
highest priority.
In an enterprise which handles 14 hosted domains, mostly for
non-profit organizations, as well as six active clients, we need to
be organized to remain efficient and effective. We use powerful
software to help us do that, and remain focused on pressing business
matters.