Pozicom Technologies Interview

Interviewed by Jono Bacon

Pozicom are an established software and services business who have used KDE extensively in their operations. I spoke to Eric Mayo about Pozicom and KDE.

What is the companies line of business? What kind of products/services do you offer?

There are 2 companies we have implemented KDE for.

Company 1 is a Rubber & Plastics manufacturer job shop. They manufacture bits and pieces for anything from rubber playground mats to automobile gaskets. We, Pozicom, sold them software, we developed, to run their business. It is an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software to handle their accounting, EDI (Electronic Data Interchange), Sales Orders, Purchase Orders, etc.... This software's database technology is built around GNU-Linux/PostgreSQL. To give life to old hardware we used KDE and Wine. Wine allows us to run our Win32 client piece which talks to PostgreSQL/Linux servers. KDE/K-Office is being used to format various reports from ERP program and to type up various shipping labels etc. KOffice was installed on a few newly purchased workstations replacing traditional Microsoft products. This company has 50+ workstations, 30 of which are now Linux/KDE!

Company 2 is a tool & die job shop. Like company 1, they have basic needs that don't justify the costs associated with new hardware and Microsoft products. Yet, they need a decent GUI with basic office capabilities. We upgraded their network from NT4.0 to GNU-Linux w/ Samba. They had an access application that was converted to PostgreSQL with ODBC. We are in the process of rewriting the application in Borland C++ Builder and native links (no ODBC) with PostgreSQL. They have 20 workstations & 1 server, 5 of the workstations are now Linux/KDE. The other workstations are bound to running some proprietary software which we will, shortly, be attempting to run under Wine. KDE has replaced Office97. They use Netscape mail for email, Linux server runs fetchmail on their ISDN line. KOffice is used for KWord, KSpread & some Kivio. Some workstations run AutoCAD and will probably remain unless Wine can run AutoCAD?

Pozicom's line of business is quite broad:

• Custom software development
• Various Software titles (ERP Pro, EDI Pro our 2 biggest products)
• Vortex Firewall for Linux is our product as well. Uses browser interface and we are currently developing KDE & GNOME management console for management piece.
• Network Consulting & Auditing (MCSE, MCNE, ACE, and CCIE engineers on staff)
• Network Integration services (mostly Web technologies and we are Citrix authorized)
• Full co-location capabilities for Web, Email, e-commerce both B2B and reseller
• Satellite Internet with www.northcommusa.com
• Smart Home division that develops smart home software on our own SBC hardware running GNU-Linux utilizing Satellite internet as delivery systems.
• EE R&D Engineering services (Mostly RF design work for smart home and various clients who have contracted us to help them OEM their products).

What are your IT requirements for the business?

Not sure of this question. Company1 and Company2 have low IT requirements from a support stand point. Both companies rely heavily on proprietary software used to run their business. Company 1 purchased our ERP package and Company 2 uses a product called JobBOSS which they are phasing out in favor of our system; this phase out will happen around 3/2002. Both companies require Email & Internet connectivity. We operate Company2's FTP site for sharing of CAD files; we do so over SecureFTP using OpenSSH. Company1's requirements as far as email and web go are very low such as basic email correspondence & corporate web presence. Company1 replaced outlook with KMail however, we are looking at Evolution that is popular in the GNOME community. It would be nice to see KMail to group all mail, calendaring, and tasks under one interface with Palm pilot integration too.

How does KDE fit into your IT requirements and what solutions does it offer?

YES! It offers office document manipulation and management for spreadsheets and word documents. We use KWord to run all our "Network Audit" reports and we use Kivio for all our network diagram reports. Pozicom has a network audit service that covers network optimization and security. Something we do before working on a customer's LAN/WAN. The audit process is basically a 2 step process where by we collect data then analyze it and type up the results into a report much like a software validation report that is common in the pharmaceutical industry. This validation report is ultimately a company's disaster recover and reference document. We use KWord & Kivio to manage all of this. We use GIMP for image manipulation however. Some of our documents involve digital pictures of various job sites we do before new installs. We do this because sometimes we are involved with satellite communications. Thus, we take pictures of roofs to show other engineers for planning purposes. Our audits and engineering documents are all KWord, KSpread, and Kivio. We need a KCAD!!!

How many machines does KDE run on and what Operating Systems do you use?

Well, Pozicom has around 5000 customers in total and we only just began (with Company1 & Company2) to use & recommend KOffice/KDE. So between Company1,2, and our own experimentation we have a total count around 45 desktop installations. We use KDE from source and the OS is Pozix Linux which is our own distribution/packaging of Linux. Pozicom also has a smart home division where we use Linux/KDE on SBC (Single Board Computers). We have roughly 20-25 installations here.

What items did you take into consideration in choosing KDE, and what made you finalise upon it?

This is easy:

1. Ability to communicate with Microsoft users (Plenty of them out there)
2. Cost
3. Ease of use

There are some minor issues in converting Word documents but for companies that mostly create their own internal docs, this is not a problem. Cost = our install time + answering user questions + licensing. Our install time is down to a simple CDROM we install KDE & KOFFICE with the OS. Licensing = none or GPL. Answering user questions = same as any Microsoft product! We have put together a small KOFFICE Book we distribute with KDE and KOFFICE which seems to cut down on the calls. Also, remember, company1 and company2 had users who where comfortable around computers and were willing to "TRY" something new.

3. Ease of use. Like anything else it took a bit to get use to it. One of the biggest complaints is that things aren't exactly where the Microsoft counterparts use to be. So... once we used it for a while it becomes comfortable. A learning curve is involved but that was expected and that's why it was ranked #3. Thus, ease of use is important but we realize a learning curve is also expected.

What particular KDE software do you utilise in your business? KOffice? KDevelop?

Company1 and Company2 as stated primarily use KWord, KSpread, Kivio, KMail(Company1), Netscape, and Netscape Mail(company2). Pozicom uses all of the above + KDevelop & KSniffer. And we are always experimenting too.

Do you feel KDE is a cost effective platform?

Absolutely! Not just GPL but also in ease of use and installation.

Where would you like to see the future of KDE go, and what would you like to see in future releases?

I'd like to see KDE and KOffice become the defacto standard in desktop publishing. Better integration among the apps. is needed and better conversion of various counter part documents such as MS-Word and Corel WordPerfect.

Future releases:

I would truly like to see server type functionality added to KDE. For example, MS-Exchange. A nice KGroupware would be a plus that leverages Sendmail or other GPL software in a server environment. Also, an Apache WWW manager for K would be good. There is a tool called Webadmin that seems to be doing much of this now. A KCitrix or KTerminal server would be a bonus.

Pozicom Technologies - http://www.pozicom.net/

Interview by Jono Bacon for KDE::Enterprise - http://enterprise.kde.org/

[ Edit ]