Our Original Goal
Our original goal
We started off wanting to re-create our existing DOS product with a graphical user interface and incorporate all that we had learned through 25 years of developing and customizing.
Simply re-writing our product using propriety tools would have bought us a couple of years, put food on the table and appeased our clients. We knew that in all good conscience - this was not the way to go.
Our client base consisted of small to medium enterprise companies (SME’s) that were struggling in an ever more demanding business environment. To remain competitive and still be able to employ their staff these clients needed their software to do more. They had limited IT budgets and needed to interact with trading partners on a daily basis whilst streamlining their day-to-day business activities.
Simply re-writing our DOS product with a graphical UI would not be enough.
We needed to provide more functionality in our product as there were no affordable alternatives for our clients.
Having spent over 20 years extending and enhancing our existing product we knew that the constantly changing, technological and business landscape, required a new approach. Our clients needed to survive and we needed to totally re-evaluate what we had created if we were to provide any assistance.
We knew that there had to be a better way to write business applications that were easier to create, maintain, enhance and customize.
We started down the research trail.
That was 6 years ago.
What we wanted
We wanted to build a system that our users could live and work with that would run on any platform and that would be adaptable to change. Not just change in technology, but change in business processes as well.
Anyone remember the GST fiasco?
Equity needed to be easy to adapt to a changing world in all respects. We managed to achieve a certain flexibility with the DOS version so we needed to provide more flexibility in the next release.
After much research we came up with a short list of requirements that needed to be addressed in order to achieve our goals.
Our package needed to:-
- not be limited by proprietary tools
- incorporate everything we had learned from 20 years of customizing
- be highly configurable - without a science degree
- be cross platform - run on Linux, Unix, Windows and Macintosh
- be based on current and emerging standards
- take advantage of best of breed technology
- be adaptable to changing business requirements
- allow integration of existing requirements - e-mail, fax etc.
- provide B2C and B2B functionality
- run stand alone, in a networked environment and over the Internet
- be easy to use
Doesn’t sound like much when it’s written down, however, simply absorbing the knowledge required to achieve these goals has been a monumental effort.
What became obvious was how difficult it would be to achieve what we wanted on a limited budget with one or two programmers. We had to find a better way to develop this system.
Way back when…
When we wrote the original DOS based Equity, everyone used DOS. There were no graphical user interfaces, no Windows, no Macintoshes and no Internet.
The world of computing has changed and continues to change at a rate that no one can keep pace with. To help our users and ourselves we needed to build a system where any component could be replaced, as technology in that area improved, without adversely impacting the rest of the system.
We needed to re-write Equity and we had a number of options:-
- Re-write using a proprietary language and toolset for one platform.
- Re-write using a proprietary language for multiple platforms.
- Buy an existing application and customize it.
- Give up and get a real job.
We explored each of these options only to discard them one by one.
If anyone is interested I could fill in the details of why each of these options were discarded, however, it is a long winded and somewhat disheartening story so I’ll get on with what we decided to do instead.
There was only one option left. One we hadn’t previously considered. Build the system in a way that would embrace change and provide functionality that was only available to the major players who had IT budgets well in access of $1,000,000USD.
An idea began to form and it was up to us to fertilize it!
“Standing on the shoulders of giants!”
Over the last 4 years we have examined countless technologies, Open and Closed Source projects and read thousands of articles and books on existing and emerging trends in application design, integration and extensibility.
We’ve sifted, sorted and tested all manner of tools, systems and technologies only to throw some of them out and try another tack. Spent countless hours, weeks and months burning the candle at both ends, consuming truck loads of coffee and writing code to test theories and formulate our plans.
During our research it became obvious that much of what was required to build our system already existed, in one form or another, as Open Source projects on the Internet.
We needed to find a way to utilize these existing projects and give something back to the Open Source community in the process.
With this change of focus it became obvious that we needed to look at our project from a different perspective. We needed to break it down into smaller re-usable pieces that we and others could benefit from.
We came up with a few basic rules we needed to work by:-
- Keep it simple!
- Don’t re-invent an already complete wheel.
- If it exists - use it, if it doesn’t - build it.
- Design the missing components as open source.
- Keep an open mind!
The project was born! All we needed to do was define it and make it happen!
Sleeves up and down to business!
The Microshare project
The goal:-
To assemble, using Open Source components, a full featured accounting and business information management system targeted at small to medium enterprise.
Sounds easy when you say it fast!
Firstly:-
We’d like to thank the thousands of programmers, users and sponsors who have contributed to the open source movement. Without your support these packages would not exist, the world would be a poorer place and many projects, including ours, would be mountains no one could climb.
Secondly:-
We would like to dedicate this web site to all the SME’s who currently employ the bulk of the work force. We are endeavouring to produce a usable business accounting and information management system based on Open Source technology specifically for you.
Our hope is that through our efforts and the efforts of the Open Source community at large that we can build a system that you can live with and that will provide potential for growth for you, your enterprise and your employees over the years ahead.
Through this web site we hope to provide an overall structure for our project and to provide links to all the relevant open source projects we are using to build this system. Over the course of the project we hope to develop or find the missing components and provide a reference for projects of a similar nature.