Best Open Source Alternatives To Enterprise Apps

PeekAB00 writes "With 2009 IT budgets getting chopped down John Perez came up with this list of 25 best alternatives to enterprise applications (e.g DimDim over Webex, SugarCRM instead of Seibel, Zenoss over HP OpenView). John's list is somewhat eclectic. I am curious to hear what other enterprise (let's be frank ... expensive) apps I can replace this year with open source ones. I am particularly interested in back-up and email archiving suggestions."

Full text searching engines

[tcopeland]

Whatever you've got, consider replacing it with Sphinx [sphinxsearch.com], which is awesome. I'm using it with Rails and the Ultrasphinx plugin and it's been great - doing excerpts (for example, notice the highlighted results from a search for 'combat' [militarypr...glists.com]) - was a piece of cake.

Re:OpenOffice works on Windows???

[theaveng]

I don't see any FPGA development suites listed on Mr. Perez's homepage. At $10,000 per package I guess that's not something programmers are willing to just give away.

Check the costs

[kiwimate]

We are migrating a whole bunch of sites away from eRoom because it's so expensive. (I didn't know it was open source, but the guy who brought it into our enterprise is a huge proponent of open source. He has rapidly lost interest in it over the past 12 months, mainly because it was a headache to administer and an embarrassment in a business sense because of the costs.)

Open source or not, I don't particularly care; I'm interested in doing the best thing for the business. In this case, eRoom is so expensive as to be unjustifiable, and we're realizing substantial cost savings by migrating to a closed source solution.

Bottom line: eRoom may (or may not) be a good technical solution, but I'm amused by seeing it in an article about using open source alternatives to save money.

Forum software enterprise, but no Exchange?

[NineNine]

Seems like it was a stretch. Community and forum software as "enterprise"? Uh, no. I desperately need an open source alternative to Exchange/Outlook and point of sale software for my business.

Glassfish/OpenMQ instead of Websphere/WebsphereMQ?

[kbrasee]

I've often wondered if Glassfish app server and OpenMQ messaging are viable alternatives (in realibility, performance and features) to IBM's Websphere and Websphere MQ. That would save a bunch of money right there, but it's got to be a huge battle switching an existing IBM system (and add-ons to that system) over to the open source alternatives.

Re:Can't take recommendations seriously

[TwinkieStix]

Interesting. Tell that to Flickr, Facebook, Wikipedia, Google, Nokia and YouTube. Or, how about Slashdot and Digg - capable of bringing down moderately sized web sites with the click of a million mice?

Check out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySQL [wikipedia.org]
http://www.mysql.com/customers/customer.php?id=281 [mysql.com]
http://www.mysql.com/news-and-events/generate-article.php?type=ss&id=slashdot [mysql.com]

Just as a single example, what kind of scalability do most people need beyond Facebook and Wikipedia. I work for a very large internet company that has standardized on Oracle, and we have several well-paid DBAs who spend all day monitoring and tweaking our database servers. My previous job was a different large company that used MySQL as a back end for a very similar infrastructure (Java EE, Spring, Hibernate, Clustered in a similar way) with not a single full-time DBA (the helpdesk manager was the only real DBA other than the deployment engineers).

Now, I'm not a professional DBA. I'm just a programmer, but I was one of the maintainers of the MySQL server (I don't get to touch the Oracle servers here except on my local developers instance). I can tell you from personal experience that MySQL is easier to maintain and administer, faster to start up, and requires far fewer system resources to keep going. Judging by just the performance of Wikipedia and Facebook, it seems to perform quite well under heavy load. So, please tell me what basis you have to place MySQL out of the elite top-tier of database servers?

Re:quickbooks?

[josmar52789]

Try xTuple.... Has a lot of the same user-friendliness as Quickbooks - but doesn't lack features like some other accounting/sales/CRM/inventory systems.

It's enterprise-class and you can buy support from the vendor.

Microsoft Project

[Anonymous Coward]

Does any one know of a good alternative to Microsoft Project? I am working on a small (academic) practicum project with a constraint that no money is to be spent on acquiring software. I tried OpenProject [openproj.org] but that seems to have quite a few rough edges. Any other alternatives?

Re:Forum software enterprise, but no Exchange?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.citadel.org/doku.php

I haven't used it yet, but Citadel is often touted as the piece you're looking for.

