Unleash Organisational Effectiveness and Reduce Risk with Open Source Enterprise Applications

One way or the other, most of the major work of organisations is done through projects thus making project management a key competence of every effective organisation. Similarly projects get done through project members performing the various tasks that make part of their job (some which may be part of normal operations)

The main model for using IT by most organisations tends to be a host of locally installed applications on the users desktops to do things like word processing, project management, spreadsheets and personal efficiency etc. This model although it seems to be working is fraught with a lot of risk … ask the non-technical employee the pain of having their laptop crash:

• They loose access to their organized mail within the mail clients (especially since the vast majority of users tend to use POP rather than IMAP for mail access.
• All documents they created for the organization get lost especially seeing how ‘good’ we are at backing up on a regular basis.
• If employees are using Outlook or some variant to manage their addresses, tasks and todos … then a lost.

All of the above typically have the following consequences:

1. The organisation either doesn’t have an ‘organisational memory’ (i.e. a way for someone else to make use of a fact known by another person). This is particularly true when internal communication is not effective ( … like the US intelligence community having all information required to have seen the X-mas day attach coming). What results is islands of memory, typically stuck in different employees’ heads and typically not available to the rest. The matter gets worse if that information is in an email or document which is typically not available if the person is sick or away or has left the organisation.
2. The organisation is exposed high risk in the event that an employee’s computer crashes. Without a proper backup solution in place that is rigorously followed (which is rarely the case, even amongst us IT professionals who KNOW better). If the employees have to backup to USB drives or CDs on their own, there is no telling what sensitive information will be conveyed via those media into hands/eyes that have no business seeing it.

My proposed solution? Enterprise software hosted on servers on the organisation’s network that users can use through a web browser. Call it private ‘Cloud Computing’. And of course you should see this coming … there a really excellent Free and Open Source solutions out there besides other terrific proprietary and commercial alternatives. So what are the advantages of this model?

1. Financial Savings: Employees don’t need fat applications installed on their computers, just a web browser. The licensing fees associated with those applications become a cost saving. Even if the applications are free, the support costs per user are also eliminated because the applications is hosted on a server. Furthermore, as we eliminate the need for applications installed on the employees’ computer and most/all the work gets done in a web browser, organisations can further reduce their IT expenditure by moving to Linux on the desktop.
2. Reduced Risk: When work is done inside a browser, on the organisation’s servers AND the data is stored on those servers, backup can be automated and be regular. It can also be more appropriately secured.
3. Employee and Organisational Effectiveness: Should an employee’s computer crash, instead of waiting perhaps a 3 days for it to be repaired and her data restored, she can pick just about any computer with a browser and continue work from where they stopped … no downtime for the organisation, no frustrations to the employee.
4. Organisational Memory: Together with established, explicit and well documented processes, I believe “organisational memory” is one of the pillars of operational effectiveness. The specific tool here is the wiki ….a unified place to document processes and projects, collaborate as well as store all ‘living’ documents about organisational standards and procedures. Putting a wiki in place creates the infrastructure for organisational memory (which is otherwise non-existend), making use of that memory is quite another matter.

So, what are some of the FOSS enterprise applications I think organisations could leverage? eGroupware is like a Swiss Army knife … comprising of a host of different applications from calendering, resource, task, knowledge and project management, as well as pop/imap mail within a browser, a wiki, polls and a website application. As is often the case one size doesn’t fit all and some of the applications in eGroupware are great while others are terrible (Site Manager and the Wiki).

If you choose not to go take the one-size fits all approach, here are some great solutions I have come across.

1. Collabtive/ProjectPier: For enterprise general (as opposed to specific such as software) project management, there are lots of applications in the FOSS community. ProjectPier is quite mature and simple while Collabtive is new, very innovative and seems to have the spotlight at the moment with a very beautiful AJAX interface.
2. Tracks: Without doubt, the acknowledged best methodology for personal productivity management in the world is David Allen’s GTD (Getting Things Done as laid out in a book of the same name). While GTD is NOT about technology but about methodolody, it helps a lot to have a great application to help with the methodology … current PIMs like Outlook fall short. How about one that can be put on a server with accounts for each employee? …. Tracks is IT.
3. Mediawiki: What can I say that the success of Wikipedia (the fourth largest brand in the world) can’t demonstrate better? How about the company’s very own implementation of that? … this is the infrastructure for organisational memory.
4. Etherpad: While Wiki’s are good for asynchronous collaboration, sometimes what we need is really realtime collaboration. As an example, 3 people could sit at their computers and simultaneously write different parts of an article to the same document! (the review and correct it)…complete with version control. That’s the brilliance of Etherpad.

