DataSync Business News

In the last few years there have been a number of open source groups which have created free and inexpensive open source alternatives to many of the major business productivity tools available to companies. There’s Open Office to replace Microsoft Office, Yahoo’s Zimbra to replace Exchange, SugarCRM to replace Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce.com and other proprietary CRM solutions, GIMP to replace Photoshop and a number of other great open source alternatives that allow companies to do many of the same things they can do with expensive commercial software tools for next to nothing.

Open source software often gives much better bang for your buck, unfortunately if you don’t have a very tech-savvy IT guy, these solutions can be somewhat difficult to implement. Recently the South Dakota Board of Regents was evaluating new course management tools and their first decision was to rule out open source solutions because they simply did not have the Linux expertise to make good use of any of them. Many companies and organizations find themselves in similar dilemmas. There’s great software out there to use, but no one in the company or organization knows how to implement it. So what do you do?

Many organizations choose to opt for the proprietary solution that comes with great support and installation help and end up spending much more money than they need to. Instead of caving in and paying full price for proprietary software, instead consider getting an IT consultant to help your company leverage open source software. There are many companies which are called Application Service Providers (ASPs) that can do the setup of the servers, installation of the software, and manage it for you for a very low price. For example, DataSync offers a complete Zimbra-based email solution that’s much cheaper than Exchange and is technically superior as well. DataSync also offers a superb SugarCRM Hosting service that’s much less expensive than SalesForce.com.

DataSync and application hosting companies like it can help your company leverage the great open source applications available and you don’t need any of the advanced technical know-how to make it happen. It’s still a lot cheaper than proprietary software, and you get all of the great benefits of using open source tools.

If you’re looking to host Desktop Application, you might want to find a more traditional IT consultant. Chances are any for-hour IT consultant can help you install GIMP, Open Office, and desktop applications like that for a relatively low one-time fee. It’ll be much cheaper than paying for expensive proprietary solutions.

Just because your small or medium sized business doesn’t have an open source technologist on staff doesn’t mean that you can’t make use of these great pieces of software. Application service providers and IT consultants can help you leverage these great software solutions for next to nothing.

It’s been less than two weeks since Joomla’s developers announced that a stable version of Joomla 1.5 was available and the new version of this open source content management system has received glowing reviews from many web developers. We at DataSync are proud to announce that we are now offering hosting for Joomla 1.5.

Joomla 1.5 features a number of useful new features, such as on the fly preview, better menu management, a new media manager, a significantly improved extension manager, and new authentication methods. If you’re still using PostNuke, DotNetNuke, or PHPNuke, it’s time to consider switching. Joomla 1.5 has thousands of components and modules available, an amazing developer community, and is one of the best content management systems web developers have available.

If you’re interested in DataSync’s Joomla 1.5 hosting services, have a look at our Joomla Hosting Services or sign up for a free demo.

SugarCRM 5.0 was recently released to the public, and we’ve had a good chance make use of the new version during our day to day business operations. So far, we’ve been incredibly impressed with the new version and the flexibility that it has to offer. Here are five new features in SugarCRM 5.0 that might make you want to upgrade:

Custom Module Builder – SugarCRM 5.0 has a tool which allows users to build their own custom modules to track whatever’s most important to you. It eliminates the need to hire an external development firm to get the reports you want in many cases. The new module builder works with reporting, work flow, and Sugar Studio.

AJAX Email Client – Email is an area of SugarCRM that Sugar significantly improved in version 5.0. The new version of SugarCRM implements its own AJAX Email client that’s very useable. It’s got a rich ajax interface, search, keyboard shortcuts, contacts, and support for multiple contacts. It’s certainly no Zimbra or Outlook, but if that’s all you got, it’s useable.

Improved Sugar Dashboards – Dashboards on Sugar just became much more useable and visually appealing. There’s now support for funnel charts, pie charts, line graphs, bar graphs, and even performance gauge charts. You can create your own custom dashboards or use the ones built in.

Improved Access Control – SugarCRM 5.0 offers a substantially improved user access control system. This will allow you to give your employees access to only the information that they need. This is a significant security improvement and reduces a lot of risk by making sure your employees don’t have too much access to information.

SugarCRM has turned what was already a great customer relationship management tool into something even better. SugarCRM 5.0 has a lot of great new features that improves the usability of the tool, and it’s definitely worth considering.

