Open Source E-Business Solutions? 110
Thor Sigvaldason asks: "I work for one of the largest companies in the world (PwC). Some of the powers that be have recently decided that we need to do the E-Business thing in a big way. My mandate is to determine who can provide this. Yeah, yeah, I know; php4 compiled as an Apache module will do everything you ever need. I've been running Linux since the pre-1.0 days, and still can't figure out why people would boot to anything else. That's not my point. Most big clients need a 1-800 number to settle their frazzled nerves. There are millions of dollars being spewed into e-commerce as we speak. But where is the OpenSource equivalent of Broadvision, NetPerceptions or someone like them? The market is really, really ready. Do you need help with an IPO? Have I missed the relevant URL's?" Sounds like a void some brave entrepreneurs might want to fill.
Open Source E-Commerce... (Score:1)
Re:PWC, clueless as usual (Score:1)
Some guys at PWC have been pressuring us to turn
off DNS zone-transfers for PWC-Domains. Noteably
these domains contained 2 IP's each (mail and www),
but that's not the point. Evidently some maroon
at PWC has decided that disallowing zone-transfers
is good for security, completely ignoring the fact
that you cannot only transfer zones by domainname
but by in-addr-arpa too.
The same bahaviour is exhibited by various half-witted
"security" companies. If you have no idea what
can happen, you don't care. If you really understand what
can happen, you're prepared and
confident. But if you know only half of it, then
it makes you frightened. That's why some companies
are so sensible when it comes to portscans, while
I just don't care.
Kirth
Re:PwC and Technology (Score:1)
Too many different parts (Score:1)
There are lots of tools to implement a web site, both open and closed: Apache, PHP, serverlets, Cold Fusion, whatever you need. There are lots of ways to implement a shopping cart, with or without cookies - you don't need a solution, just a bit of web savvy.
The back end: credit card validation, payment, merchant accounting - these things can never and will never have an open source solution. To do any of these things is not a matter of code, it's a matter of dealing with a bank or credit card organisation.
CyberCash [cybercash.com] and Bell Emergis [emergis.com] (just to name two) are offering for a fee just such backend access. It will probably always be that way. If you have an account or access to someone like that, you can do all the rest using open source solutions.
I forgot: free Zope account at www.codeit.com (Score:1)
Re:I forgot: free Zope account at www.codeit.com (Score:1)
Zope is very interesting though - especially the new 2.0, which looks to take a lot of pain out of the development process compared to the older version.
Even if you just use it for content management, with no custom code, you still get delegation and revision management, transactional changes (undo) and other goodies.
Re:WebObjects (Score:1)
The top of the iceberg is the iceberg. (Score:1)
Well, maby e-commerce as normal commerce doesn't exist, but that is irrelivant here.
Never mind that the normal Joe Schmuck doesn't do e-businell, *companies are ready to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for the software and services*, that is the point beeing made here.
The e-market customers today may be only companies that want to be ready when the e-business takes off big-time.
But the market definately is here, for companie that sell e-commerce solutions.
--
Why pay for drugs when you can get Linux for free ?
Arsdigita has one (Score:1)
IF NT is so great then what about (Score:1)
Chuck
Re:Good luck (Score:1)
Remember how the Roadrunner's Coyote always treads air for a while before he plunges 1,000 ft down the cliff embedding himself in 5 feet of solid rock?
e-Commerce vs. e-Business (Score:1)
I wouldn't be surprised that open source e-Commerce solutions come out while the e-Business take a few years. You know, ERP through a Web interface.
Hate to nitpick, but I don't want the issue to get blurred.
It's e-business people, not e-commerse. (Score:1)
Here is the difference:
e-commerse: makeing sales over the internet.
e-bussiness: doing ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) through a browser interface.
Very different animals. This wouldn't bother me so much if it wasn't for the fact that I work for a company that does e-business software but no e-comerse software.
You notice I don't mention the company name. Why, not open source so it is not relevent to the topic.
Stepping off my high horse.
Re:**flamebait**??? (Score:1)
Re:Good luck (Score:1)
Yep. Get 'em drunk on power, and then sell 'em anything at all. It's too perfectly right not to be true!
Meta-Moderate! (Score:1)
Re:**flamebait**??? (Score:1)
"We hope you find fun and laughter in the new millenium" - Top half of fastfood gamepiece
There's minivend (Score:1)
Maybe this is a good time to write you're own? (Score:1)
Perhaps this is such a time. Someone needs to write it first, why not you? Maybe you can convince the "powers that be" to fund it?
