OpenSocial is cool

Have you seen OpenSocial, the latest API by Google?

If you haven't, and dig this stuff, do. It is awesome!

I believe that the first Open Source ERP to implement it will score a big one.

Gloablization , Customer Experience and Enteprise 2.0

Today while enterprises are increasingly going global in IT outsourcing, supply chain and customer services operation, there is a growing need to improve global productivity, collaboration and business processes. The Yankee Group calls it “Enterprise Anywhere” - the trend where global companies leverage their global resources to optimize their global operation.

So, where do Open Source Web 2.0 applications come handy in the enterprise world? It is by increasing global usability, collaboration and productivity. One specific area which seems like a natural fit is the Enterprise Global Customer Experience or CEM (Customer Experience Management).

One of the main customer experience challenges for global enterprises is to be able to capture and integrate all the customer experience history and intelligence from different information sources like ERP customer service module and CRM systems into one global source of Global Customer Experience Intelligent Unit. This unit can be leveraged to capture innovative product and customer service ideas and most importantly improve customer experience processes and customer satisfaction.

Another area where Open Source Web 2.0 applications can be very valuable is the ability to create or integrate to a Master Data Management (MDM - a master source of customer experience data that can be leveraged across the enterprise from both front end and back end ERP/CRM systems) to capture personalized customer experience and interaction intelligence data and use it to improve customer experience processes (CEM), customer satisfaction and loyalty.

By Amir Ben-Mordechai

Open Source ERP status as of September 2007

Doing a search of the projects tagged as 'financial' at SourceForge.net, sorted by ranking, shows that the most popular ERP projects are:

• OpenBravo (Rank: 4)
• ADempiere Bazaar (Rank: 10)
• opentaps (Rank: 17)
• PostBooks (Rank: 238) (New project. Growing FAST. Based on OpenMFG)
• Compiere (Rank: 272) (Losing popularity fast)
• ]project-open[ (Rank: 504) (Thanks to bnordgren for the lead)

The popular osFinancials (Rank: 84) could be considered a complete ERP system for several Small Businesses.

opentaps seems back on track to releasing the (quite elusive) 1.0.0.0 release.

Jive gets US$ 15 millon funding

News.com reports that Sequoia Capital has invested $15 million into Jive Software. This could be another sign of the Web Office starting to gain traction over ERP.

On the other hand, what big ERP investments have been announced recently?

Interview with Openbravo COO

Sean Michael Kerner published an interesting interview with Josep Mitjà, COO of Openbravo.

Openbravo is, along with Compiere, opentaps, ADempiere Bazaar, at the top of the OS ERP game but, being fully Web based, it might be the best headed for the future of ERP as we discussed in this post.

Plus, as Josep said:

We do have inquiries about Compiere, mainly because Openbravo's application dictionary originated from a 2002 version of Compiere, and as the application dictionary defines the contents of each screen, the two applications can appear to have some similar features.

Compiere's work was seminal and we are careful to duly identify any original and modified code. However, contrary to Compiere, we have a dedicated engine that delivers a fully Web-based interface. Our current code base is almost entirely comprised of original, continually evolving Openbravo-developed code.

You can read the full article here.

Web ERP vs Desktop ERP

Does anybody find any good reason to start development of a new OS ERP basing it on the desktop?

I feel that, with the success of AJAX and RIA's in general, the desktop does not hold any advantage over a Web platform for this kind of apps anymore.

Any counter arguments?

On the Web Office and ERP merging

The concept of the Web Office is quite a new one, so its definition could be arguable matter. But, the way the proposed solutions are evolving, it all leads me to think that a company ERP and Web Office will start sharing the same framework and, ultimately, be one solution.

One obvious link is that both store and manage enterprise information. For example, all Enterprise Information Systems (EIS) must have a "Contacts" section. Independent of the nature of the Contact (Co-worker, Client, Vendor), they are all persons, so most of the data will be very similar. You could have corporate Clients and Vendors, also sharing attributes in its modelling. The synchronization of this data among several systems is a tedious and risk prone task, even when automated.

