[ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu for small business

[Grant Sewell]

On Tue, 27 Jul 2010 21:14:05 +0100
Jim Price wrote:

> On 27/07/10 19:24, Alan Lord (News) wrote:
> > On 27/07/10 18:42, Jim Price wrote:
> >> 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?
> >
> > For an SME I'd be thinking (server end first) about an alternative
> > to Microsoft SBS, e.g. Email, Shared drives, Proxy, Content Filters
> > etc.
> 
> I'm not sure what I'm going to do about email yet. It is likely to
> start sufficiently small that I'm thinking using their ISP email
> would be a good place to start - when they get offices and an ISP. I
> have the opportunity to avoid SMB to the clients for shared drives,
> as it is all being done from scratch. I'm tempted to try an sshfs
> implementation to take some of the burden away from making it secure.
> Proxy and content filters are going to be straightforward to start
> with, but as with all of this, I need to pick something scalable. One
> of the biggest problems is likely to be starting with a very low
> budget and an IT department of one (me).
> > We (The Open Learning Centre) get asked quite a lot about "business
> > applications" rather than Ubuntu itself. Ubuntu makes a great OS for
> > running apps like:
> >
> > Virtually any Web/MySQL/PHP app,
> > CRM,
> > Doc Management,
> 
> I hadn't considered doc management as a standalone thing. I'll have
> to put a bit more thought into that.
> > Asterisk (VOIP PBX)
> 
> One of the other directors of the company is likely to try and do the 
> PBX side of things, and I strongly suspect that will be done using 
> proprietary products from one of his other companies.
> 
> > Even ERP systems.
> 
> I'm going to be pushing the idea that CRM and ERP are selling the
> idea of big integrated solutions from one supplier, which you only
> see as an advantage if you hit problems integrating or scaling your
> existing packages. I'm hoping to avoid those problems in the first
> place by using open source software and not getting locked into
> anything proprietary which won't integrate well. I've always been
> surprised that people have thought solving integration and lock-in
> problems needs a single bigger product with a bigger lock-in than any
> of the components replaced by it.
> 
> > If the new company is a startup then Ubuntu would be a great choice
> > on the desktop, but if there is already a legacy of Windows and
> > familiarity with it, then this is a hard sell for a small firm
> > where the cost benefits are not significant enough on their own.
> 
> The issue with familiarity I'm expecting is going to be with the 
> employees, but I've transferred enough friends and relations to
> Ubuntu that I don't really anticipate huge problems there.
> 
> > A sometimes good route is to use cross-platform apps like
> > OpenOffice.org, Mozilla Thunderbird/Lightning and run them on
> > Windows for while.
> 
> That is an approach I've used for people who already have windows,
> but I'm hoping to keep windows completely off the desktop, and serve
> any windows apps from somewhere I can keep control of them.
> 
> > This makes a transition to Ubuntu slightly easier although TB
> > packaging in Ubuntu is sub-optimal currently.
> 
> In what way is TB sub-optimal? I've not hit serious problems with it 
> myself, and I use it a lot. The only thing I can think of which some 
> people have had issues with is Lightning integration with the various 
> versions of TB.
> 
> > Hope this helps.
> 
> It's all going to help at some point I suspect.

You could go down the Google Apps route - mail, document space with the
ability to share between users (and have them work on the document
simultaneously, which takes a bit of getting used to).  There are
plenty of CRM and ERP systems that integrate with the Google Apps
"single sign-on" way of things.  Since you can enable IMAP/SMTP support
relatively easily, you don't have to use the GMail interface for mail -
you can use whatever client you want, so having Ubuntu on the desktop
would be relatively easy.

Grant.