Re: [Phpgroupware-users] "Betting Your Company" on PHPGroupware

[C K Wu]

Hello, Alex,

Thank you for considering CK-Ledger as a possible starting
point for offering solution to your client.  I'll be more than
happy to incorporate whatever changes you make to
CK-Ledger back into the main CK-Ledger distribution
code, if you so incline.

P.S.  This reply is not sent to the phpgw list, but instead directed
to address@hidden, because I think
it may not be of general interest to the phpgw list.

Best Regards,
CK Wu

Alex Borges wrote:

> El vie, 01-08-2003 a las 08:08, Doug Dicks escribió:
> > Hello All,
> >
> > I need some opinions or advice.
> >
> > A month ago some of my coworkers and I left our previous employer to
> > start a new company.  We've just gotten our first significant contract,
> > one which calls for a groupware (email, address book, time-tracking)
> > solution.  It's a large number of users, but generally not all at the
> > same time.
> >
> > We'd really like to use an open solution.  We all believe in open source
> > and are willing to contribute work back to the project.  Something like
> > Exchange/Outlook would kill our profit margin, but we'd rather break
> > even than fail.
> >
> > The new project is pretty high-visibility within the local community and
> > has several very large companies involved.  The outcome of this project
> > will certainly have a major, major impact on the future of our new company.
> >
> > So, given all of this, would you use PHPGroupware if this were *your*
> > company?  Why or why not?
> >
> > Thanks for your advice.  PHPGroupware is our "plan a", and I need to
> > validate this direction.  Things should get rolling very quickly now
> > that we have the deal, and the project schedule doesn't allow for any
> > time to change out the core technology half-way through.
> >
> > Thanks again.  I look forward to your comments.
> >
>
> This is a very good question. Some of the contributors here are members
> of company that have taken this step long ago. Probably the first of
> them should be Dan and/or jengo (dont remember), creators of this thing,
> that founded a company.... and many others. Some of them founded their
> companies, others are independent consultants and others are in-house
> consultants for the companies they work with.
>
> -----------------------------
> |Here is a success story. Ill try to be as objective as possible.
> -----------------------------
>
> All in all, i have a phpgw working with a 600 administrative (with pcs
> and net connections) user organization with 30 branches all over my
> country (mexico) and in other countries (costa rica, the us). This is a
> large autoparts maker. Its been a lot of work, but i dont regret it at
> all, this year its actually starting to pay off.
>
> I started that deployment last year, about march. I was supposed to move
> this guys from exchange to a solution of my choosing. I had been
> tracking phpgw and using it inhouse for a year before that and i liked
> it.
>
> So in i went. I saved them about 90% of what it was gonna cost them if
> they stayed in exchange (two year deadline was comming), so i lost money
> (do the numbers), and i had to heavily modify phpgw to their liking.
>
> Took me about 8 months to stabilize the whole thing with migration and
> all the changes they wanted (the javascript addressbook was one of those
> changes).
>
> Today its a different story i think. The phpgw i took back then was a
> great app, but it needed significant tweaking to make it into that
> corporate datacenter. Stuff like a central company directory with links
> to accounts were there, just not how the admin wanted it. So i rolled my
> own changes.
>
> In the end all my work it was so messy that i didnt even want to pass it
> back to the community, knowing it would be instantly rejected (hey, i
> rejected it myself). So, i waited until stabilization was completed and,
> in the meantime, i started contributing and discussing what the client
> asked of me.
>
> The release schedulled by aug 8 covers all of what i did and more with a
> very high standard of quality.
>
> Some of that was made by the community since some ppl here had the same
> needs as myself, some were ideas of other ppl that i hadnt thought of,
> some is stuff that im paying to be done and is being finished as we
> write (its 2:30 am here, i should get back to that).
>
> This year we were contacted by a university with 4000 students wanting
> an e-learning solution. I immediatly thought of phpgw but my associates
> shrugged on me since weve spent so much on it with almost no profit
> (now, to level this, this is not true, its not much proffit from phpgw,
> but the client also pays a service fee for network consultancy and
> mantainership of their servers. we convinced them to switch their dbms
> to linux as well, and we wouldve never gotten in if we didnt have what
> they really needed at the right time).
>
> So anyways, i started looking for this elearning solution and found it,
> its called whiteboard. But, in looking at it, i thought most of its
> stuff is already in good shape in phpgw, so it would be a better idea to
> port it. I contacted the author and he is interested in the idea. So we
> will probably have that by the end of the year as well.
>
> Another client thats a-comming is an industry needing a simple CRM. With
> quoting capabilities for their sales model. No prob, i thought, there is
> CKledger and, whatever it cannot do, we can make happen in house.
>
> So, all in all, phpgroupware has some shortcommings, but they are mainly
> related to the fact that its written in php. What ive learned is that
> its a PLATFORM, not just a webmail or a suite, but a whole framework for
> building collaboration applications. From that point of view, phpgw has
> NO match, no other FLOSS groupware project that ive found worries about
> providing a platfrom independent collaboration API. This thing can
> export its methods through xmlrpc or php and supports a good number of
> databases for the backend.
>
> In this respect, everyone in the community is working on that idea (i
> think). You have escandinavian companies doing some great document
> management stuff, american ppl studying the posibilities of
> interoperation of phpgw with other FLOSS solutions (OpenOffice,
> OpenGroupware, Evolution), EU companies making plugins to sync it with
> outlook, others trying to formalize and document the design, AU
> consultants working on the freamework to have a generic syncronization
> solutions (palm syncyng...etc.) and we are ALL open to subcontracts (had
> to pitch that one in).
>
> Its a live community of ppl with real business problems and scenarios,
> most likely similar to yours, so, YES, I bet my company on this thing,
> for that matter, I bet yours! ... ;)
>
> Also, this is a community that you can talk with, discuss the problems
> you encounter and i can assure you that, if you interact with it the
> right way, youll soon find people with solutions to your problems
> (solutions that maybe youll have to implement yourself, maybe not).
>
> So, thats the risk, that a FLOSS project may or may not go in the
> direction you want it to. Same thing happens with linux or any other
> project of this kind. BUT, if you comply with the quality and
> interaction ettiquete rules, you will allways have a way to solve your
> problems by doing it yourself, by associating with interested parties in
> the community or by paying to get it done (there are guidelines for this
> too, not everything will be accepted into core, even if you try and pay,
> but there is a place for this kind of modification as well).
>
> Um...i cant direct you to the links where all this stuff is documented
> (guidelines, way to work...e.tc.) cause the main site got haXored by
> evil daemon-kiddies. But stick arround, download the thing, look at the
> api, discuss your needs and have tons of fun.
>
> (Hell thats a long sales pitch)
>
> > Doug
> > --
> > Doug Dicks
> > Revelant Technologies
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Phpgroupware-users mailing list
> > address@hidden
> > http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/phpgroupware-users
>
> _______________________________________________
> Phpgroupware-users mailing list
> address@hidden
> http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/phpgroupware-users