DataSync offers SugarCRM 5.0 Hosting.

After a long planning and resource allocation phase, our SugarCRM/Zimbra integration project is set to launch March 1, 2008. It’s been great working with the community to build out a strategy and requirements list for the project, now we’re ready to kick it into gear. If you are interested in contributing to our project please get in touch with our development team. We’ve posted the project on SugarForge here. We anticipate launching the initial version by the end of Q2 2008, and will be filling out features throughout the year.

Please get in touch with us if you’re interested in contributing to or purchasing the tool. This project will be open source (GPL3), but we’ll be offering a commercial version with support and implementation assistance. It’s our first foray into open source project management, and we’re excited to contribute our time and resources to the community.

In the last few years we’ve seen a significant number of open source tools which are effective no-cost or low-cost replacements to traditional proprietary tools which can costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to purchase and maintain. Open Office is now very competitive with Microsoft’s Office Suite, GIMP can do many of the things that Adobe Photoshop can do, and the OSS email solution, Zimbra, is making many wonder if Exchange will maintain its market dominance.
On the business side, we have many great open source solutions available, but very few of these tools integrate with each other in any meaningful way. When you purchase software all from the same company, usually their tools will play with each other very well, but when it comes to several different open source projects with different programming teams, you’ll save a lot of money, but there’s little chance of meaningful integration between each application.

That’s all about to change. DataSync is developing a new OSS unification suite which will make many of the open-source tools used by small and medium sized businesses work together as if they were all made by the same company. The project is called the “DataSync Productivity Suite.” The biggest benefit of the solution is that there’s no redundant data between the applications. Instead of having a set of duplicate contacts in SugarCRM and Zimbra, you’ll just have one set of contacts. You’ll only need to enter the data once, and it will show up where it needs to in all of the OSS applications that you leverage.

The DataSync Productivity Suite will have integrated open source applications to meet any and all business needs. It features the Joomla Content Management System for your company’s website, SugarCRM for sales force automation and customer relationship management, Zimbra for your business email needs, and KnowledgeTree for document management. The architecture around the productivity suite is extremely modular, so it’s very easy to add in additional open-source applications as time goes on. In the near future, DataSync will be adding an e-commerce solution to its arsenal of OSS tools available.

DataSync’s Productivity Suite also features a unified logon module which will enable you to sign-on to Joomla, SugarCRM, Zimbra, and KnowledgeTree with one username and password. With a single sign-on, you’ll be able to access all of your business productivity tools at once.

Click Here to Learn More About DataSync’s Productivity Suite

The stable version of Joomla 1.5 recently was released to the public, and I’ve got a chance to implement it on a couple of different sites now. There are a few things moved around, but it’s still the same great content management system with a few great new features. Here are five features that might cause you to want to upgrade to Joomla 1.5.

On the Fly Preview – If you’re making changes to a page, you no longer have to save it before seeing what it’ll look like. Previously if you wanted to experiment with a page that you didn’t necessarily want to keep, you’d have to make a copy of it and then mess around with the copy so the original was intact. Now Joomla 1.5 offers a quick preview button that allows you to see what your new page will look like without having to save.

Improved Menu Management – Joomla’s menuing system received a significant overhaul in version 1.5. Previously you would have to click several buttons and configure things exactly how you wanted. With the new version of Joomla, you can add a new menu item with just three clicks.

New Media Manager – The media manager that is a part of Joomla received significant improvements in Joomla 1.5. There’s a vastly improved user interface that provides thumbnail and detail views of your content. You can also upload multiple files at once with easy and there are now some configuration choices that you didn’t have before.

Simplified Extension Manager – In Joomla version 1.0, there were separate installation pages for templates, components, mambots, and modules. Now there’s just one installation page that works with all of them. You just have to pick-out your file, and Joomla will determine what type of extension it is and install it in the appropriate place for you.

New Authentication Methods – In version 1.0 of Joomla, you were stuck with Joomla’s user accounts and had no other options. Joomla 1.5 now supports OpenID as well as LDAP, so you can integrate your existing user accounts with your new Joomla website. This is certainly a godsend for corporate intranet websites.

Joomla 1.5 has certainly made a number of significant improvements and is easily one of the top open source content managements systems available. Joomla 1.0 worked great, and now Joomla 1.5 has made what was good even better.

