Corporate Open Source Tools May 29, 2008
Posted by rsentana in : corporate, linux, open source , 2commentsI have joined my current company for a few months now, and I start to understand the dire situation of the IT department.
Frankly speaking, the current state is far from perfect.. very far! For one, there are no clear job description for determining roles and responsibility among the IT team members. The engineers who assist in selling and delivering the products to the customers are the very same people who support the internal IT requirements. After sales support is practically non-existent. Project documentation are only in the mind of the person in charge. Even our website promoting our existence in the IT world (internet) is still a-clean-newly-installed Joomla portal for a while now. (Why not Drupal, I have no idea. So don’t ask. 
)
Looking at those situation, I am now “imagining” what it will be like if I’m given the task to manage the IT department. So here’s my “imaginary” plan on how to sort things out:
- Set a clear job description among the IT team members
- Separate the internal IT support team with sales support team
- Create an after-sales support team for external customers
- Promote our existence in the internet by revamping the portal & manage the content
- Support other departments in using IT resources more effectively
Note: It is also important from the management point of view to set a clear path whether they want to move forward with (and invest in) the IT sales team. Without this clear intention, the effort will be useless. In this imaginary scenario, let’s assume we have the full support from the management.
The first and second tasks are pretty much a collaboration between HR department and the IT department. The other three tasks will require some effort to find the open-source tools to assist the team. So here are my selections:
- Monitoring Tools: Nagios + MRTG
- Trouble Ticket Tools : OTRS
- Portal (internal & external): Drupal with the proper modules installed
- Corporate directory: Open LDAP
- E-mail solution: Qmail + Squirrel Mail or Zimbra
For Phase 2 of the project, I have some ideas to improve the IT team infrastructure as well as their skills. Some areas that may need an online tool (and the potential solution) would be:
- HR system: Orange HRM
- Finance & accounting: Not so sure about this one, but I found out that Kuali Foundation has done some works on this matter. Unfortunately, typical finance team don’t believe in relying on open source system for money related matters. Hopefully this will change in the future.
- Sales: The existing portal can be enhanced with e-commerce modules, or alternatively, using OScommerce is not a bad idea. Sales tools may need other solutions which I can’t think out of my mind right now.
- ERP: Openbravo or Compiere. Both supports Oracle XE, but Compiere seems to have a larger community support.
I am open to any suggestion you may have in terms of any information related to the best corporate open source solution. I wish I am no longer imagining things, but really given the authority to implement the solution. If that happens, I’ll post it here. *fingers-crossed*
