[Sussex] An actual Linux application question :-)

[Neil Ford]

On 18/12/02 3:31 pm, "Mark Harrison" <mark.harrison at ekingfisher.com> wrote:

> A mate of mine is setting up, with two former colleagues, a small
> consulting business.
> 
> They are each going to be working from their homes.
> 
> They want a shared database to manage their contacts on (normal
> marketing things like - name, company, email, phone no, last contact,
> letters sent, Christmas card list....etc....)
> 
> They are looking at Access :-0
> 
> I have persuaded him to "give me a couple of days" to come up with an
> alternative. My mate has (BT!) ADSL, so will be able to host the
> "server".
> 
> I'm assuming that there must be packages out there to hook up to a MySQL
> backend, and provide a web front-end already there...
> 
> I know I _could_ go and surf sourceforge for a while, but would rather
> ask if anyone already knew of something?
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Mark
> 
I may get unsubbed from the list for saying this, but depending on the area
they are consulting in, they may want to look at ACT! for their contacts
management. It really does it's job well and whilst it is windows based and
commercial, there are some applications where sometimes that is the best
option.

Make sure your mate also understands the lack of service level agreement
that he has with his ADSL line if he's going to be running anything business
critical off of it. I'm not saying you can't do it, just that you have to be
aware of the risks. How much would it cost if the other people in the
business couldn't access the contacts database for say 1 hour? 1 day? 1
week? Having recently had first hand experience of lack of service on behalf
of clients from a couple of ADSL suppliers, I know exactly what it's like.
Being told it would take 14 days to get one circuit back was not funny.

If your mate would like some consultancy, feel free to pass him my way :-)

Neil.
-- 
Neil Ford
neil[at]smudgypixels[dot]net
http://www.smudgypixels.net/neil/photos/