Hi Bryan

There is a Linux distribution called "Small Business Server" [1]

Copy & paste of its features:

o Internet Gateway o Firewall o VPN o E-mail o Bandwidth and P2P Manager o Multiwan o Intrusion Prevention o Web and FTP Servers o Antispam/Antivirus o Content Filtering o File and Print Services o Data backup o Groupware

maybe add the following:

o Asterisk [2], the free public telephone system o Free Software ebXML messaging gateway o Free Software Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system (maybe at least the server part of it) o UBL import and export library for ERP system (do not know of an available library yet) o ... integration of the pre-setup ebXML messaging gateway with the pre-setup ERP system.

From the Linux crowed I know that there are Linksys and D-Link router appliances which can be reprogrammed with a different Linux distribution [3] (maybe with something like the SME Linux distribution). Such a SME appliance will have the total cost of ~ 60$ (hardware and software included).

The makers of the Open Source Hermes ebXML messaging system have been thinking about an appliance see here [4].

Not sure what you mean with a "virtual" appliance vs an "physical" appliance ...

Regards

Sacha

[1] http://www.clarkconnect.com/ [2] http://www.asterisk.org/ [3] http://openwrt.org/ [4] http://www.cecid.hku.hk/projectelf.php

Am Donnerstag, den 15.03.2007, 12:12 +0100 schrieb Bryan Rasmussen: