On Sunday 24 Jul 2005 15:43, Will Partain wrote: > (Something a bit different -- Scottish/Linux connection included...) > > Here's a question I've been wondering about... A small business/org > has a need for some pretty standard "intranet" IT things -- some > subset of: e-mail, (internal) mailing lists, a place to stash (shared) > documents, a wiki, some (internal) blogs, a way to manage a common > pool of contacts/addresses, a Subversion server, "groupware" (almost > always meaning "a way to schedule meetings"), an issue tracker, and > perhaps something extra for "project management". Backups and data > "security" for all of that. These don't vary from one company to > another, not really. > > What if you're a company and you want to *buy* the above? You don't > want a server, you don't want an IT guy, you just want a Web panel > where you can tick "give us an issue tracker", and that's that. > Employees plug in their laptop, aim a web browser and/or VPN-thingy, > and it just works. > > An extreme solution I've seen mentioned is "websourcing", where you > use an assemblage of web apps to achieve the above: gmail for mail, > Yahoo! groups for mailing lists, JotSpot [NB: open for business] for > wiki-oid things, and so on. This would seem to rely on a bunch of > employees each signing up for a plethora of services, and aspects like > "data security" will just be hard. For a little reading on this > option, some blog entries and comments thereon: > > http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/04/websourcing_pro.html > http://www.evhead.com/2005/04/running-your-company-on-web-apps.asp > http://www.surfarama.com/index.php?p=135 > http://blog.thylmann.net/2005/04/corporate_web_a.html > > At the other end, there are people who will look after a box for you > (in some co-lo place), "There's a Linux box, do what you like." This > doesn't seem to get rid of the need for an IT guy. > > There _do_ exist people who solve a part of the problem, the best > known being e-mail. They run "your" mail server, handle the > spam-squashing, often do mailing-lists for you, provide a webmail > interface, etc., and you never have to think about it. [Or not: see > http://www.deepchip.com/gadfly/gad072105.html for a contrary > experience.] The problem is, if you need an issue tracker or > Subversion server -- or any one of the "other" things -- you're back > to needing an IT guy (or an amateur pretending to be one :-). > > But does anyone offer to solve the _whole_ problem? I'm not even sure > what query to type into Google :-(
That's a hard problem too solve. When hosting companies do this kind of thing, i.e. they provide hosted services, they tend to pick certain things. For example you don't see many mod_perl or postgresql hostings, just because they aren't that popular. This is where I think the problem is, demand. It's a lot to invest in setting up and configuring all the services you mentioned, and a gamble if you don't know/have idea if they will all be used. > > I would be most interested in Scottish answers and/or things built on > a Linux base (if only so I can sleep at night :-). I'll summarise if > I get many non-public answers. Thanks, > Just my thoughts as to why it hasn't been done online yet. Feel free to flame me. Gavin. -- Kind Regards, Gavin Henry. Managing Director. T +44 (0) 1224 279484 M +44 (0) 7930 323266 F +44 (0) 1224 742001 E [EMAIL PROTECTED] Open Source. Open Solutions(tm). http://www.suretecsystems.com/ _______________________________________________ Scottish mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/scottish