DataSync offers Joomla hosting as part of it’s productivity suite.

In the last few years, Zimbra has grown by leaps and bounds in competing with Outlook and Exchange in the corporate email world. Most technical analysts agree that Zimbra has a much better and more server management tools, is much more efficient than exchange, and is more reliable than exchange, however thus far Zimbra has been primarily been an email-server solution, and much less of an email client. It’s has a very useable AJAX web client, but until recently, there was no desktop software that Zimbra created to compete directly with Outlook. Zimbra recently launched a beta of their new desktop client, dubbed Zimbra Desktop, and we’re impressed.

The primary benefit in using Zimbra desktop as opposed to the web client is that you can use it when you’re offline. You might be on the road, have your laptop with you, and want to send an email or save an appointment for later, but you can’t since there’s no internet connection. You can now do that with Zimbra Desktop. You can make any changes you want with Zimbra’s Desktop Client, and then whenever you have an internet connection again, it’ll sync your changes up to the server.

Zimbra Desktop features full email support as you get in Outlook. It also features a fast and indexed search tool. You can also access your calendar and contacts offline. An interesting feature is that you can manage Gmail, Yahoo Mail, IMAP, and POP email accounts in addition to your Zimbra email accounts. This means that you can view all of your Gmail offline, make changes as you’d like, and then when you connect to the internet, any changes you make to the account will by synced.

The client is written in Java and is available on Windows, Mac, or Linux. So far, it’s just a beta, but it’s got a lot of potential. As the development process continues and Zimbra Desktop matures, Outlook is sure to have a fierce competitor.

With the proliferation of Google Apps, Meebo, email web clients and other web applications, it’s very clear that we are moving away from a traditional client-server model of desktop software and moving towards server-side web-applications which we can access using nothing more than our standard web browsers. When it comes to web based email clients which are being increasingly adopted by businesses and universities, there are two primary competitors when it comes business & corporate email solutions, and they are Zimbra (OSS) and Microsoft’s Outlook web client. Which offers an overall better user experience & has technically superior functionality? Let’s find out.

Customization – Outlook’s web client only allows 4-5 different color schemes developed by Microsoft. Zimbra offers close to 10 different themes which each significantly change the look and feel of the client. In addition, developers can create their own Zimbra themes whereas Outlook’s themes are limited to what Microsoft creates.

Address Book, Contacts, & Tasks – Outlook & Zimbra both offer very good address book, contact, and task functionality. These are fairly mature pieces of software and we won’t likely see much change in the near future between either of the clients.

Document Management – Outlook has no support for document management. Zimbra has what they call a “Briefcase” which will allow you to upload and store files in your email server, which can come in really handy when you don’t have a flash drive. It also makes it so you don’t have to email files to yourself.

Instant Messaging – Outlook has no support for instant messaging and Microsoft instead suggests that their customers rely on the Windows Live Messenger service that they offer, but this requires a desktop client, which not everyone wants. For corporate and educational environments, Zimbra offers a very functional instant messaging client. You can add anyone else in your network and chat with them when they have their email clients open, so it’s a great solution for business environments.

External Mail Delivery – Outlook’s desktop client allows you to add multiple POP3 and IMAP email accounts from various servers, but Outlook’s web client is missing this functionality all together. Zimbra’s web client allows you to add as many POP3 and IMAP accounts as your hearts desire.

Preferences – Zimbra has 9 different tabs of options & customizations that you can modify to your heart’s desire, whereas outlook only has one page and very meager settings and customizations that users can play with.

So where do we stand? Zimbra is clearly technically superior because it has all sorts of functionality that Microsoft’s Outlook web client is missing. It also provides a much better user experience because it’s versatile and can be customized to whatever the user’s heart desires.

When we think of the idea of a Meetup Group, most of us think small groups of Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich supporters that organize sparsely attended events for their candidates, but there are a few other interesting groups that have come up as well. It turns out there’s a meetup group in Chicago for the open source application, SugarCRM.

Stefania Viscusi from TCM Net has the story

Open source CRM provider, SugarCRM (News - Alert), offers the “Chicagoland SugarCRM meetup,” for beginners and experts to highlight the latest tips and tricks for making the most out of SugarCRM.

The monthly meeting also offers an answer session with SugarCRM experts, and information about software patches and new releases.

DataSync offers SugarCRM Hosting