Other, more subtle, reason elicits from the collaborative nature of the Web Office. All enterprise work-flows would be better handled if defined on a single work-flow engine, instead of having different management for different systems. Much office work is subject for a work-flow process. Those are element that have been present in ERPs for a long time, that are now being incorporated into Web Offices.

Another common issue is to have two different systems (most times requiring duplicate input effort) for, say, project management and the accounting of absent and leave days.

As a commenter in the previous post pointed out, the Web-Interface (not a small matter in many cases, specially if you can extend or align the "Web-Interface" concept to a whole "Corporate Image"). He also mentioned report designer (Which I would extend to Business Intelligence engines) as something that could also be merged.

I will assume the Single Sign On issue does not need much discussion.

Common elements of ERP and Web Office

In short, we have identified the following as common framework elements:

• Single Sign On
• Contacts (Workers, Clients, Vendors)
• Image Design and Standards
• Work-flow engine
• Tasks and Projects management
• Business Intelligence and reporting engines

I am sure that further analysis should discover more of this elements.

Examples

Even though I am not aware of similar essays, I do acknowledge several companies developing solutions that have obviously identified this trend. Zoho, 37signals, and ShareOffice would be among those.

Open Source ERP to merge into Web Office?

A bit over three months old, and I am already questioning if the Open Source ERP is the way to go.

My recent work on Web Office suggest me that the best path to roll out an OS ERP on a company is to start with the Web Office, and from there build the ERP.

What do you think?

Google Code - Updates: Now Accepting Student Applications for Google Summer of Code 2007

Google Code - Updates: Now Accepting Student Applications for Google Summer of Code 2007

"Father of Java" James Gosling: Openness breeds more trust

Sylvia Carr conducted a very interesting interview with James Gosling, aka the "Fater of Java".


The bit I wanted to share is this piece of encouragement for OS ERP developers:

Do you think we'll see more use of open source in the enterprise as time goes on?
Gosling: Yeah. It's sort of gotten to the point where it's hard to imagine people using more because so much already is (used)--everything from open-source operating systems to databases to programming languages to development tools. It's getting to the point where there's not much left. There are some areas like large-scale databases and ERP (where) there aren't any really serious open-source ERP (enterprise resource planning) solutions. They're getting there.

Of course I fully agree. It's just good to hear a geek celebrity say it every once in a while.

The blog is not abandoned

I'm just spending too much time on the OpenGoo.org project.

I'll be back soon with OS ERP news.

Open Source Enterprise Systems coming together

Sure enough, there had to be something going on. Stephen Shankland just published a very interesting article at cnet news on the topic. It covers the creation of Open Solutions Alliance, which brings together many OS EIS projects.

I believe this is an interesting and promising venture. I will closely follow its moves.

How are ERP, CRM, BI and CMS merging?

It seems to me that ERP, CRM, BI, and CMS should tend to merge into single framework systems.

What is being talked about this subject? What examples are already popular. I am sure SAP, Oracle, and the big players are aware of this. But what about the Open Source Community?

What is the name for such a framework or system? I guess it should be something like EIS (Enterprise Information Systems), or something like that.

Wikipedia's definition of EIS is quite vague for the term, so I think it could easily be adapted.

I would like to name it, to facilitate the discussion.

Opportunity for Open Source ERP?

The Register had an interesting article today, from Quocirca's Sharon Crawford, about a recent high merger and acquisitions activities of traditional ERP suppliers.

It does not mention the possibility of considering an OS solutions, which, as an IT director, I certainly would.

But it does make some very interesting remarks:

"If you think your supplier is ripe for takeover, or if it has already been bought, you might be considering a change to another supplier"

Although it continued to mention only big vendors, it says later:

"There must be a well-defined product roadmap and it is important you can see and influence the continued development plans."

I totally agree with that, and I believe those are two strong arguments for considering an Open Source solution.

OS ERP "impact on organizations" research

Today I learned that Salvador Bueno and Dolores Gallego, Assistant Professors in Business Administration Department in Pablo de Olavide University, are conducting a research that involves an analysis about Open Source Enterprise Resource Planning (OS ERP) and its impact at an organization.

It would be very useful for their work that any OS ERP user completes their online questionnaire at:

http://aramis.upo.es/general/centros_depart/departamentos/invest/oss/

It is great to know other people are working on this subject. Salvador and Dolores work is certainly going to throw some light on the question of OSERP maturity. I will post about the outcome as soon as I get the chance.

