Michael Trup's blog

The key lesson is 'Know what you want.' My company has been outsourcing some web design and maintenance for over five years. The first few years it was mostly done with UK companies but two years ago we decided to cut our costs dramatically by outsourcing abroad. We decided to start with a couple of new, non-mission crictial projects especially around the customisation of open source software. I am one of those people who believe that to learn something you have to put your toe in the water but try and make sure you don't get your foot bitten off in the process.

The communication challenges were interesting to say the least and timeframes stretched. Part of it was our fault and part of it lay with our partners. The real root of the problem is that having worked with a UK company with whom you could just explain the broad business objective, we learnt over time that you have to be very clear in knowing exactly what it is that you want when working with an overseas company. If your guidelines are broad there are lots of opportunities for misunderstandings. If there is an opportunity for misunderstanding the chances are it will happen! Of course, you cannot expect someone else to know what you want if you are unclear in your own mind so try and layout your ideas on paper, plot the broad functionalities that you need and then encourage a dialogue both with the overseas project manager and the programmer who is working on it.This process should allow you both to be clear in what it is you want done.

During the last year I have read a number of tips of places where one can legitmately access free or open source software applications, with some restrictions. Obviously, there are tens of thousands of apps and I am familiar with Sourceforge etc. I have been pleasantly surprised at the number of useful little programs that one can access free. Typically, if you want the full features you have to subscribe or pay for a customisation service, which is fair enough. Here are a few sites I think are cool, useful:

Gliffy - great little online flow charting program

We are looking to install a Wiki internally to act as an online manual/handbook for staff. It needs to be hosted internally on a network for 50 people or so. We want permissioning so that managers can edit/authorise individual contributions, but everyone can contribute. It also needs to be printer friendly. It can be hosted on a Novell Suse Linux or Microsoft 2003 server.

Anyone have any recommendations for software that is easy to use and not too dificult to setup?

One way for linux to make an impact on the SME marketplace is by using it pre-installed on an appliance. Collax offers a Groupware solution that has all the benefits of stability, security and scalability of linux with an easy to user, Windows like user interface. It is a great alternative to Microsoft Exchange. You can arrange to borrow an evaluation unit from Interactive if you want to have a play around or show it to clients.

Well worth having a go!

Have you used any of these:

Drupal
CentricCRM
SugarCRM
Alfresco
Jaspersoft
OpenExchange

any others? Which do you rate and why?

Any feedback would be appreciated.