Just a word of caution … “If you are going to put all of your eggs in one basket (ie all your apps and data in the server room) … by all means try to get a titanium basket lined with air-cushions”. I’d hate to imagine the pain should that basket break or if some vermin gets into it.

Needed to make all this work for good and not just be technological tyranny and confusion is a CIO who actually ‘gets it’, one who continuously explores ways of integrating these technologies into the work processes of the organisation and provides employee training and on-going support especially to the non-technical employees. And it goes without saying that we also need employees who are willing to continuously explore more effective ways of doing their work. Now, how about that? Please I’ll be glad if you share your experiences so we can all learn from them and contribute to making them better.

Ultimate Ubuntu Linux EyeCandy

Ok …out of the box, most Linux distributions are eyesores compared to MacOSx and Vista [even XP for that matter]. But the tools to make this beautiful lady shine are out there. Here is what an average guy like me was able to accomplish … so you can imagine what an organized set of people can do in this sphere.

So let me give you my own version of the Obama dream for Linux …. ¨If there is anyone out there who still …
….doubts that Linux can be as cute or even cuter than Windows or MacOS,
…who has not yet awoken to the the fact that Ubuntu is the most flexible operating system there is…..
…. who still doubts that Ubuntu is the virtual land where all dreams can come true …. THIS POST IS JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG!!!!¨ [not exactly like the great guy himself but .... u get the idea ]

First by laptop is an HP Pavillion dv5-1199ei, 2GHz Intel Centrino 2, 4GB RAM, with Nvidia chipsets for graphics. To honour this beauty [my girlfriend calls the laptop by concubine ] … I decided to go with 64-bit Ubuntu 8.10 and so far, I have not been disappointed [...I am NEVER using the 32bit OS if I can help it].

Here is a list of the common applications I installed:

• I installed Wine so I can run some Windows applications.
• I installed Google Desktop Gadgets and Screenlets to suit all my desktop Widget/Gadget itches.
• Songbird for media player — it is the only Linux media player beautiful enough for me [others may be better but the aesthetics also matters to me]. Even then, I have installed the latest version of WinAmp using Wine [but in truth, it is not much better than XMMS]
• I also have Mplayer [with additional skins], and also VLC player.
• For Bible study, I have GnomeSword [a lot like e-Sword which I use on Vista]
• I use Pidgin for instant messaging [waiting for Digsby to become available on Linux]
• For the geek in me, I have GNS3/Dynamips/Dynagen for network emulation, Ethercap and Wireshark for packet analysis.
• To support my Webcam, i installed and use Cheese Webcam booth — works great.
• Openoffice Draw is a little clunky for my liking, so I installed Inkscape.
• My life is always very miserable if I don´t have Freemind, so I have the latest beta version of Freemind.
• I have latest Java installed with Flash 64-bit plugin for Firefox so I can watch Youtube movies.

bla bla bla, so here are some of the pictures ….

Fig 1: My desktop with some Google Gadgets running and my custom panel that holds shortcuts for applications I use most [my version of Windows QuickLaunch bar]

Fig 2: My cool dock application – AWN: I especially love that cool curving popup of a frequently used partition on my hard drive.

Fig 3: This is one version of my ¨Start¨ menu …. from the top toolbar [which automatically hides itself to give me more screen real estate when i am using other applications]

Fig 4:Freemind … the other part of my brain that is outside of me.

Fig 5: Songbird, my favourite audio media player on Linux.

Fig 6: All my running applications in ¨shaded mode¨ … let´s see you do that on Vista [out of the box]

Fig 7: What can I say? my workspaces visible at the same time in 3D! Cool isn´t it?

Fig 8: Switching through my running applications in an elegant and visual way.

Fig 9: Another way to flip through my running applications … the more traditional way.

Fig 10: My dock [AWN] and the second way to access my applications.

Ok …. all of these are not some artist impressions, i use them everyday. And this post was done using the ScribeFire plugin in Firefox.

Thank you to all those wonderful guys out there who make these beautiful things possible and affordable. Welcome to the future of computing …. it is painted in Linux!

Leveraging ICT in Entrepreneurial Ventures IV: Use ICT to Cut Costs

Unifying your inter-office Communications: The typical small business office today has about 4 computers, need a printer or two (in fact one CEO I spoke with last year had a grand vision of putting a printer on each of the 20 desks and PCs in his office!!!). There also is some kind of voice system … and Intercom or PBX. Not only does this complexity increase maintenance costs, it increases the chance of something going wrong and is more importantly from and entrepreneurs perspective an unfortunate waste of money.
For starters, with ensuring that your computers are networked will allow the organization to get a lot more from it. Over the network, the organization really doesn’t need more than 1 printer for 10 people. With a network in place, a single Internet connection can be share by all computers in the office, printers, document templates etc. Furthermore, you can completely leave out the extra cabling and PBX for your intercom and do chat, voice, video and even application sharing on your local network. The resultant cost-savings are non-trivial.

Automate Back-end Processes: Information about products and services can be put on a company website. Similarly forms and information brochures can be put online so people can access them rather than having to call every time and make inquiries. Any work that involves filling of forms by your clients can be automated and done online – not only does it reduce the opportunities for mistakes (as the computer can validate data on the fly)
Go Quasi-Paperless or Fully Paperless: And with a fully networked office, do we really need to print a document that we want to send to a colleague in another cubicle/table? Definitely not. Such things as interoffice communications, memos and reports can be done completely digital. But a caveat here … for this not to be a recipe for a business disaster, there must be proper backups in place so that the entire business does not come down because a computer failed.
Keep Physical Office Space as Lean as Possible: Probably my most disconcerting suggestion, if the infrastructure exists, using innovative management, consider the possibility of cutting out fixed and recurring costs relating to maintaining a physical office and run your venture predominantly virtually. Rather than office cubicles for each employee, why not just buy each employee a laptop and let them work from their homes? This way you will substantially cut your utility bills – power, cleaning etc. This is quite disconcerting because poor management has a huge need to control and micromanage people but to with a forward thinking management system in place, this will work out quite well because it gives employees huge flexibility. Obviously this can’t apply to all ventures and a critical amount of real estate in the form of office space and accessories will still be required. Even in manufacturing where people need to be on ground, there are some staff that can do the majority of their work without being physically present. This is however not without its caveats and so….. Proceed with caution.
Communicating with Suppliers and Distributors: Since no business operates in isolation, part of normal business administration involves contact with supplies and distributors to manage the supply chain end-to-end. Communication with these partners has come a long way from physical meetings to phone calls and now the rich messaging applications are a new and exciting addition to the mix. It is now possible to hold meetings online (GotoMeeting, WebEx) with full videoconferencing with nothing more than your Internet connection and a relatively cheap value computer. On the lower side, plain email and instant messaging can do a tremendous amount of work. These same multimedia communication technologies can also be leveraged to make product demonstrations to customers in different parts of the world.
Leverage e-Learning: As multimedia computers, networks and the internet become more commonplace; start-ups can leverage them to provide training to their employees at lower costs that traditional, consultant led alternatives. The idea is not to completely eliminate consultants and their workshops but to provide tools for employees to get more skills and knowledge from the convenience of their personal computers.
Use Freeware & Open Source Software: Legally acquiring the software that most business need for office automation can cost significant amount of money (See the article “The Simple Case for Free and Open Source Software” at http://ibiztech.wordpress.com for details). It is possible to shave off more than 50% of the acquisition cost for relevant business applications by using software that is free of charge. Examples include Ubuntu Linux instead of Microsoft Windows for your desktop computers, several variants of Linux for practically all your server applications, OpenOffice.org suite of applications (replacement for Microsoft Office). Some of these applications are the best in their class and very reliable.