Too little news

I wonder why there are so few mainstream media news about Open Source ERP; even when some OSERP systems rank very high as the most active projects in sourceforge.

I have not read a single news about the topic during the whole week.

I am starting to think about two possible explanations:

1. The market does not perceive the systems to be mature enough for serious consideration (as it has with Operating Systems or even Office Suites).
2. The systems really aren't mature enough for serious consideration.

I forgot to mention

Two great sites that inspired me on this work:

http://www.opensourcecms.com/

and

http://distrowatch.com/

The finalists

Theoserp is proud to announce the finalists for its research work on Open Source ERP Systems.

As of today, the most relevant OS ERP systems are:

Adempiere
Apache OFBiz
Compiere
JFire
Openbravo
opentaps

This are the three that give me a bit of curiosity, and would consider, having the time or arguments for it.

ERP5 (I am growing fond of Zope)
FacturaLUX (It's in Spanish!)
Neogia (It seems to be an active project, but the website certainly could use some care!)

The search for the finalists

After my initial research and comparison, I have selected six "finalists". This are the systems I will setup to conduct a more thorough analysis. I also selected another three that I could review, in the rare case I have time for it. I would also welcome comments on my decision, and any challenge to take any other system into account.

The criteria used for the selection was based heavily on my perceptions. Many things give me a first impression that is hard to overpass: a bad Web Page (design or setup), news on the site that are over a year old, and those kind of things that give the feel of an old project being abandoned. I also ponder heavily the developers count; I usually do not trust big projects that are a "one man show". The sense of popularity is another relevant factor. Finally, a demo and screen shots usually give a good impression (unless the demo is badly setup, of course).

The big list

Ok, here is a list of all the Open Source ERP that seemed relevant to analyse.

I have made a simple matrix that I will post as soon as I have my site (www.theoserp.com) set up, comparing: developers #, supported OS's, supported DB's, Latest Release Date, and language.

In the mean time, I will just post the list of the systems I put in the matrix:

Adempiere
Apache OFBiz
CK-ERP
Compiere
ERP5
FacturaLUX
GNU Enterprise
JFire
MaxDev
Neogia
Openbravo
OpenMFG
opentaps
SQL Ledger
Tiny ERP
TUTOS
webERP

I am back!

Right after starting the blog, I took a two weeks vacations. Man, did I have a great time!

To anyone thinking of coming to South America (specifically: La Aguada - Uruguay, and Praia do Rosa - Brasil), I recommend both places I stayed at:

http://www.bungalowsdelpiemonte.com/

and

http://www.studiosdobarao.com.br/

More resources

Now, googlin' for "Open Source ERP" I found...

Other systems ranking high
Tiny ERP
http://tinyerp.com/
which has a nice website

opentaps
http://www.opentaps.org/
Which seems to be a layer over OfBiz

JFire
https://www.jfire.org/
Looks pretty nice

OpenMFG
http://www.openmfg.com/
Looks ok

And other cool links
I actually saw this link in the wikipedia ERP page:
http://www.cio.com/research/erp/edit/erpbasics.html
I'll check it out when I get the time. It looks interesting

Too bad I didn't get any results from google sets (I had higher hopes for this google project):
http://labs.google.com/sets

This is a pretty good article (although it seems a little like pro-'CK-ERP'):
http://www.webpronews.com/expertarticles/expertarticles/wpn-62-20060111OpenSourceERPforSMEs.html
Where 'Fisterra' and 'CK-ERP' are mentioned (and subsequently added to my research list)

A list of (presumably java) open source ERP projects:
http://www.java-source.net/open-source/erp-crm

Starting my research

Starting my research; one of the first, nowadays obvious, better stop would be Wikipedia.

Then, I found this link searching for 'ERP':
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_resource_planning

And from there:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ERP_vendors

So, my first list to get started would be:

• Adempiere
• Apache OFBiz
• Compiere
• ERP5
• GNU Enterprise
• SQL Ledger

The Open Source ERP

This site is intended as a resource for people searching for Open Source ERP systems information.