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
yes, but... (Score:1)
yes, but some people do... personally, if I needed something to be really secure I'd probably use open source, or develop my own. Its not without precedent for commercial apps and OSs to have backdoors.
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
**flamebait**??? (Score:1)
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
You want URL's ... Get it ;-) (Score:1)
It seems to me what MiniVend is the most advanced
OS solution available today.
http://www.minivend.com/iri/mvend.html [minivend.com]
If you like Walnut Creek CD-ROM store then this stuff is for you
http://www.opencart.com/ [opencart.com]
Yet another Perl & MySQL marriage http://yams.screamdesign.com/ [screamdesign.com]
And at last, if you prefer to build systems by hand from simple blocks look at this page.
http://www.montana.com/ethan/shop.html [montana.com]
Scotch (and offtopic) (Score:1)
Funny, my bottle of Glenfiddich says "Scotch Whisky" on the front. Care you to argue the use of the word Scotch with that family (to invest in our company, marry our sister....Glenfiddich ad)?
Re:I forgot: free Zope account at www.codeit.com (Score:1)
Hmm... (Score:1)
It's not that I'm against E-business. Not hardly. I think companies like Amazon and Dell have made tremendous strides in making the Internet a vital (and in Amazon's case, the only) part of their business. What I don't like to see, though, is sites who's E-business is half-assed. So I agree with the first poster. Let's write some really good e-business, OpenSource, software that can be reused. I'm up for it.
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Re:There are some tools (Score:1)
(Disclaimer, it uses one currency that may make me rich, if I work hard and sit up
straight and smile a lot at the right people -- DigiGold.)
I can show anyone who's interested a small e-gold transaction, just click on the
QuickGold URL and send me an account number, saying you saw this here. We
want to help commerce work -- no obligation.
JMR
Re:Ok... (Score:1)
Re:IBM (Score:1)
Re:duh. (Score:1)
Hell, one of the best secure webservers out there (stronghold) is basically Apache.
Allaire Spectra (Score:1)
The only closed-bits are are the security API.
It's not released yet - they expect to release in the 2nd week in Dec - but they'll support people going live with a Release Candidate.
The info's here [allaire.com].
Re:Allaire Spectra - URL (Score:1)
Re:Scotch (and offtopic) (Score:1)
WebObjects (Score:1)
For that matter, I don't really see what would prevent some enterprising developers for making a clone. The back-end parts of WebObjects are already there with there with GNU-Step [gnustep.org]. The WebObjects specific parts consist of only a dozen or so classes. The TOUGH part would be replicating something like Enterprise Objects Framework (EOF) [apple.com] which is the magical part of the whole system that maps the underlying database to the web application.
Sounds tough, but not impossible. In any case, I believe WebObjects is a good model to base an Open-Source Web-Application framework on. Once you have that, you'd use an easy time putting together an e-commerce package.
Ideas? Comments?
Why do Big Companies need a 1-800 number anyway ? (Score:1)
I think part of the problem is that "big clients" are used to purchasing buggy closed source products, like Windows, that crash for no discernable reason. Unless they can call Microsoft in on the case, there is simply no solution easily available. No one else understands the product.
Open source should be the answer to this problem. There is only one problem, How many Linux users actually read the source ?
Of those how many can change it to fix a problem ?
How many can actually decide whether changing the code is appropiate ? It may be easier to change the project implementation rather than the OS code.
This leads back to making sure you have qualified pesonnel. At this level of sophistication, you really need fairly sophisticated interviewers in order to understand whether or not you are actually getting a qualified professional. Most organizations simply don't have this core competence. (A lot do, especially in hardware development and civil engineering.)
This leads to another business opportunity, a consulting firm could offer technical interview services. Unlike headhunter's these firms would "guarantee" a persons technical qualifications only. The prospective employer pays a one time fee for this evaluation.
Back to the idea of developing an OSS solution for E-Commerce...if such a "turnkey" solution appeared today it would be some time before it was well understood by the community at large. This negates the short term advantages of OSS. You still have to be able to "call" someone. If that someone isn't being paid, how can you be sure they'll be there ? Only after an Open Source solution has been used for a while will it seem an acceptable alternative to large companies.
