KVeman Dec 3, 2004   9:45 AM GMT

Let's back things up a bit... A) What platform(s) are currently in use? B) What's the budget? C) What's the timeline? B) Not all ERP's are the same, as each has its own strengths and weaknesses. And in the case of PeopleSoft/JDE, longevity becomes a factor. C) Is there a mandate to have all of the given requirements present within on package? Is multiplatform and/or multivendor integration out of the question?

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Jwadrian Dec 3, 2004   10:10 AM GMT

I would suggest putting your office on a site to site VPN thought your firewall. This would make them appear as if they where on your corporate network. Once they are connected you can manage these resources the same as any other in your location

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Amalhotra Dec 3, 2004   11:12 AM GMT

Moons, Unfortunately there in not one panacea, but something very close. For a mid-sized company(which I am assuming here, let me know if I am wrong), a Lotus Notes base may make the most sense. Over the last 11 years of my career I have worked with numerous technologies from dotnet, websphere, lotus notes, ibm on-demand systems, Outlook, VB and I can keep naming. What I have found is very simply Lotus Notes is the best corporate email and small application infrastructure. Currently I consult for a 3.5 bln $ travel services company. I have worked with Lotus Notes for over 10 years now and I haven't had a single virus infection and I can compare it to an organization I consulted for in 2001 where they used Exchange and Outlook and within 3 months the Admin ran twice to my desk to pull my data cable out so that my machine does not get affected by the virus. Yes I have seen some users not too pleased with the lotus notes interface, but it's just a matter of training them and showing them the power of the product and they are wowed because they can do so much more with Lotus Notes than with Outlook. We use Lotus sametime which integrates with Lotus Notes as our instant messaging and meeting space. It integrates with Netmeeting to give video conferencing. I won't count on it for professional quality video conferencing and we don't use this feature much, but I think it will serve day to day needs pretty well. Also sametime gives white boarding and application sharing capabilities. Again a free tool like VNC works much better but gives only desktop sharing capabilities. VNC is nice if I want to hook up to my server, but in a business meeting I want to share my PowerPoint but not my email so most users feel comfortable with application sharing which Lotus Sametime offers and not desktop sharing. Common database - We pretty much use lotus for our discussions, keeping word documents, keeping presentations etc. The best part is that the inbuilt search facility allows us to search the content of these Word or Powerpoint attachments too ERP package - Now that?s a tough one coz I don't know much about your organization. We use Siebel in some parts of the company and there is a mixed response. I personally am not that impressed. Firstly it's VERY expensive. And I mean compared to the value it provides. Secondly the technology it uses has some serious limitations, like data from web service calls need to be persisted in its database before it gets displayed. Therefore it is extremely slow in certain scenarios. And the distributed / replication capabilities of Siebel just didn?t make the mark for us. We therefore developed a home grown application on Lotus Notes for our CRM needs in the sales dept. It works like a charms and users really love the ability to work disconnected and also the fact that they get all there applications - CRM, Sales Tracking, HR applications, Budget management all on the same Lotus Notes platform. From a company perspective it saves a lot of $'s in training, implementation and maintenance costs. Emails - I have covered. With Notes you can get both intranet and internet emails. Large file transfers. For file sharing of moderate sized files I recommend attaching them to a shared database on Notes. We just attach them to a discussion database. I also tried a personal web based storage database running on the domino (Lotus Notes server is called domino) server and it worked well too. For really large files however I will recommend a FTP server. Video conference - covered that remote IT diagnostic - We primarily use VNC for that. A few nice to have features that we are currently exploiting is blackberry integration with Lotus Notes and my favorite is the mobile web infrastructure. I don?t have a blackberry and don?t intend to buy one coz I love my palm treo 600 but I like the fact that since the Domino server has a built in web server so I can get my email over a simple web browser and even on mobile devices like my palm or the other old verizon phone I have. Also I can deploy web applications in an instant without any unnecessary complication. It?s tough making this decision. It?s not just what you choose for now, but what can give you the flexibility tomorrow and grow with you. I hope my reply helps.

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Travelmate Dec 3, 2004   1:30 PM GMT

whe have software develop units in india and we are using daily remote access from in terminal server over a distanse of more then 9000 KM trough a normal DSL internet connection and it works fine. also we are giving support to or customers all over the world this way without any delay. But do not take small bussiness server because there terminal server is disabled. averithing is working and we seen to be on the same speed in or european or india office.

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