Open Source ERP Guru

Great news coming from Openbravo,one of the leading open source ERP vendors – they have raised 12M$ in funding from several European VC’s. That is really great news for anyone who is involved in the industry.

It is yet another indication that open source ERP is heading straight into the mainstream of enterprise applications. With such a strong round of funding, you can expect more trust from potential customers as Openbravo secured its business for the next couple of years. Nobody wants to invest in an ERP project only to find his ERP vendor out of business two years down the line. We can expect a strong growth in both Openbravo adoption, especially in Europe and in south America, as well as in the entire open source ERP industry.

Openbravo’s commitment to its open source community will remain a big question mark. With additional stakeholders in the company (the new VCs), it will become increasingly challenging for Openbravo to keep its community of volunteers happily involved. It will be interesting to follow up on that issue.

Finally, this round of funding raises again the possibility of a large acquisition of one of the open source ERP vendors by one of IT mega vendors. I discussed this subject thoroughly here. When considering the potential for an exit for one of the vendors, this round of investment seems like a pretty smart move by the VCs.

This open source ERP industry news roundup will focus on knowledge transfer activities by the leading solutions,an area of significant investment of time and money. One of the first motivations to start Open Source ERP Guru was the lack of knowledge around open source ERP solutions, which is, in my opinion, one (if not the most) significant factors preventing open source ERP solutions to become mainstream in the enterprise. I am glad to see that the different projects are putting emphasis on this issue.

We will also discuss new releases coming out from Apache OFBiz and Compiere.

• TinyERP- First, since I am getting quite a few questions about TinyERP I plan to further investigate the solution and post an installation walkthrough. Tiny is also working hard on knowledge transfer around its product, currently focusing on Europe. They will hold ‘Discovery Days’ across Europe all throughout May. They also offer free launch!!
• Openbravo hosted a European open community event. Reading through the announcements, you could feel how Openbravo is trying to find its way as venture funded company while remaining connected to its voluntary community . The Openbravo community, mentioned several times in the announcement, is no longer just hardcore programmers and product enthusiasts but now also includes partners paying customers. This evolution of the Openbravo community is a sign of maturity but also poses some challenges. Openbravo’s site has many recorded presentations on their community event page.
• OFBiz are releasing new features on a continues basis. In the past few months, the project put a lot of programming power into improving the UI. If you already have experience with these new features, let us know. I plan to upgrade my OFBiz installation and I will share with you the new UI.
• Compiere announced a new update release of its ERP solution. It contains a long list of functionality enhancement. Strangely, I couldn’t find any new download on the Sourceforge site. I will need to further investigate this issue and understand if the new version is available to the entire community or just for paying customers. Stay tuned.