Enterprise Application Software ideas.

For a while, I've been considering offering setup and maintainance services for EAS for clients. I have a few clear candidates and some ideas for others and would like to hear suggestions or advise you may have for others.

Distro: I'm leaning for Debian, which is what I use in most server where I have the choice.

Apps:

- CMS: WordPress. I have used Joomla and Drupal in the past and at this point feel WordPress is easiest to configure and use. This is minor as I am not very interested in website development and if anything would subcontract this part of the setup for interested clients.

- File hosting: NextCloud. Works well, easy to setup, scales. The last time I deployed NextCloud for an organization I was disappointed that it seemed counterintuitive to encrypt files client side, it's been a while and I cannot remember the exact situation. Ideally I would like to offer a solution that offers client side encryption (i.e. sysadmin cannot read files).

- Document Management: Alfresco community edition[1] has been recently recommended. I have not tried it yet but plan on doing so as it looks robust.

- Syncthing: Though I suppose not really EAS, I find many uses for it and guess I will continue to do so.

- ERP (specifically CRM component for now): Odoo. Very impressed by its functionality and ease of installation and use. Many other apps available as well, too many to describe here (Sales, Invoicing, PM, etc. etc.).

- CalDAV/CarDAV server: Radicale. Have used this solution on a plug server for few users. Not sure how it scales but worked well when I used it.

- Email.

This is a tough topic for me. I have a customer somewhere where internet speeds are very slow who uses email mostly locally and for whom I have suggested self-hosting. I am not very confident about self-hosted e-mail in general, and specifically in a context where internet access is spotty and slow and electrical service sub-par. On the other hand, this customer sends large files so this may help. The e-mail could also be hosted elsewhere and the files locally with NextCloud (I suppose unencrypted if they will be shared with third parties?) and linked in the e-mails.

Client:

RoundCube: Looks good and could be a good solution for people who have become accustomed to accessing e-mail from a browser.

Sogo: This also looks interesting and seems to have calDAV/carDAV support.

E-mail server-side? Is it worth doing this? How difficult will it be to avoid spam? Will the domains end up blacklisted? Downtime? How demanding will sysadmin work become, i.e. will it significantly increase needed attention/manpower?

Team collaboration:

riot.im: This is the only one that comes to mind. I find it very difficult to convince people in companies not to use the huge proprietary mobile chat apps for team collaboration, so for now this area is a bit of an uphill battle. Video conferencing among several people could make a difference. I'm not sure if this feature is ripe on riot. I also don't know the current status on encryption. The last time I looked, encryption was in beta and could be enabled but then not deisabled again (I tested the client on one of the already setup servers). The ability to have good Voice or even Video conferencing, several people at a time, for a virtual meeting, may be a defining factor to pull in those who are currently using the big proprietary apps.

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Finally, I'm trying to think about how these apps can work together in a specific company environment, and final selection will depend on this (of course customers may have more than one option where it is relatively easy to do so). For example, how would a company use Odoo and Riot.im simultaneously? Would this lead to confusion? Would it be better to choose one or the other? For example, if choosing Odoo, just enable different add-ons to have chat capabilities, etc.