There is a common need to be able to share contacts and calendars and other information efficiently among employees. Until recently, the common solution was Microsoft's Exchange server. Although the Exchange server is the industry's leader, its price prevents most of our clients from justifying its use. That is, it is too expensive. Fortunately there is an open source alternative that runs on Linux.

Our firm has internally evaluated this open source alternative for the past year, and it has been absolutely reliable. We use this groupware server internally as our only calendar and contact management system. As a result of its tremendous success within our firm, we have decided to make it available to our clients. We buy Dell computers, install Linux and the open source groupware package and deliver true value to our clients. If you are interested in this solution, please contact us for more information or for a live demonstration.

There are only three rules in computing: (1) backup (2) backup (3) backup. Unfortunately, many of our clients have found their current backup solutions to be unreliable and difficult to use. In addition, restoring files from the backup media has proven frustrating and time consuming.

We have developed a Linux-based backup server, using Dell computers, to perform an automatic nightly backup. This backup process saves the two most recent versions of the file.

Retrieving files from the backup is simple, and all users on the network can restore files themselves without calling the system administrator. Restoring files from the backup is as simple as using Windows Explorer to browse to the backup server, locate the desired file, and click-and-drag.

If you would like more information about these solutions, please contact us.