As you all know I am a great proponent of Open-source and Linux. Each week I look around the web for news stories about it, looking for something I can write about.

This week I found an article on Tech Republic from a writer that according to his BIO is very knowledgeable in Linux and FOSS, here is the link to the article: http://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-configure-ubuntu-linux-server-as-a-domain-controller-with-samba-tool/

In the article, he is telling people about how they can use Linux as a domain controller but is quick to point out that it will only be an NT4 domain controller. Well who would want to build an NT4 domain controller and put it on their network, it would be very counter-productive.

The thing is he is right, the way he built the server it would be an NT4 domain controller, but if he had just downloaded Samba from Sambas website, and gotten the latest version, rather than using the version in the repository of his Linux distro, he would have actually had a Windows 2003 domain controller.

He goes on to say that this would not be an Active Directory domain controller, again why would anyone really want that.

I commented to the writer that if he had just taken a bit more time, he could have had that Windows 2003 Active Directory domain controller. To me, that would have been a better promotional story for Linux.

I am rambling a bit, I guess my biggest problem with what gets reported about Linux and FOSS is sometimes old news, and because of that businesses are in the dark about what Linux and FOSS can do for them.

So what I am asking my readers for is if you run into an article that seems to show Linux and FOSS in a substandard way, let me know about the articles, and I will see if I can give you a better and more modern take on the problem.

I have been trying to come up with some really good info on all that Angbert Enterprises is working on, and kind of came up with this idea. How the SMB is being under-served.

What do I mean by this? I was at a potential clients site the other day, (I was there as a customer) and I had helped the son of the owner with a pretty simple math problem in a spreadsheet. What I knew was that when he took my order he did it in Excel, but that order was not connected back to any other process as near as I could tell, so I asked him if they had looked at an ERP solution for the business. He asked what it was and as I explained it to him, he told me that they had just paid some really large amount of money to upgrade their QuickBooks.

I asked him, why he did not use QuickBooks to input my purchase order, and then be able to turn that into my receipt etc, he really had no answer other than he really had no idea about how to fully use it. So, I offered to help them work with QB, and get them set up, so that they have a better handle on inventory, PO’s, Invoices, etc.

Now I really wish that I had talked to him sooner about this, because I would have moved him to ERPNext, this would have saved him at least two thousand dollars, plus he would have a system set up for his needs that would be able to track his inventory and all other parts of his business. Now because he spent so much money already, I may not be able to get the job, because it is a hard sell to to an SMB, “you bought that for X amount of dollars, now you need to spend this much more to really use it.”

This is why I offer Open Source solutions to my clients, except for the possible cost of purchasing some hardware, the only thing they will be paying for is my support for getting them set up and running, and if they want maintaining their systems. In the end the TOC is thousands of dollars less than the commercial software, especially when we are talking about the SMB,but this still applies to larger entities as well.

If you are interested in finding out more, contact us, we do not charge while gathering requirements, find another consulting company that says that.

When I first became a Google Apps for Business reseller (now G-Suite), I looked at it as a great platform for a small to midsize business to use to save money and get some really great features. As it turns out these features are fantastic for any company of any size.

I have worked for many companies over the years and the one thing that always is an issue is TCO of email and email storage. When the IT department discovers that they keep having to upgrade the NAS because people are keeping too much email, they start putting data limits on the inbox size, and have to spend money on archiving solutions, because now they have to be able to retrieve emails going back to certain dates because of possible lawsuits. Well, G-Suite has you covered, the basic G-suite solution is $5.00 per month per user and comes with 30GB of data space, and I have heard of users retaining over 100,000 emails and not using half of their allotted space. For the larger businesses, you can go to $10.00 per month per user, and get unlimited space. The larger space also comes with features that will cover Sarbanes-Oxley requirements, such as Vault for eDiscovery that covers email, chats, and files, an archive of all emails and chats sent by your company, and you can even set retention policies. The costs for all this in an in-house solution can easily be in the $300.00 or higher per year on an in-house solution such as Exchange. This one key point should sell you on G-Suite, but there is so much more that it offers.