Re:Bacula

[alta]

Can everyone please give their opinion of Bacula vs Amanda? (The only thing that looks good TO ME about BackupPC is it's data de-duplication) Currently I'm using Retrospect, and it gets the job done, but has flaws and I'm not ready to pay the upgrade price (we originally got a free license) I'm a VERY mixed environment, we have: Win2k3 w/exchange Win2k3 for file/print Centos for: MySQL Apache Pen/VRRP load balancing MailScanner virus/spam gateway Vmware Server (all hosts are linux, guests are mixed) Vmware ESXi Right now retrospect does a good job on all of it except MySQL. Well, except for the fact that it recently lost a backup set at the same time the server hosting the files died, loosing 20GB of data :/ I have another handwritten backup script that rsyncs the most crucial data to exavault.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Open Source Financial Software?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone here have any experience with and/or recommendations for any open source finincial software suitable for running a small (but growing!) services company?

We are currently running on QuickBooks, but we are finding it extremely limiting.

Thanks!
AC

Enterprise

[dkixk]

You know, I've been hearing that term, Enterprise, thrown about for a while now and I *still* don't know what it's supposed to mean. Maybe Wikipedia can help.

Enterprise software is software intended to solve an enterprise problem (rather than a departmental problem) and often written using an Enterprise Software Architecture

Off to a good start. So, what is an enterprise? Merriam Webster thinks that it is one of the following:

1. a project or undertaking that is especially difficult, complicated, or risky
2. readiness to engage in daring or difficult action : initiative
3. a: a unit of economic organization or activity ; especially : a business organization b: a systematic purposeful activity

So, apparently, Enterprise Software can be software that helps one recite the alphabet backwards while drunk (difficult), pick random sex partners (risky), walk up to Mike Tyson to insult him (daring), or helps, for example, my little cousin run her lemonade stand (economic activity).

Re:Forum software enterprise, but no Exchange?

[jimicus]

Zimbra is so good, I'm shocked it wasn't on his list. The one caveat is it's owned by Yahoo!, so if they either go away (doesn't seem likely) or do get bought out by Microsoft (also doesn't seem likely at this time), the support for it may disappear. But then, it's open source, it'll never really die, will it?

Ah. Funny you should say that.

I looked into Zimbra and actually, it's not as simple as that. It's licensed under a modified MPL, not GPL, with a very heavy trademark protection stance - you can't rebrand it, for one thing. It's a complicated enough project that I don't see there being a successful fork unless it's backed by a commercial enterprise and any commercial enterprise wanting to take it over would have to buy the rights to the Zimbra name.

embarrassment in a business sense ..

[rs232]

"We are migrating a whole bunch of sites away from eRoom because it's so expensive .. [and an embarrassment in a business sense because of the costs]

Expensive, how so, licenses, maintenance, down time, explain Spock ?

[we're realizing substantial cost savings by migrating to a closed source solution.]"

What 'closed source solution did your company choose, who did the choosing, how is this solution saving your costs?

"I didn't know it was open source .. but the guy who brought it into our enterprise is a huge proponent of open source"

This is curiously contradictory, while he was enthusing on 'open source' did he neglect to mention that eRoom was so expensive? Did you even ask about the license, even when the splash screen came up?

"He has rapidly lost interest in it over the past 12 months, mainly because it was a headache to administer"

What's he being doing over the past twelve months to earn his salary. Does he stil lwork there? How did you company manage preceding your migration to the 'commercial' solution. What is it about these 'open source fanbois', don't they have any business discipline?

What was it doing that caused the excessive administration. Generally, from what I've seen, and I've been in the business for over fifteen years, once a system is up and running, and baring hardware failure, it requires minimal administration, a bunch of scripts does it all.

"I'm amused by seeing it in an article about using open source alternatives to save money"

I'm amazed that Ford Motor Company seems to be able to get it working. What business are you in again ?

Re:Database Sofware

[berend botje]

I may be biased, but I think Postgresql is *easier* to use than MySQL. Thanks to PgAdminIII even newbies can do a fine job of managing a rock-solid RDBMS.

Re:Microsoft Project

[Flopy]

Ever tried Planner? http://live.gnome.org/Planner [gnome.org] There's also a Windows version.

Re:Not enterprise at all!

[EveLibertine]

The alternative explanation of swordgeek's definition of "Enterprise" software (Star Trek jokes aside) is that, according to his definition, there is currently no enterprise software available anywhere, from anyone, nor has there ever been any.

I'm willing to accept that as a reasonable answer.