OS [Ubuntu/Vista] Cross Compatibility – Critical Success Factor for Application Success in the Market

Anyone who has been reading my blog knows am a Ubuntu fan … and on all my computers, I dual-boot between Windows XP and Ubuntu desktop. It just occurred to me this morning [18th May 2008] why of two applications capable of achieving the same task, I choose one over the other even though both are installed on my machine.

Since I use both OSes approximately equally, what determines what application I use is whether I can continue my work irrespective of Operating system. It is for this reason that open file formats and cross compatible applications [even if file formats are closed] are an extremely important determinant of application success in the marketplace.

Even though I think Mindjet Mindmanager is way cooler than the Freemind, I almost always use Freemind for my mindmaps because it is installed both in my Windows & Ubuntu OSes and I can start my work in Windows and continue in Ubuntu [Linux] or vice versa. That is not as easy to do with Mindmanager unless u are a WINE guru — I for one frown on running XP in a virtual machine on my Linux just to run one application … thank you sir …. I’ll use Freemind.

Other applications in this category … ie those becoming more and more OS-agnostic [ie apart from web applications that is] which I frequently use are

1. Inkscape over CorelDraw [I think OpenOffice.org Draw sucks!!!]

2. Juice [Linux version is called Icepodder] as podcast aggregator vs Itunes.

3. OpenOffice.org Writer and Calc for wordprocessing and spreadsheets.

It may then be that one strategy for an application to take to gain market share is to keep your file format proprietary and closed but make the application OS-agnostic … and there better be a free [yes as in free beer] version or else …..

The Importance of Eye Candy towards Linux Desktop Adoption

For most people born within the last 35 years or so … using a computer has become and inextricable part of living. Unfortunately [for Linux] most of the not-too-technically savvy amongst them got started using some version of Microsoft´s Windows or an Apple Macintosh. These people have been used to a certain way of doing stuff and how things should look. For Linux to appeal to this people, not only must it flaunt it´s technical excellence, freedom of choice and low cost, but must also prove as easy to use, flexible, simple and aesthetically pleasing. In computer-speak, eye-candy refers to how beautiful or pleasing to the eye the whole user experience is. It involves beautiful graphics, icons, mouse cursors as well as animated feedback.

These characteristics plus simplicity is perhaps the primary reason why Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distribution today not only on the desktop but for servers. I used to be a Fedora fan but today, I don´t see myself downloading and burning six iso images and spending about an hour to setup my system when I could do all that from a single CD in about 30 minutes. Therefore, switching to Ubuntu on both my desktop, laptop and any server services was just a no brainer. A key department in which most desktop linuxes have improved is the eye-candy department but to get the kind of eye-candy that makes people drool a little tweaking needs to be done which may be more than the average joe is comfortable with doing [eg installing compiz theme manager, emerald, using svn to get keys and then download themes.]

Eye candy has become important because our laptops have become very personal objects, much in the same way we by cute phones with nice covers for them and change wallpapers regularly. Eye candy is the primary reason why most people go WOW!! when the first see a Macbook [both hardware and software eye candy]. Personally, one way in which I have spread the Ubuntu word is with my own laptop. Immediately after installation, I enable compiz themes, install emerald theme manager, get some beautiful themes, cute icon packs, cursor themes and nice looking fonts. I also get rid of most of the default login screens (except the Human Circle) and add cutter ones which come up at random. So when most people see my laptop, they go WOW!! … what OS are you using? — giving me the perfect opportunity to sell them not only to how aesthetically pleasing [aka eye candy] Ubuntu and Linux can be but also the fact that I usually don´t bother much about antiviruses, the moral issues of pirated software, or system instability. Yes I know, focusing on eye candy might seem like a trivialization of the technical excellence of Linux, but then most of the people out there whom we´d like to adopt Linux on the desktop are people who would gladly ´…make the mistake of falling in love with a dimple and then marrying the whole girl [and live to thank God for the mistake].´ to paraphrase Evan Esar, italics mine. I think eye candy is that dimple that can be used to seduce people to marry the whole girl (desktop Linux)

The Simple Case for Free & Open Source Software

 

Everyone is supposed to like a ‘free’ lunch and so free software is equally tempting – check out the rate at which Windows and other commercial software is being pirated. For any business or organization, keeping operating costs low is usually at the top of management’s list of priorities (except of course the organization is run by ‘damagers’). There is also a minimum level of IT which every organization needs and its associated costs are not insignificant – at least those related to software.

