LinuxSA January 2008 - Running a business - the Linux Open Source Way

  Hi all,

  Time for the January meeting announcement (it's next Tuesday)...

  The usual details:

   When:   7:00pm-9:30pm (doors open 6:45pm) on
           Tuesday, 15th January, 2008
   Where:  Senior Secondary Assessment Board
           of South Australia (SSABSA)
           Boardroom (1st floor)
           60 Greenhill Road
           Wayville SA
   Cost:   FREE
   Who:    Anyone and everyone.
           No pre-registration necessary.

  Presentation:

   Laz Davila will be talking about "Running a business - the Linux
   Open Source way":

   Can Linux and Open Source tools "run a business"?

   What are the advantages and disadvantages?

   This talk presents the case study of Davtec, a local software
   development and IT support business.

   Davtec's "back-office" is made up of a collection of Linux servers -
   with staff using windows workstations and a variety of proprietary
   and open source tools.

   This presentation will give a quick rundown of the tools used to run
   the business (with interactive demonstrations of any tools of
   interest):

   - Samba / Openldap as the domain controller
   - Qmail / Clam AV / Spamassassin / Squirrelmail - Complete
     mail solution
   - Asterisk / PHP PBX interface - VOIP telephony
   - dotProject - Project Management
   - Twiki - Knowledgebase and Quality Management System 
   - Sugar - Client Relationship Management solution
   - Journyx - Timesheet system solution
   - OpManager - Network monitoring solution
   - SVN / WebSVN - Version Control
   - Eventum - Issue tracking

   Based on this, and on experiences setting up clients with Linux and
   Windows servers, the presentation will offer a set of "lessons
   learnt" - what works, what doesn't, and what we would do
   differently.

   Laz Davila is the director of Davtec, a small business he started
   four years ago, which focuses on providing systems and software
   engineering services, but also deals with IT solutions and support
   for local businesses.

   Since graduating in 1985 from Adelaide University, Laz has taken on
   many roles in software development and IT, including: software
   engineering; systems engineering; IT support and project management.

   Through his career, Laz has "grown up" with Unix and many of its
   variants, such as AT&T Sys V, BSD, SCO, Solaris, Minix and most
   recently Linux. With a "hands on" attitude and an appreciation of
   the elegance of Unix based operating systems, back in 2004 Laz
   decided to underpin his new business with a "Linux based
   back-office". His talk tonight presents lessons learnt from this
   exercise, highlighting the advantages and disadvantages of
   introducing Linux into the business environment (where Microsoft is
   still "king").

  Finding the Venue and Parking:

   You can park either beneath or next to the SSABSA building.  If you
   are driving west along Greenhill road, you can turn left into the
   driveway if you are going slow enough to notice the sign and turn in
   time :-), or you can turn left at the next road, and left again to
   go along the street behind the building to access the carpark that
   way.

   If you try to enter the building from street level but the doors are
   locked, walk down the stairs and use the lift in the below-ground
   carpark.

  Pizza:

   After the meeting, please join us for pizza at San Giorgios (cnr.
   Frome Street and Rundle Street in the city).

  For more information:

   Email: organisers@linuxsa.org.au
   Web Page: http://www.linuxsa.org.au/
   Mailing List: linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au
   IRC: #linuxsa on irc.freenode.net

tech/LinuxSA | 09 Jan 2008 | #