By andyf on

Hey y'all,

The more I'm looking, the more I have to look! I'm trying to decide on a technology to use for an intranet for a small company (the details of the intranet aren't vital here). I've used Drupal to make a semi-complicated site, and feel fairly confident that I know its power when combined with CCK and Views. But before going down any technology path, of course, I decide to see what options are out there. And I discover the term Groupware. Sounds nice. Wikipedia gives me links to Access Grid, eGroupWare, Group-Office, Kolab, LibreSource, OpenGroupware.org, phpGroupWare, Scalix, Zimbra, Bricolage, Dot Net Nuke, Horde, Open-Xchange, Simple Groupware, SlashCode, Alfresco Enterprise, Jahia Integrated Java Enterprise Portal, KnowledgeTree, Nuxeo CPS, OpenKM, Nuxeo EP, ResourceSpace, Scoop, Kerika, Chronopolys, dotProject, Fle3, JavaForge, Mindquarry, project.net, SharpForge, Trac, and Croquet. Phew! Well I'll get the best solution by examining this (huge) list right? Hmmn, some are not open source according to OSI, OK. Ah some have OS requirements, others just need Apache. Then I find the site http://www.opensourcecms.com/ (fantastic site - gives you access to a number of open source systems like this, and gives you a sandbox to play in). But oh no! There are more options now (don't worry I'm not listing them). And then I notice under Miscellaneous there's something called SugarCRM. A bit of research later and I have a whole new category of software, ie CRM to look at. And yes variations abound. Hours later and I'm looking at ERP software, the definition of which leads me to HRM software. The list expands and expands.

So I am tasked with finding a good solution, which technically I feel could be considered, groupware, projectware, HRM, CRM, ERP or a mixture of the above. And there seems to be significant overlap between capabilities of the software that falls into any one category. I like to consider Drupal as a tool in my belt that I should know how to use of course, but also when to use; but what is a sane way of investigating the alternatives when there are so many?! The more I look the more there are! Has anybody come up with a decent method of sorting wheat from chaff? Are there sites with intelligent comparisons/reviews which include version numbers? Is there a prize for best ERP software that anyone knows of? How do you guys make the choice?

Sorry if it seems like a weird post, but my normal plan of research, research, research seems to be expanding my choices rather than narrowing them down!

Thanks,

Andy

Comments

zilla’s picture

zilla commented

don't get lost by allowing the CMS options to promote mental 'feature creep'

start first with ONLY your internal needs. ask simple questions like:

do users need blogs?
do we need to manage categories and a taxonomy?
do we need forums?
do we need a wiki or just a repository for pages?
do we need integrated messaging?
do we need mobile access?
do we need permission level viewing controls for any/all content?

and so on and so on...

then go back and hit a punchlist...for a typical company intranet, i think you'll find that drupal is the best choice out there. if you can't do it with what's in core, then you can absolutely get it done with contributed modules.

andyf’s picture

andyf commented

Thanks Zilla,

I'm ok in avoiding feature creep. The problem is that having arrived at the features I'm not sure if Drupal is the way forwards. Sure it can do everything I want in one way or another. But will it give the smoothest product? Some of these other titles have very smooth AJAXy interfaces when using a browser, and they also tie in with clients such as Thunderbird/Lightning and Outlook.

However, if I'm interested in an iterative improvement cycle to hone the intranet better to the users' needs, Drupal gives me far more flexibility. But then again is it likely that we'll ever need more power than you get from Zimbra, which is easier to set up and integrates with other clients as mentioned. But why choose Zimbra when I could go for... round and round it goes!

Thanks again,

Andy

jscoble’s picture

jscoble commented

Your question should have been titles 'How to pick best open source solution for my needs?' since open source software, like closed source, covers every territory possible in the software world.

Even though there is function overlap, the different classes of software have different focuses. You can narrow the list by determining your functional needs and the use cases that you will be using the software packages for.

Once you narrow down your list of prospective software, you will need to do some evaluation to make sure it fits your companies needs, or hire someone with expertise to guide you through that process. Sites like opensourcecms can help a little, but you are limited to basic installs of each package.

From your last comments, it sounds like you are looking for a groupware package. Zimbra is currently the best of the open source groupware package. It is designed to compete with Exchange server. If your looking for calendering, email and collaboration, this is an excellent choice, especially if you need a system that will play nice with Outlook. The outlook connector will cost you, but this is the norm since replacing the Exchange/Outlook stack is considered a killer app in the open source groupware world. There are other options available, like Citadel, or you can cobble together your own using a variety of open source packages.

You have the CRM/SFA side. SFA, sales force automation, was developed as a way to help sales organizations manage their sales process. CRM descended from SFA with the paradigm shift of let's look at the sales process from managing our relationship with customers perspective. In reality, most CRM systems are more sales oriented than customer relationship oriented, though they do keep track of interactions with customers, which make them CRM in the software world. SugarCRM is the most popular of these in the open source world.

ERP, enterprise resource planning software, is meant to help organizations manage and utilize their resource, plan resource usage etc. Manufactureres use ERP a lot. SAP is an example of closed source ERP. ERP tend to be very complicated to setup and install. It used to be a few millions was the beginning entry price for a SAP implementation with some implemenatitions that I know of running over $100,000,000. The cost has probably gone down significantly with ERP on demand and other advancements and the fact that ERP providers have saturated their original market and have to sell to smaller organizations.

Drupal is a CMS, or content management system. It's mainly meant to enable websites and enable organizations to manage the publishing process. These websites may be internet or intranet based depending on how they are deployoed. It may be able to do portions of what the other systems do, especially with additional modules, but it wasn't designed with those other needs in mind.

Think of them as all varieties of fruit, and like fruit the software sectors you are looking at do have some overlapping attributes, however they are still as different as apples, oranges and tomatoes. Most organizations larger than a small business will run a number of these software types, in addition to others that were not mentioned. It's one reason why companies have IT departments.

Write down your must have requirements.
Write down your it would be nice to have requirements.
Write down your use cases.
Write down you user audiences.

You may find you need more than one software package to fill your needs.

Good luck.

andyf’s picture

andyf commented

Thanks so much for taking the time to write that jscoble, it's really muchly appreciated. I will find the time to check a few out. Goodbye weekend;)

zilla’s picture

zilla commented

so i'm far less concerned with cool ajaxy features i suppose - for me, the ability to control and easily manage and construct workflows is paramount, and drupal does all of that - and many modules add ajaxy features that users like...

however, i know of no other cms like drupal that is all ajaxy and still does even half as much and has this kind of developer support base working on modules to extend it...

andyf’s picture

andyf commented

Yeah I understand totally - I am still awe-struck at the power/time factor for Drupal and the variety of uses it can effectively be put to. I'm not Drupal bashing with my AJAX comments; just if there is something prerolled with AJAX that covers my needs...

hualahyja’s picture

hualahyja commented

Hi, to compare the features of particular CMS-es I often use the cmsmatrix.org site. There is a well commented online interface for CMS comparison.

M TALCOD’s picture

M TALCOD commented

I don't know a lot open source software but I do know Drupal very well and it's a really efficient and practical application that we use at TALCOD (French Web and Open source agency I work in) and I can tell that customers are quite satisfied with it.