What companies fail to understand is the cost of e-business. A lot of companies go into e-commerce thinking about the costs they can avoid, like real estate and sales staff. They don't want to hear about how some of those expenses are going to be replaced by the purchase of high tech talent.
Along with failing to understand the costs, companies fail to understand some fundamental advantages. Most companies don't want to pioneer, they want to follow where others have already been and avoid mistakes. Sensibly cautious. Unfortunately this closes those companies to new revenue opportunities.
Have you ever seen a customer kiosk that allows you access to a company web site in that companies stores ? This would seem to be the cost effective way to give brick and mortar customers access to everything that may not be in their particular store. No more dealing with sales associates for special orders. If it is on the web site, the store can deliver straight to your home so why lose that customer because they go home and surf the net to a competitor's site ? Ever try to explain that simple idea to the VP of Sales ? Might as well be talking to a wall.
Take it another step. Why don't stores have interactive maps and stock levels of/for themselves ? I want to know where the baby oil is at this "X-Mart" so I go to the kiosk and click to Baby Oil and have the store map come up. (You are here, baby oil here) Now if this particular store is out of stock, you can automatically be given a chance to order online...seems like a no brainer eh ?
Re:WebObjects - don't go there. (Score:1)
I rue the day when Apple gave up on Objective C and Openstep, but hanging on to them in the form of WebObjects is just prolonging the agony of defeat. There are better, faster, easier to use solutions available like Meta-HTML, AOLServer, PHP, Zope, Enhydra, and so on.
Re:Support. (Score:1)
If thats not enough for anyone using Linux, I don't know what is!
Re:Hmm... (Score:1)
Re:One business idea... (Score:1)
As someone who spent almost a year battling with MS SiteServer Commerce (not my decision), I can definitely tell you that there is a market and a need for it.
Re:IBM (Score:1)
GNU Enterprise (Score:1)
GNU Enterprise:
http://www.gnu.org/projects/gnue/gnue.html
Re:Look around?? This is an ERP framework (Score:1)
Definitely a project to check from time to time if you're in the B2B & ERP business.
Just my 0.018 Euros
The idea of open source (Score:1)
Re:One business idea... (Score:1)
Droplets(TM) [waterken.com] is a capability environment for web based applications. Most of it is covered by the Mozilla license.
On the waterken.com [waterken.com] site, you'll find a running demonstration application and tutorial, as well as a live shopping cart application for making purchases using e-gold [e-gold.com].
The Droplets(TM) environment includes an open source interface to the e-gold Shopping Cart API, so that anyone can quickly setup a web storefront.
Re:The truth about e-business (Score:1)
Very good summary.
That's how e-business works when big established companies want to put the "e" into an existing business. I've been through that procurement process - IBM was the ONLY vendor that responded competently to us. Broadvision and Interworld told us (paraphrasing slightly) to bend over and squeal like a pig.
OTOH, much e-business isn't about Sears going on-line, it's about Amazon and Furby-4-U starting from scratch. These are companies with no initial attachment to a particular vendor, and no legacy issues to fight. The one thing they care about is time to launch - they don't even mind spending money like a Swedish sportswear shop, provided it gets that site live by yesterday. At this point in time, there isn't any vendor that's offering good products that can reliably build big sites like this. The market is completely wide open to a vendor with a good product - IBM don't have lockdown on it by any means.
No, template driven shopping carts are NOT what a large site wants.
Re:What is E-Business? (Score:1)
eBusiness is going to be about B2B comms, not B2C (not quite there yet).
Customers are easy. They turn up at your site, all using nice predictable browsers. I'm sick of hearing some bunch of Mac-using Gustavs whinging and whining about needing to support both IE and Netscape as client UAs 8-)
The really awkward problem is supplier comms. How do you talk to suppliers when barely a tenth of them have EDI, EDI sucks dead bunnies through a straw anyway, their legacy platforms are all over the show and you can't even rely on workable tcp/ip comms to the machine room.
The holy grail of eCommerce at present is warehouseless trading; where orders are despatched to suppliers on a Just-In-Time basis, then turn up at UPS to be broken down off the pallets, packed into customer-sized boxes and then dispatched. The retailer doesn't need to own a distribution chain, and they don't need to pay for stockholding. Getting this to work right makes a huge difference to your bottom line figures and it all depends on good B2B comms engines.
