All over the world Open Source is making win after win in diversely different organisations. From one man and his dog right up to huge enterprises, more and more businesses are switching to the benefits that Open Source can give them. This is not just a story of low cost software, but stable, secure, reliable, supported, feature-laden enterprise-class software, all available for...yes...you guessed it...a low cost price.

One such organisation is the National Institute for Mental Health in England (NIMHE) (nimhe.csip.org.uk). Part of the Care Services Improvement Partnership (CSIP), they are commissioned by the Department of Health through each of their eight development centres across England. CSIP is part of the NHS, and works in partnership with a wide range of organisations and communities to support the local implementation of government policy across all 3 sectors (health care, social care and voluntary sector).

CSIP have fairly standard IT requirements for an organisation of its size and position. Each member of staff can choose to be home-based or office-based and home-based staff are required to make occasional visits to the office base in Moseley, Birmingham. To offer greatest choice to users, we want to support Linux / Windows / MacOSX platforms. So all staff need to have a laptop and WIFI router at home and the ability to access mail, calender & diaries anywhere anytime.

An introduction

Back in late 2004, an event held at Villa Park in Birmingham launched the Knowledge Engine - a collaborative suite of tools to engage local public sector organisations to work together better. At the event were OpenAdvantage who were informing delegates about the benefits and opportunities of Open Source. One such delegate was Alasdair McIntyre, the Deputy Director at NIMHE. McIntyre had a discussion with OpenAdvantage about Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and the Open Source options available. After a further meeting at OpenAdvantage in Central Birmingham, NIMHE were seriously considering an Open Source solution for CRM.

"OpenAdvantage were instrumental in NIMHE considering their solution" says Jenny Dalloway, Locality Director for CSIP West Midlands, "without OpenAdvantage we would never have made the first steps". She continues, "the existing CRM software available to us offered a very, very, high cost solution by Microsoft". Dalloway identifies the stark reality of where the organisation was going, "NIMHE had developed a Knowledge Community which introduced us to Knowledge Management thinking. This led to the realisation that we didn't manage our customer base knowledge well. The only way forward within our budgetary restrictions was Open Source".

At the initial meeting at OpenAdvantage, NIMHE was introduced to the popular SugarCRM (www.sugarcrm.com) application. SugarCRM is an incredible powerful, flexible, simple to use and cost efficient CRM that is available as Open Source. In recent years there has been an explosion of interest in SugarCRM, and a follow-up meeting with a member of the IT team secured the view that SugarCRM not only met expectations, but smashed through them with additional features and a huge scope for customisation and flexibility.

Although CRM was a prime consideration, NIMHE were so impressed by Open Source that other avenues of interest started opening up as it became part of CSIP and moved its office-base. This included the consideration of the popular Linux Apache MySQL PHP (LAMP) architecture to support all applications including their Knowledge Community and websites. Red Hat Linux was also considered as as a base for the back office. In addition to this, the availability of the code was a key consideration, "the speed of development and flexibility was an important factor for the Central Team" says Dalloway. She continues, "the ability to modify the code to meet our needs meant that we have control of our own software".

Implementation

NIMHE's initial interest in Open Source didn't start and end with SugarCRM, but their current solution involves a range of Open Source software:

• Red Hat - www.redhat.com - This enterprise class Linux distribution has been a leader in the business sector, with a number of high profile organisations using Red Hat.
• Zimbra - www.zimbra.com - A revolutionary web-based groupware server with email, calendaring, contacts and more, all in a dynamic AJAX driven web interface.
• MySQL - www.mysql.com - Leading Open Source Database server.
• PHP - www.php.net - A web scripting language that has enjoyed immense popularity with the web development industry.
• Apache - www.apache.org - The worlds most popular web server, driving over 60% of the conventional web and leading the SSL web.
• Enterprise Groupware System - www.enterprisegroupwaresystem.org - A strong and functional enterprise groupware solution including CRM, ERP, accounting, calendering, project management and more.

You may have noticed that SugarCRM is absent from the list above. Although NIMHE were hugely interested in SugarCRM at first, another meeting with OpenAdvantage alerted them to a new CRM that should be considered before the final decision was made. This new product, Enterprise Groupware System (EGS), is developed by Coventry based Senokian Solutions (www.senokian.com), a company geographically close to NIMHE in the West Midlands. This geographical connection gave birth to discussions with Senokian face to face, and CSIP ultimately decided that EGS was right for them. "We have formed a real partnership with Senokian" says Dalloway. She continues, "this has enabled them to provide robust support and gain a real understanding of how we work, and therefore our IT needs".

You can see why. EGS provides an impressive portfolio of features - CRM, ERP, accounting, collaborative document management, e-commerce, content management, file-sharing and more. EGS is also under a fully Open Source license, and the software has been developed at an impressive rate, with Senokian basing its business around the software. This commercial commitment has resulted in support, hosting and turn-key solutions.

It wasn't just features that made EGS a winning solution for CSIP however, "SugarCRM, whilst providing a CRM solution for us, was a little 'clunky' in nature, and didn't offer appropriate linkages to e-mail, diary and an events management system, which was important for us to capture all KM about our customers" says Dalloway. She continues, "Enterprise Groupware System offers other functionality of importance to us such as ticketing & events management".

Support

In terms of support, CSIP needed the confidence that their solution could be properly maintained and supported. To achieve this, four resources have been put in place. Firstly, CSIP have their own on-site IT Manager who looks after and maintains the systems. Secondly, a contract with Senokian covers the back office systems. Thirdly, CSIP have sub-contracted additional support as needed for roll-out of new hardware and software. Finally, CSIP have themselves developed in-house support skills in the West Midlands and the National Team. Their approach is inspiring - a combination of formal support contracts and in-house training and education. Then again, this is unsurprising as they are in the business of knowledge and knowledge management. Their approach should be a lesson for everyone.

With such a strong solution, and being a public organisation, traditional poltical pressure to run with the status quo is to be expected. Did CSIP get any of this? "None really" says Dalloway. She continues, "but there was some social pressure from staff as Open Source was unknown". Dalloway understands that changing an IT solution is unnerving for anyone, whatever you change from and to, "most Health, Social Care and Voluntary Sector staff have only ever worked with Microsoft, and changing something as fundamental as IT, on which everyone is so dependent, is not always easy".

Conclusions

With a strong, successful solution in place, what does the future hold for CSIP? Dalloway feels the future is bright, "we are moving forward together in the West Midlands, and for CSIP National we are in discussion with the other 7 RDCs about migration to Zimbra & EGS, and using the same e-mail address across the organisation". Open Source has certainly formed a core in the organisation, right through to application development, "every application being developed to support CSIP is being done with the Linux Apache MySQL PHP (LAMP) architecture".