If you are a small business, you may not need voice and video conferencing as much, but if you have divisions, and offices all over the country or world, integrated video conferencing can save you money in travel and other expenses. Again, in the companies I have worked for, they have conference calls with teammates on all sorts of subjects, and these companies pay for conference services so that they can make these calls. With G-Suite, it is integrated within Hangouts, and it is already included in the Basic $5.00 plan, nothing more to pay for, nothing needed to be added to your IT budget.

Collaboration, I cannot tell you how many times I have worked on a document with one of my teammates, and played the I sent you the update email back and forth. This email game in itself leads to excessive emails in storage. With G-Suite, you can collaborate on live documents, meaning that all the team members on that conference call above can have the same document open at the same time and can add or subtract from the document live, and they all will see the changes. It does not have to be during that meeting, it could be any time. There have been so many times in my corporate life where I am collaborating on a document, and I need to make a change and my collaborator has gone to lunch with the document open, now it is locked, and I can’t make my change til they get back. Not with G-Suite, if it is open you can edit it, and when the person gets back they will be shown what was changed, who changed it, and when. This is especially great when your team is working on a spreadsheet that needs to be constantly updated.

Administration, for those of you that are like me that have been administering computer systems over the years, you will really love the ease of administration of G-Suite. Adding users and groups, managing devices, and making sure your data is secure is so simple with G-Suite. There is also a Google Cloud Directory Sync, that allows you to make sure your G-Suite domain and your Active Directory domain are in sync. This sync never makes changes to your AD, and has features to make sure that the data is accurate on the cloud side.

There are so many other features in G-Suite if you are interested in knowing more contact us at www.angbertenterprises.com

 

I was reading an article the other day claiming that Linux on the desktop is dead.  By that, what they were saying is that businesses were not going to move to Linux as a desktop platform because of software constraints, and administration of the Linux Desktop environment.

I really do not understand this thinking.  Here are my thoughts on why Linux is still a viable platform for the desktop, especially for the SMB, but even for a larger business.

“MOST USERS ONLY USE THE BROWSER AND OFFICE APPLICATIONS”

That’s it, there are of course some specialty software’s out there that can only run on a windows platform, but in today’s day and age those are getting fewer and fewer.  I have worked in the banking industry, and advertising, and have been doing it since 1995, and still I have found that most users only use two applications, the browser, and some office platform.

So, how do you get around this need for some specialized software that only runs on Windows, Virtualization screams the loudest.  At my last job, we created some virtual windows machines and delivered a script to the users machines that would allow them to pick an RDP session from a list to start a windows desktop and do the tasks they needed from there.  That is one solution.

Another could be application virtualization, or even in some cases Wine on Linux, the point is there are ways around the issues of using Linux on the desktop, and these solutions will not break the bank of an SMB having to buy a few licenses of Windows.  The savings for the SMB will come from the low cost of Linux, and the ability to run older hardware longer.

Now you could argue the Linux doesn’t integrate well with Active Directory, well I am here to tell you it can and does.  I have an Active Directory domain controller I built using Samba, and my Linux workstation integrates perfectly into it.  I log into my domain when I log on to my workstation/laptop, and I even have offline access to my AD account when I am away from my office.

If you are an SMB, or really any business that is looking to save some money on your IT budget, give us a call, we will be glad to come and make an evaluation, and if feasible move you to a Linux platform that will work for your business.

Angbert Enterprises will begin offering to its customers an ERP solution.

An ERP is an acronym for Enterprise Resource Planning, this is an application that is used by a company to track Sales, Inventory, Human Resources, Billing, manufacturing, and even Point of Sale including bar code scanning.

The solution that Angbert Enterprises has decided to go with is an open source solution called ERPNext.  ERPNext is currently installed and being used by over 1000 companies around the world in over 130 different countries.

ERPNext can be installed as a standalone web app on your own local server, or there is also a cloud based solution.

Contact us today so we can give you a free demo, and then start helping you with this solution.

Contact Us Today