I 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:

1. Set a clear job description among the IT team members
2. Separate the internal IT support team with sales support team
3. Create an after-sales support team for external customers
4. Promote our existence in the internet by revamping the portal & manage the content
5. 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:

1. Monitoring Tools: Nagios + MRTG
2. Trouble Ticket Tools : OTRS
3. Portal (internal & external): Drupal with the proper modules installed
4. Corporate directory: Open LDAP
5. 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:

1. HR system: Orange HRM
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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*

During the last couple of years, more people have started to hear about Linux in one way or another. This is in a most indirect way helped by the incumbent of desktop OS king Microsoft with its Windows Vista release. Though very neat and full of eye-candy, Vista requires a very hefty hardware requirement to properly use all the features, such as a minimum of 1 GB RAM and top of the line graphics card. Many of the existing computers are not equipped with that sort of specification. In addition, most of the drivers working in the previous Windows XP don’t necessarily work in Vista. therefore, many people with non-Vista-ready computers are sticking with XP. Needless to say, even the Vista-ready computers are not necessarily able to run all features in Vista. To top it all, Microsoft planned to scrap Windows XP as soon as 2009 (though it has moved the schedule to be later than that).

Given the above situation, people are starting to look for alternatives, and this is where Linux come to the picture. Created in 1991 by Linus Torvalds, it has grown to just a toy for the technically adept engineers to a user-friendly desktop replacement. I have begun playing with Linux system in 1999 with Suse 6.1, and I am following the progress Linux system has made until now where I have installed Ubuntu 7.10 on my laptop and Fedora 8 on my old PC at home.


Here are some of the things I like about Linux (or should I say GNU/Linux):

1. There are many distributions to choose from. I think this is a strength rather than a weakness, since more variety provides many usefulness to many people with different tastes and needs.
2. Good community support. This is why I choose Ubuntu and Fedora over other distributors, due to their support availability in their respective forums.
3. Thousands of applications. Yes, many Linux applications are included in the distributions, and installation is easy with yum or apt commands via the internet.
4. Compatibility with old computers. Requirement for Linux is as old as Pentium II, or even lower. Even if you want to show the best eye-candy programs such as compiz and avant windows navigator, a 3-year-old IBM Thinkpad should be able to run it without any problems.
5. Compatibility with Windows programs. I know there are some file formats created by Windows programs that are not compatible in Linux, but there are many alternatives and other option such as saving it to a common format or totally migrate to its Open Source program in Windows. OpenOffice, Evolutions, Gimp, and Mozilla Firefox are some of the programs that will make Windows user to be able to do their daily tasks easily in Linux.
6. Many PCs & Laptops come with Linux. Dell and Asus have launched their Linux version of PCs and laptops last year, followed by Everex and many other PC manufacturers. Asus EeePC has been sold like peanuts. In the server side, HP and IBM has since sold their servers compatible with RedHat Linux system.
7. To top it all, it is free as in free beer during Oktoberfest.

Why don’t you give Linux a try? The big wave is coming and you certainly don’t wanna miss it!