So this time last year I was planning on building a distributed IT system across many small offices with a maximum of 30 people in each. This year we are consolidated in one building on two different floors with all the servers in one room. Amazing change.
But to be honest it does not really change the overall IT plan that much. Our customers are still spread out all over the world and we now have staff members on three continents – not bad for a 100 person company.
The one thing that has changed is what software we use – we are driving firmly away from Microsoft and into the hands of Linux and open source software.
We are working with an Apache project ERP system called OFBiz with help from the great guys at Hotwax Media – the improvements we have seen from in our warehouse are just amazing.
How to handle user authentication has also become clearer with the help of a Redhat project called FreeIPA. This really looks good enough to replace our current Active Directory setup.
Finally Rackspace, my personal favourite managed hosting company went public and is about to open its Hong Kong data center. Servers already ordered!