THIS IS A TEST INSTANCE. ALL YOUR CHANGES WILL BE LOST!!!!
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This document is all about the question: Is Open For Business OFBiz something for Me? We have talked to many who are using or considering using Open For Business. We have also talked to many who are trying to leverage OFBiz in their business as a tool or a starting point for more focused endeavors. This document is based on all of that feedback and includes ideas from dozens of discussions with those who are benefiting from OFBiz right now.
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The most common question asked about open source software is "how do you make money with it?" The most common answer to that question, among professional and amateur alike, is "by providing services based on the software!"
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Software Development
Offering software development services based on open source software is a very natural and valuable service. Because the original software is open source it is possible to hire someone to modify or add to it. One of the main attractions of open source software is that because the source code is available it can be customized or issues can be resolved quickly without having to go through the maker of the software.
This is especially true of enterprise software like OFBiz. We do all we can to make the applications generic and flexible, but it is impossible to satisfy the needs of everyone who uses it with what is offered as part of the core project. Most companies will have sufficient resources to hire someone to add customizations for them. Such arrangements can range from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands or even millions of dollars. Generally as more money is involved quite a bit more custom functionality and integration with other systems is required.
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Business Analysis & Design
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With Open For Business you can get on your client's good side by recommending a solution that not only has no licensing fees, but can be easily customized. This means that you can actually use all of the good ideas you come up with in the analysis and design phase.
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Web Design
Even organizations that don't require fancy software often desire to have a well done web site. If you are doing web site design right now, chances are you have clients that have grown or have become more ambitious and would like to have eCommerce or other functionality on their customer facing or internal web site. Introducing your clients to Open For Business may help them find what they need and give you good work along the way. And if you don't have technical skills for hosting or deployment in house, don't worry, there are many other groups you can work or partner with who can help with just that.
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These services are especially valuable coming from a web design group that has special talent such a artists and marketers. Because OFBiz is flexible and easy to change and maintain you can offer your clients the best of your creativity.
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Hosting
Even if a customer does have sufficient money for a great solution they don't always have the expertise or desire in house to keep that solution running. Larger companies do often have staff and systems in place to host their applications, but there are thousands upon thousands of small and medium sized companies that do not. When you consider the cost of the facilities needed for reliable hosting it makes sense to let someone else take care of that, someone who already has those facilities in place an working well for many other organizations.
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Though you may find two Workflow Engines in OFBiz (in older releases in specialpurpose : workflow and shark directories) OFBIz itself does not use a Workflow Engine. It has been tried, but OFBiz is finally using EDA through its concept of ECA (Event Condition Action)
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- Ergonomy
- In ecommerce the templates are often changed so much that accessibility ends up more in the hands of the designers and developers who customize the system (so make sure you have a good service provider!). The OOTB ecommerce templates do a pretty good job of this by using styled text instead of images, alt-text on images, and so on.
- For the OOTB (Out Of The Box) back-end functionality, accessibility is considered, and to be maintained it must be considered in customizations. These are primarily web-based applications and to improve accessibility are very text-heavy, etc.
- Note also that OFBiz back-end is able to be read from left to right or right to left (try Chinese or Arab languages to check)
- For disabled persons
- We did some effort in the back-end part of OFBiz. Sight disabled persons should be able to work with OFBiz without too much pain. For instance, following Jeffrey Zeldman's excellent advices in his "Designing with Web Standards" book (see our books page for details) we have implemented an access key to skip navigation and go diretly to content area. This concept could be extended of course...