One Man's Trash is Another Man's Treasure...
What is unthinkable at the enterprise level, is daily necessity in MicroBusiness. The concept of using Open Source creatively, and to do a job beyond what it is thought of as doing, is a living, breathing reality for businesses of the size described in the original article, and more so for even smaller ones.
Businesses of this size require something beyond make-do desktop solutions, but cannot afford enterprise level solutions, which are geared for business needs far beyond what MicroBusinesses require. We find the most varied needs, and the greatest degree of scalablility, required in businesses with less than 20 employees. The needs of these businesses are very often not classifiable by standard corporate models, and they are widely varied, so that each contract presents a new foray into the unknown.
We rely almost exclusively on Open Source, most of it Linux or Unix based. We've searched out the better supported, and more sustainable pieces of software. We don't hack code, for the same reasons it has been mentioned that ZenCart would be unsustainable - if you cannot easily and quickly update something without having to hand edit hundreds of bits of code, then it isn't going to be an affordable solution long term, ESPECIALLY for a budget operation.
But there are many stable, flexible Open Source components which can be assembled into an interim level solution for businesses within a growth phase where they are aware that they'll need to make radical changes again in 2-3 years. When the prospect of another level of changes is that far out, it makes sense to offer them a solution you know they'll outgrow, because technology is changing fast enough that major changes would be required within that time frame anyway. And in the mean time, a solution that has some limitations that do not affect a smaller company's ability to meet day to day needs, is perfectly achievable. It does put more of the support and maintenance burden on in-house or contracted tech support rather than on the software company, but that is also a sustainable and affordable reality IF the right applications are chosen to start with.
Laura
Mom to Eight and CEO
