April 21, 2005 -- SugarCRM, DotProject, and Mambo Server have joined the line up of hosted business solutions offered by Connect Computing and other providers and consultants.
Over the last couple of months, a new version of these projects have been released and they are outstanding solutions for small and medium-sized businesses. SugarCRM is becoming a viable
alternative to expensive CRM packages. It is similar to Salesforce.com but the code can be downloaded and installed anywhere.
Connect Computing started out offering only OSCommerce and SQL-Ledger. Currently they have half a dozen supported solutions.
DotProject is a web-based project management tool similar to MS Project and Share Point Services. It handles file uploads and forums as well and managing projects and tasks.
Mambo Server is a content management system that supports news articles, static web pages, blogs, etc. There is a growing community behind this software and the template based system is
very nice.
These business packages are all built upon a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP)architecture which makes them extremely easy to maintain. PHP developers have created a standard "module"
way of doing things that is evident in all three applications.
"Business and IT professionals need to be aware that there is growing trend to use Open Source and several Open Source projects are become more mature than their proprietary
counter-parts", said Roy Hoobler of Connect Computing.
Although some knowledge of PHP might be required for any administrator to work with these products, only a "novice" level and familiarity makes working with these applications fun.
Connect Computing Inc. has more information on their website.