[ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu for small business

[Paul Morgan-Roach]

----- Original message -----
> I've been reading the list for a few weeks (and posted once to get gmane 
> set up and tested) in preparation for an upcoming job. I have a contact 
> who is keen on using open source wherever possible in a new startup 
> company, so I am looking for any kind of resources which might help in 
> such a situation. I've been using open source software for years, but 
> only in large corporations in fairly narrow applications.
> 
> I couldn't make the Ubuntu in Business meeting a couple of weeks ago, 
> but is there a writeup of what happened there? Are there any other good 
> starting points to get an overview of what Ubuntu can offer the small 
> (but hopefully fast growing) business?
> 
> -- 
> Jim Price

<snip>

I'd primarily look at http://ebox-platform.org for the ebox package. It ticks all the boxes for a drop-in replacement for MS SBS and is getting better with each version (asterisk is a recent package addition, for example). I've got a couple of deployments out there and it's very good.  Ironically though support for joining linux clients is limited and tbh it's a bit of a pain getting linux clients connected, but it's on the wishlist for future releases.

In the Fedora/Red Hat camp Free-IPA is an awesome project that serves as an all encompassing replacement for Active Directory by linking kerberos, 389 directory server, PAM and FreeRadius. This is rapidly maturing and is massively scaleable - I've been testing this since early versions, and it does what it says on the tin!

It's been said before but what the open-source community needs most is a full replacement for Exchange, with sharing of tasks, public folders and calendars. Egroupware is good but some people genuinely prefer software to web-apps and this is one area that's lacking.