hello, I want you to imagine spinning up six servers in an organized cluster with VLAN, security, load balancing, raid volumes, and the ability to scale services, backup data, upgrade individual software packages without the worry of breaking connections with other running products. Now imagine spending less than 1 hour to accomplish this. I am not talking about just scripts. I am talking about a system designed for a production environment, built for simple, robust, and manageable implementation of OFBiz and other packages customers need.
This is the world of Rancher, Kubernetes, and docker. *Objective:* Create easier access for non-programmers/developers to OFBiz *Premise:* While I think the product (OFBiz) is a wonderful collaboration, its complexity and advanced skill set places it outside of the masses to implement and maintain. *Opportunity:* Conceive an easy module system to create and deploy the product (OFBiz) while allowing the product's complex and very important development. Whereby placing the product within reach of more administrators and users. *Method:* With some simple tools, we can leverage the popularity and acceptance of new approaches to containers (IE docker, Kubernetes, etc.) *Approach:* As docker development is lengthy (mostly due to image creation), using tools like ANSIBLE to create simple scripts for the "assembly" of OFBiz modules. These scripts can more easily be modified and maintained to design, assemble, and deploy the customized images of OFBiz. *Create Value:* To encourage the continued development of OFBiz, a revenue path should be considered. While we must listen to the market and adjust our processes accordingly, establishing clear revenue generation should be considered when creating these products. I want to propose the opinion that many administrators and users will need and be willing to pay for technical assistance with software operation, not the installation of the software. The skillset necessary to maintain and support the software is very different and perhaps more easily located than the skillset required to install and configure the software. Also, the software's maintenance and support offer a longer relationship and greater revenue stream from the customer. *Integration:* By allowing a more simple and efficient installation, a new market can be created to integrate other applications to OFBiz. The container concept is powerful because it will enable many different systems to "play nice" with each other. For example, I have manufacturers who what an accounting system to integrate with their manufacturing process. They do not see the accounting system driving the manufacturing process, but the manufacturing process driving the accounting system. By launching the OFBiz in a container, they can integrate their current manufacturing process via a shared database. These customers are focused on manufacturing and its methods, not the accounting system. This concept could drive a more untapped niche market. As always, I look forward to knowing your thoughts and or directions. ----- John Lee Engineering – Bright Star Controls Office (626) 605-1188 Direct (626) 605-1177 Mobile – SMS (626) 365-7510 -- Sent from: http://ofbiz.135035.n4.nabble.com/OFBiz-Dev-f165671.html