We all love to flame M$oft, but if BizTalk works right, then I'd just love to talk to Bill about licensing deals over my soul.
arsdigita shoppe (Score:1)
see http://arsdigita.com/free-tools/shoppe.html
the source is open, except the gateway to credit card processors...
greenspun-sama has written *at length* about server-side web development, and basically, i agree that with his assertion that any business is going to require so much customization that no solution will obviate the necessity for programming.
beware of closed e-commerce *solutions*, they may require months of work mapping your data to their "flexible" model (with nine-hundred tables--to take an example from legal billing, the dread lawpack to cms open transition). kuma
Re: (Score:1)
Re:The truth about e-business (Score:1)
Re:The truth about e-business (Score:1)
PwC and Technology (Score:1)
Open source e-business (Score:1)
What do you mean no OS E-Commerce Solutions? (Score:1)
It's the LIABILITY (Score:2)
You should read a PwC contract. The contract will say that PwC is not liable for anything that happens as a result of the consulting services, and that the vendor of the software (Microsoft, SAP, Oracle
For those of you that have read one of these contracts, or like me has prepared them, you will understand why PwC does not use OSS.
The business model of the Big Five parterships is a Dinosaur. They lack the swiftness and ability to truly get into "e-business". At the top are parters that are so far removed from the business that they are only capable of maintaining client relations (which, I admit, they do well). At the bottom is the young, untrained multitude of consultants that swarm on each project, learning a little as they go and working their little asses off without the benefit ot training or experience.
Here ya go! (Score:2)
#include \
#include \
#include \
#define BLACKLISTS 2
#define INVALID -1
#define VISA 1
#define AMEX 2
#define MASTER 3
#define NOVUS 4
#define UNKNOWN 5
#define BLANCHE 6
char *cardTypes[6] = {
"Visa", "American Express", "MasterCard",
"Discover/Novus", "Unknown", "Diners/Carte Blanche"
};
char *blackList[2] = {
"0000000000000000", "2121212121212121"
};
int isValidCCNumber(char *ccNumber)
{
char *cardNo, *tempPtr;
char tempStr[20];
char ckMask[16]="2121212121212121";
int cardType=5;
int count, x, ckttl=0;
tempPtr=cardNo=malloc(250);
for(x=0;x248) break;
*tempPtr=ccNumber[x];
tempPtr++;
}
*tempPtr=0;
if( ( strlen(cardNo) > 16 ) || ( strlen(cardNo) left) */
while( strlen(cardNo) != 16 ) {
sprintf(tempStr,"0%s",cardNo);
strcpy(cardNo, tempStr);
}
* if doubled number has two digits, use sum of digits (18 = 9).
*/
for(count=0; count9) x-=9;
ckttl+=x;
}
for(count=0; countBLACKLISTS; count++)
if( strcmp( cardNo, blackList[count] )==0 ) return INVALID;
if( ckttl % 10 ){
return INVALID;
} else {
return cardType;
}
free(cardNo);
}
/* Pay Me Now */
But the point... (Score:2)
For a long, long, time, they have denigrated free software because the (rather incestuous) relationships where consultants and vendors of both software and hardware is beneficial to all.
Something like a "Free R/3" might be somewhat tempting insofar as it would allow consultants and hardware vendors to have bigger shares of the "pie."
On the other hand, this would require that they actually become "technology" consulting firms, which seems rather unlikely.
Zope and Digital Creations (www.digicool.com) (Score:2)
Re:Why I kinda doubt it. (Score:2)
But, I doubt we'll see a lot of OSS in e-commerce too. Just for different reasons.
It seems to me that because it is the nature of business to be competitive, it is against the corporate mindset to trust a large part of the business to a co-operative effort. The suits I've talked to are more likely to view these endeavors as being necessarily quid-pro-quo: the logic seems to be that if they're not paying top dollar to have someone put this stuff together for them (right down to the software level), it's suspect.
I expect it's an unfortunate side effect of the elusive nature of software systems. A lot of executives view techs like mechanics: they don't know what we do, they don't care, they just don't want their engine to jump out of the hood and land on the road, and they expect to pay for the privilege. If I told you I knew a mechanic who doesn't charge for parts... well, that'd be weird. Corp types think the two things are equivalent.
Re:What is E-Business? (Score:2)
Unless of course you're working in the real world where some clueless suit reads something in Computerworld, and decides that the hot new product du jour is their strategy.
