Wikki Verma Suggest Before opening an IT consultancy, I did my homework. I interviewed lifelong consultants. I read books. I even took personality tests to confirm that my psychological constitution matched the challenges I did face as an entrepreneur owning and operating my own business.

1. Wikki Verma,
President
Computer Consulting Specialists, Inc.
Livingston, CA, United States

2. What is Open Source Software
 www.opensource.org says 10 things, but we summarize as:
 Software in a community that is:
 Freely Used (no warranty, no limits on usage)
 Freely Extended (must share source, represent original works and
owners)
 Many varieties of licenses, they ARE different.
Know what they mean.
 Check out www.opensource.org for large list and details of each.

3. Summary
A case study of a project created with open source technology.
 Project analysis: Goals & Resources
 Technology: TCO, Evaluation & Decision
 Implementation: Building the project
 Lessons: What was learned
 Resources

4. Project Analysis
 What are we doing? What do we have?

5. Project Analysis: Goals
 Project – functional, scalable, simple.
 Timeline – when will each phase roll out?
 Budget – how much money do we have?
 Longevity – short term utility or long term application?
 Equity – invest time in ourselves, or dollars in outside
vendors?
Inexpensive, Build Fast, Quality: pick any two.

6. Project Analysis: Resources
 Staff Knowledge – what is current ability of staff?
 Time – how long do we have?
 Money – how much do we have?
 Technology – what is already in use?

7. Technology
An Evaluation of Open Source Software

8. Technology: Total Cost of Ownership
(TCO)
 Startup Time: days or weeks?
 Development Time: weeks, months, years?
 Startup Money: cost of acquisition
 Development Money: recurring costs and time.
 Equity: $ pay to outside, vs. pay to ourselves
 Risk: Dependency on outside trends?
 Support: availability? Cost?

9. Technology: Investigation
 LAMP: Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP
 Windows: ASP/ActiveX, .NET, SQL Server
 IBM WebSphere, Sun ONE, HP

10. Technology: Evaluation for TCO
 Tech staff has both Windows and UNIX background
 We have time (several months ok)
 Low budget, little money to spend.
 Prefer to invest equity in ourselves.
 Would like to reduce risk from outside tech trends.
 Need solid, reliable server that requires little maintenance.
 Need development questions/problems solved, but not real
time.

11. Technology: Decision to use LAMP
 This is a new project (no migration necessary)
 Our staff has UNIX (Linux) experience
 Large user support community for core technology
 Invest into own technology equity
 Reduce risk of reliance on technology trends
 Low cost to entry (no license or hardware fees)

12. Implementation
Putting Open Source Software to Work

13. Implementation: Development
Environment
 Linux server, Windows 2000 & XP workstations.
 Apache, MySQL and PHP.
 CVS & e-mail/IM for configuration management.
 Smarty template engine (smarty.php.net)
 PEAR application framework (pear.php.net)
 SafeSQL - PHP Class to prepare SQL statements
Google to find. Written by author of Smarty.

14. Implementation: Development
 Data model with subject matter experts, talk through 1-to-
Many relationships, sanity check.
 Design PHP class hierarchy for business N-tier layer.
 Create shim PHP classes for web designers to use while
building and testing HTML templates. This provides ability
to develop GUI in parallel.
 Smarty template syntax can be HTML syntax compliant for
use with Dreamweaver.

15. Implementation: Open Source value,
case in point
 We found a useful PHP class for preparing SQL statements
called SafeSQL.
 However, it did not provide all the functionality we wanted.
 In about 2 hours we modified the source to add our
features.
 We then e-mailed a copy back to the author; that these
features may be included in future versions (as he my
decide).
 We enjoy similar features added by other developers.

16. Lessons Learned
What have we learned from our experience?

17. Lessons Learned: Support
 Subscribe to on-line newsletters early on. Look for digest
versions and skim for understanding of product and
current support.
 Plan time for support from open source community.
Response time may be days.
 Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Be courteous to the open
source community.

18. Thanks For Read
WIKKI VERMA