Take a swing at Linux for small business
With most business-grade Linux distributions, you already have every software package a small business could ever use. Putting them all together, though, could be tough. If you know Linux well, it's not a problem. If you don't, you should consider putting the small-business Linux software suites into the field.
The best known of these is IBM's Small Business Suite for Linux (SBSL). This includes DB2, the WebSphere Application Server and Lotus Domino. These programs are integrated together to provide small businesses with all of the messaging, Web site and data management that they could ever need. Better still, if your customer wants to start play immediately, the package's install program lets you install the entire package, or only part of it, in as clean a manner as we've ever seen a back-office suite go up.
On the user side, SBSL also includes WebSphere design tools for Linux and Windows, and Lotus Notes, SmartSuite and Domino Designer for Windows. At a price of US$499 per server and US$90 per client with a hard limit of 100 users and full support for the Caldera, Red Hat, SuSE and TurboLinux distributions, SBSL is as an attractive option.
Say, though, that your customers want simply a "best of breed" Linux server. You could build your own, or you could deploy e-smith's Server and Gateway 4.1. This Red Hat 7.0 distribution-based package takes a simple ideaâ€"-deploy preconfigured, top-of-the-line open-source programs with an easy-to-use installation and management programâ€"-and easily runs with it.
The e-smith product includes the Apache Web server, the Qmail e-mail server, the Squid proxy server, a Point-to-Point Transfer Protocol (PPTP) VPN, Samba, and all of the other network server/Internet gateway basics. It's an impressive package, and with its preset support for Windows, Mac and Linux clients, it will appeal to even offices that have autographed photos of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs on the CEO's wall.
If the technology doesn't do it for you, the priceâ€"-US$595 for an annual subscription that gets you the software, upgrades and unlimited technical support, via toll-free phone, fax or emailâ€"-is mighty convincing. And, your most cost-conscious customers will love that you actually can run the server on as little as a 60MHz Pentium with acceptable results. On our test systemâ€"a 100MHz Pentium that's seen better daysâ€"it had no trouble handling the load of a 25-user small office.
