THINKCube software for SME business efficiency

Tamara Nissanka

Integrating Inf-ormation Technology into organisations has become a growing trend in the corporate world, as it has proved to improve efficiency and productivity. The THINKCube Collaboration Server 2.0 is one such ICT creation by the 100 per cent local THINKCube Systems (Pvt) Ltd.

The system uses existing mature open source software and is invented to provide Small and Medium businesses with a comprehensive IT solution for organisational efficiency.

Speaking about the newly launched Software in an exclusive interview with Daily News Business was the Co-Founder, Chief Technical Officer and Director of THINKCube Systems (Pvt) Ltd., Buddhika Siddhisena, who has over 10 years of experience as a Developer and Consultant in several mainstream software development organisations in Sri Lanka.

"The Collaboration Server allows companies to do all their IT work, like exchanging e-mails, hosting internal web-sites, file sharing, printer sharing, adding firewalls and related features required by organisations", he explained.

The Collaboration Server is a combination of modern ICT features tailor-made for business organisations.

It comprises of the all important e-mail (web and desktop), Anti-Virus Protection for downloads, Intranet, Voice Over IP (VoIP), e-mail spam filtering, Calendering, Contact Management, Instant Messenger (IM), Organisation Website, Web Content Filter, Dynamic DNS, Blogs, Wikis and File Sharing. Launched nearly one month back, the THINKCube Collaboration Server 2.0 is currently in use in three companies already.

Siddhisena explained each of the features in THINKCube Collaboration Server 2.0. The blogging feature that the system offers is ideal for companies that want to market their products.

Latest corporate news could also be published on the Web, using a blog aggregator. " This will not only promote the company and the product, but also the people behind it.", he said.

The Wiki feature gives organisations the opportunity to make use of employees' collaborative effort, when working on an important document. For instance, a business proposal or a marketing plan could be compiled by combining contributions of several employees through the Wiki feature that acts a whiteboard space, open for developing, modifying and editing.

IM allows the organisation to have an instant messenger server running locally and chat with each other, without having to be connected to the Internet.

"The interesting thing is that the whole system is running locally. Therefore, a slow Internet connection does not affect any of the operations. The server will be in your office. So the power of the internet will be inside the organisation."

He went on to explain some of the features unique to THINKCube, " We provide a single interface where you can create a username and set a password so that when you turn on e-mail, for instance, that username and password will be automatically assigned for the respective e-mail account."

The similar system is applied to all features in the software, thus preventing the "management headache" of keeping track of these details each time admin changes.

Through the THINKCube Collaboration Server 2.0, the company targets small and medium enterprises that cannot afford IT and therefore do not give IT a major priority.

"Specially if they are not an IT company, they don't worry much about using IT. But we think they could improve their systems by using IT.

When companies go for IT, they often end up hiring one person to manage their IT.

"Then they end up being at the mercy of that person. Here even the executive can handle everything."

Relating the reasons behind the name 'THINKCube' Siddhisena said, "When people hear of servers, they think of big machines that are stored in server rooms.

We wanted a server that was more user-friendly, which you could keep on your desk, and something that looked nice.

So we were thinking of something like a box. Then "Thinkcube" came into mind and "thinking out of the box" also fitted right in with that."

The key aspect noteworthy in THINKCube is, the user interface that comes with a wide range of features covering the IT infrastructure area and the Web 2.0 area.

"We have developed this interface, so that even a CEO who is starting up his company can easily handle the company's ICT system."

Creating the whole system has taken the team of three a mere one and half years, during which their main focus had been on exploring mature open source projects and integrating them together for the final product. Highly passionate about Free and Open Source Software as developer, Siddhisena said, " Building a similar software from scratch would have taken us at least five years.

We did not have to go through a major software development life cycle of testing all the applications, because each of the open source applications used to develop THINKCube, themselves were really good.

That's the power of using open source." The Collaboration Server 2.0 is constructed using existing Free and Open Source Software such as Zimbra, Pigeon, MediaWiki, Asterisk, Jabber and Ubuntu Linux as platforms.

The initial funding for the project had been done by one of the co-founders of the Company. However, the total value of the project had not been costly, since the developers have primarily made use of free software.

"The funding is currently done by a local agent investor." Siddhisena said.

The software is available for downloading over the Internet. Therefore, it owns the full potential of reaching computer systems around the globe.

THIKNCube Systems (Pvt) Ltd. plans to venture out within the South Asian region initially and extend software solution services to the US and UK in the future.

He said the company is looking to partner up with hardware vendors and system integrators who are already providing custom IT solutions. THINKCube Systems are presently negotiating with several such vendors.

The software licensing is based on a per user licence, and extends from five to fifty people, since the company's target group is Small and Medium enterprises.

"In Sri Lanka there are a lot of people who are not aware of open source development. Software Freedom empowers the user by showing them the source code, giving them the freedom to modify it and distribute it without having to pay any licence fees to any party."

He said Initiatives have been taken together with the Lanka Linux User Group and the Sri Lanka FOSS Community to create awareness about Free and Open Source Software.