At GM, the word on the street is that GM is not refreshing Unix boxen for using Unigraphics, and are instead moving to Micros~1 Windoze NT. Why? Because NT workstations are supposed to somehow be cheaper than HP-UX and Solaris boxen, despite the fact that operating and and administrating these boxes isn't going to be any cheaper. Factors like stability, reliability, and performance are being completely ignored. According to UG Solutions, NT is the greatest thing since sliced bread, therefore NT is the now the preferred solution of choice.
<sigh>
Re:Good luck (Score:2)
Why I kinda doubt it. (Score:2)
Don't get me wrong I think it'd be a great business and could benefit from open source, but this is one of those areas that is better left in house in a corp because it will have to interact so much.
The basic compnents are already there too. I mean there are open source web servers, databases, and even page editors (like vi and emacs
Just my opnion.
-cpd
There *is* open source e-commerce software (Score:2)
The hard part of setting up an electronic business is all the infrastructure stuff that has to go on in the background (ie. Shipping/Warehousing, Order Tracking, Customer Service, Credit Card Fraud investigations, Sales Tax accounting and payment (which can be a nightmare). Putting up a web site that displays your catalog of products, allows people to order from that catalog and takes and processes their credit card info is comparitively easy. Also, most commercial "EC" software solutions do none of the backend processes. They hook into what you already have (your accounting software does have public api's/views right?) with custom code (written by the vendor's $$$ consultants) and they are far from free (sometimes into $ millions).
OK, now to the free, open source E-commerce software running on a free, open source web server. First, read the article at http://photo.net/wtr/thebook/ecommerce. html [photo.net]. This provides far more detail than I have time to write here and is the best reading I could recommend to someone considering purchasing commercial EC software. Second you can get the software (it's all source code, it's in TCL) at http://arsdigita.com/free-tools/shoppe. html [arsdigita.com]. Third, you can see the software in action on an ancient solaris box at http://mitpress.mit.edu [mit.edu].
I learned most of the stuff that Philip espouses the hard way. He is certainly not humble but I would have killed for that kind of info 18 months ago when I busted my toe on each and every stumbling block associated with online commerce!
Oh, and it all runs on Linux as well.
MiniVend (Score:2)
The installer takes the administrator throught an intensive Q&A session, asking everything from what user will be running MiniVend to what background colors you want your default pages. It loads up sample data and starts up a fully-functional store that you can use as soon as it's installed.
There's a lot more to MiniVend. I've looked at it only briefly, out of curiosity, and I have yet to give it a thumbs-up or thumbs-down (as if anyone would care :) I'm just throwing it out there.
RP
One business idea... (Score:2)
The combined force of Java servlets on one hand, and content/presentation separation of JSP (and maybe XML with Cocoon, which I haven't really played with yet) seem to me like an ideal e-commerce solution, as any existing infrastructure can be tied to a Java API these days.
But, as much as I appreciate the work of the Apache Java people, I believe an extra layer of abstraction is needed, a web-application Java API. Wouldn't be nice if any score of developers and small companies could sell/license specialized Java classes that could be dropped in the same web-application framework?
I'd really like to see a company that would support such a standard, collect and standardize the different classes, and compensate the developers appropriately. So, for example, a small company could develop a shopping-cart class. Then, the 'brokerage' company would tie in this class with the rest of the application and sell the entire application to a client, providing support: the developers of the shopping cart class would get a pre-agreed-upon share of the sale and support fees. And of course, to create more competition they could also license the same class to any number of 'brokerage' companies...
Does anybody else out there want something like this? It's not exactly open source, it's more like open API/standards, but hey, small-time developers have to eat too
Re:Good luck (Score:2)
Re:PWC, clueless as usual (Score:2)
99.995% availability.
Thats pretty a pretty interesting figure, especially since MS can't even do it. I've checked out quite a few versions of 'Wolfpack' and it fails to do even 99% uptime in most situations.
NT also requres *4* machines do get there, and if you're running SQL7, you're SOL because it doesn't support it yet, *AND* its not instantly available either. That DB has to startup, check through possibly corrupted data, and then become available. That could take up to half an hour for a large database... It was very interesting explaining this to the manager of the DB department where I used to work at MSN. He said it was all BS, but gee, when he released his pet project, it flopped HARD and didn't even work because the DB response was so bad. (Maybe a whole slashdot article on its own) Ohwell, too bad for him
Re:Why I kinda doubt it. (Score:2)
I think the best feature of these packages is the ability to link individual users to individual content (one-to-one, in BV's terms). Slashdot, for example, seems to use perl scripts to accomplish this ("seems", "i think", "might", etc..). An open source toolkit using free db's and webservers, similar to a couple of the projects mentioned earlier, could very well be a successful open source project.
I think I may, I think I might, get back to work and sleep tonight,
-crb
Re:Ok... (Score:2)
It was started to handle our internal needs, and outsourced because we knoew that was the best way to make it better.
Re:MiniVend (Score:2)
Ok... (Score:2)
IBM (Score:2)
Also, the guy that invented PHP is now employed by IBM's apache group.
Seems like a no-brainer to me.
What is E-Business? (Score:3)
E-Business is nothing but a marketing term. It means absolutely nothing on its own. Before looking for tools, you've got to define what you mean by E-Business.
Just guessing, but PwC probably isn't looking for shopping cart-type apps. You're probably looking more for customer relationship and customer account management-type apps. So, you've got to figure out how to interact with your existing back-end systems.
Yes, Apache+PHP (or, Apache+mod_perl, Apache+JServ, Zope, ...) can probably handle this job, but you're legacy system vendor might also offer tools that work better.
Bottom line: pick a product that meets your requirements, don't pick your requirements based on your product selection (IS Project Mgmt 101).
There are some tools (Score:3)
Check out www.smartworker.org [smartworker.org] for more info!
And it's completely open source
Good luck (Score:4)
It doesn't matter than I can show the solution will be cheaper, better, more reliable and more configurable, and even give them examples and show them places where its being used for much larger projects that what we're doing. I can't use it simply because it's not Windows NT, or just barely maybe they'll let me use Solaris if I can come up with a good enough argument why NT simply won't work at all.
In a lot of Big Corporations, it's not whether or not the solutions exist, or whether they work, it has more to do with whether they fit the approved mentality of the company. In the case of PwC, because of the way management works, I suspect it also has to do with whether or not the vendor is in good with one of the partners who makes decisions on what technology to use.
Linux is making some inroads, and so are other Open Source products, but never, ever in my experience, in any "production-quality" service. I suspect this is similar in most other Big Business companies.
This comment is partially a venting of frustration at seeing the company spending literally millions of dollars on proprietary solutions to do what a $5000 Linux PC with a few hours of PHP programming can accomplish, (hence the Anonymous Coward posting - you might think you recognize me, but you probably are wrong) but it's also an attempt at commentary or questioning on how some companies can get so big that they can stagnate and ossify on the inside to the point that no truly new directions ever get taken, yet somehow still maintain enough moemntum or simply have so much money that they can't die, or at least give the appearance of undead.
So why is it that smaller companies who are willing to take risks and invest in new technologies don't run circles around these older corporations who aren't and put them out of business? Is it just the name recognition? Is it just the tremendously deep pockets and the fact that money begets money? How is it that PwC in particular, and very likely many other companies in this industry as well, can position itself as a technology consulting company when it isn't willing to invest in new technology for itself? It would be interesting to see how many companies who position themselves as "technology consulting firms" have an list of internally-mandated software titles from which there is allowed no deviation, yet claim to understand all the latest technolgies and fads.
The truth about e-business (Score:4)
I don't even know where to begin, other than to say this - e-business does not exist.
e-business is a phrase coined by IBM's marketeers to describe the combination of content hosting services with live customer service. The actual software involved varies across the board. There is an open-source e-business solution, it's called perl, and we use the hell out of it.
I deal with really, really large and expensive web sites. We use really, really expensive computers. The software is simply not the issue - it's all vanilla crap, db2 and netscape web servers, IIS, domino, whatever, there's nothing special about any of it.
Yes, it can all be done with apache on linux boxes.
You don't pay a million bucks for apache on a linux box, tho - you pay a million dollars because, and this is something everyone needs to understand about corporate computer provisioning, you are in bed with your customer. Our largest customers? Sears, Macy's, etc - we have existing contracts with all of them for all sorts of stuff. They're used to giving us money, and they are pals with the people with whom they sign the contracts.
And that, folks, is how business in the real, 2.5 billion dollar a year, world works.