Consider the traditional costs for the most rudimentary IT needs of any organization – a computer with the standard tools for office and web productivity.
1. Hardware – a complete computer system…………………………$400:00
2. Windows XP……………………………………………………………………………$200:00
3. Office 2003…………………………………………………………………………….$400:00
4. Miscellaneous………………………………………………………………………..$100:00
Total ………………………………………………………………………………………….$1,100:00
Miscellaneous costs her cover software like IM clients, Antivirus tools, RSS readers and other freeware tools that must be downloaded and installed from the Internet ( … and I love the heartburn the word miscellaneous gives the bean counters!)

$1,100 per PC at minimum. Thus for a small organization of 5 people to have only PCs without any server services costs $5,500:00 – not an insignificant figure for a small business especially in developing countries.

As an astute manager, what you say to a proposal to legally shave off about $700 per PC for a similar or improved feature-set? …. this means that for $5,500 you get to give 13 employees essential functional IT tools or better still you could add a simple network to your 5 systems — good deal any day any time.

And what is the miracle that gives me such enormous cost savings? ….. GNU LINUX and other free open source software. If you want a more specific answer, I personally swear by Ubuntu but there is also Freespire, Fedora, Mandriva and for those already running Windows, a plethora of free and opens source solutions for office and web productivity.

Ubuntu is free – as in free beer — up to and including acquiring the installation disk (get more info here). You can have the CD shipped to you free of charge if you don’t have a broadband connection to download it from http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu. On that single CD which I repeat can be mailed to you free of charge, you get the following – just to name a few:

1. Full featured, stable world-class operating system.
2. A complete office suite – OpenOffice.org 2.2
3. Web suite including browser (Firefox 2.x), email client (Evolution), IM Client (GAIM)
4. Vector graphics and illustration software – Inkscape.
5. Relative freedom from viruses and malware.
6. World class image manipulation software – The GIMP

And of course, the peace of mind that you are not stealing (pirating) software and thus are on the wrong side of the law. Of course, if you are connected to the internet, practically any other type of software is available free of charge at a few clicks away.

For sure this won’t solve ALL your IT needs …. for in an interdependent world, you will still need some Windows or Mac-only tools but I am convinced beyond doubt that when we sum up what we gain from what we loose, free open source software (FOSS) is the clear winner for most SMEs. Haven’t tried it yet? don’t wait any further … drop me a line if you need any help.

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Now playing: Yanni – Face in the Photograph
via FoxyTunes

Piracy ‘Disrupts’ Disruptive Innovation?

I have been fascinated by Harvard’s Clayton Christenson work on Disruptive Innovation. One of the premises of his work is that a new technology can garner huge market share when it competes against non-consumption, or it suddenly makes it possible for people who couldn’t afford technology to do something equally well. Well, this is a business technology blog and I have been looking at the penetration of desktop Linux in Africa i.e. desktop Linux as a disruptive innovation for Windows.

Linux really fits the disruptive innovation bill clearly on both counts but there is a huge saboteur to it becoming THE desktop OS of choice on most desktops to people who can’t afford to spend $1000 on a PC (See my other blog on how I arrive at this figure). That saboteur is piracy. First, because of the sheer number of other people using it on desktops around the world – Windows is the natural tendency for most people (besides the fact that most new laptops come with Windows pre-installed) – now if it were not affordable by any other means, these people would then have no choice but to love and use desktop Linux and unless Microsoft can find away to make Windows equally free – most of the developing world would end up with Linux.

 

That is not going to happen as long as piracy enables these people to obtain almost any commercial software for as low as $2. It is for this reason that desktop linux hasn’t grown as much as one would expect from the Disruption models especially in the developing world. So ….. how do we remove this limitation? – Food for thought.