Booking and Order Management System

IBM Lotus Domino vs open source PHP

[AndreaDS]

Hi everybody,

we have a very small company that run some websites in the toursim sector in Budapest Hungary (multilanguages and multicurrencies) and we want to change our control panel for managing ina more automatic way the booking orders from clients, confirmations from suppliers, product info and accounting system.

We are thiking to either build it with IBM Lotus Domino platform or with open source PHP. But we are open to other possibilities if you kindly have suggestions :-)

Does anybody can suggest me which is better from the point of view of website managing, order managing etc..., so from the everyday work point of view and which is more client-friendly?

Does anybody can understand which type of managing code these Big Guys of [snip] used to built their site and which type of system they use to manage their bookings?

It is very difficult for a small company to compete nowaday: every kind of help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks to all of you.
Andrea

[edited by: phranque at 2:01 am (utc) on Jan. 19, 2008]
[edit reason] no URLs please [/edit]

[phranque]

welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com], Andrea!

[coopster]

Integrating "back-end" software and databases is a project that needs detailed analysis and design. I would start by taking a look at the software being used ... is it proprietary? I mean, did you write it or is it a packaged software solution that you purchased? If packaged software, do they have public interface modules that allow you to incorporate web-based access, collection and display of information? If not, then is your existing structure set up to handle/maintain a Lotus Domino server? Have you considered short-term setup costs versus long-term maintenance? Maybe open source will be a better fit? The software to run the system may be free, but are you prepared to maintain an in-house server yourself? Do you have programming staff or are you going to need to outsource those services?

There are so many questions, AndreaDS. I think you will need to take some considerable time to analyze your current situation and develop a project plan.