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If you don’t have time or don’t have much expertise to setup your office infrastructure eBox is exactly what you need. It’s based on rock solid Debian. Featuring most common softwares you need to run your office, it comes in one single 440MB CD. If it doesn’t meet your software requirements, you can easily develop your own module or even better sponsor one module! It will definitely be cheaper and you will be supporting Open Source!

Recently Matt Willsher developed a subversion module for eBox. Here’s what he says about eBox:

I was looking to set up a server at home and had evaluated various platforms for the task. Having built a box from the ground up for the job, I got tired of the amount of work required to add new services and servers, especially as the machine grew in complexity – LDAP, Kerberos, Netatalk, Samba. Adding new things got trickier. So I tried eBox and was very impressed with the ethos of the project – the ease of use, it being open source, uniformity of data use and broad range of well though out features. Plus I’ve never configured Samba so quickly!

One thing was missing for me though – Netatalk integration. I’ve been wanting to get back into coding for a while as I’ve not done any in some time. The OO nature of the framework was ideal and Perl is a language I used some time ago, so I thought I’d give it a go. 

I think a basic office infrastructure must consist of:

1. Firewall
2. DHCP
3. E-Mail
4. Proxy

eBox covers all of that and also it features:

1. IP Management
2. Network Management
3. Proxy/Content Filter
4. LDAP
5. Windows PDC
6. File/Print Server
7. Jabber Server
8. DNS Cache
9. Date & Time Server
10. Virtual LANs

Setup is easy and quick, after installing you can manage it through a user friendly web interface.

It’s in very early days but I strongly believe that it will be very successful project. May be it’s also good chance to start a new business just like Endian did with IPCop and some other softwares bundling together.