--
Suddenly Anonymous E-Coward
OpenSales (Score:4)
Magic-SW [magic-sw.com] also looks interesting.
Here's a link to a Slashdot post about the above, you might find some of the responses helpful: http://slashdot.org/articles/99
Personally, I'll keep using XEmacs, apache, perl, php, and MySQL as my "e-commerce solution".
PWC, clueless as usual (Score:5)
PWCs chief negotiators walked out of a 600 million euro project because the client had a safety critical system and NT was on the blacklist. PWC was asked to send their best and brightest, but they just didn't understand why NT wasn't god's gift to safety. They toed the PWC company line, said that only NT could deliver 100% uptime with some type of mirroring, and tried to downplay HP-UX, AIX, Solaris, and MVS, since they could only claim 99.995% availability. That kind of shit doesn't play to a savvy customer, and they lost the whole deal (staffing, engineering, documentation, training, project management, procurement, auditing, ad infinitum). My client got the network and telecomms bit, so I'm happy.
PWC is a traditional accounting and auditing firm, but growth in that area is limited. They are trying to expand into managing huge telecoms and IT projects as well, assuming it is all the same game. But PWC doesn't have the expertise to slap some sense into the boardroom members. So they think they are cutting edge because they have a nice deal with MICROS~1, BillG told them all other technologies are obsolete and not to ever put them into a bid. Corporate herd mentality, kills every time.
Back to the original "ask slashdot" question.
What a client is looking for, when they purchase some commercial software, is that the supplier will have a small number of people available to respond to their questions in a timely manner. This is between 5 and 20 people at the absolute maximum. There will be a frontline customer service person always answering the phones, 24/24x365. Backing them up is an account rep whose bonus comes from keeping the client happy and renewing the maintenance agreement. Internally there is 1 or 2 technical support with intense knowledge of the product and the systems it runs on, and systems it connects to or deals with. Optionally, there is one person who knows what the product does from a business perspective. Finally, if there is a big enough problem, there is one engineer who wrote part of the code and can be interrogated for tiny details or forced to fix a bug or add a feature.
That is it. Get a handful of technically competent people together on staff, and you can support any free/OSS project. You need to have the helpline person available (4 or 5 fulltime staff or 2 and pagers). There has to be an account rep to keep the PHBs happy.
Then you need 3 to 5 programmers or systems people. With OSS, everyone will have access to the source code, so fixes can be implemented to the client's whim. If a problem crops up, have one of your programmers get on usenet or IRC or buy a linuxcare contract. Chances are they can research the problem and have an answer within 24 hours.
Compare that model to where you do not have a commercial software provider under a contract to provide you with near instant fixes. At best you can hope for is to get through the often clogged helplines, and then get told your fix will be in the next service pack in a few months.
Have you ever tried to negotiate with MICROS~1 for a 24 hour guaranteed response for a critical installation of NT boxen? I have, and when we mentioned that price was no object and we wanted access to the source code or the original programmers, the droids stared at us blankly. They didn't get it. The big client wanted some custom changes guaranteed, and an iron clad contract with penalty clauses for the supplier if they couldn't provide certain functionality. MICROS~1 only dictates, and they NEVER sign a contract with a guarantee for fixes. Sun got the contract.
What PWC can do...
If PWC were to create a linux or OSS or nearly-free OS (*BSD) support group internally, they could save a fortune on support costs. PWC bids on big projects, and passes on the support costs from the suppliers (M$, Sun, IBM, CA, SAP) to the client, without being able to take a cut for themselves. If PWC is the prime contractor, they face the liability for support, and for business losses of their clients if they can't provide a functioning project. If one of their suppliers, MICROS~1 for example, decides not to fix some problem for another 1.5 years, PWC is liable for all the clients losses, and for all their size there is nothing they can do to force M$ to fix something. M$ is never under a contract to fix or guarantee their soft. With an internal OSS support group, PWC themselves can generate a response to a client almost immediately, and keep the support costs for themselves.
You just have to pass it off as a business case, and hope they take notice. Up till recently, they haven't. So do yourself a favor and find an employer who has an OSS support group and bids linux into big projects. KPMG and Anderson both support OSS at this point, and the profit is all theirs. Do the math, a 10 box server installation typically gets a US$30,000/year support contract, and a 15 person team of linux hacks can support 2000-2500 boxes.
the AC