Open Source (ERP) Enterprise Resource Planning on the move?
I just looked at the 30 June 2009 statistics of SourceForge.
1. PostBooks ERP, accounting, CRM by xTuple
2. Openbravo ERP
3. Zenoss Core - Enterprise IT Monitoring
4. Notepad++
5. ADempiere ERP Business Suite
6. phpMyAdmin
7. 7-Zip
8. OrangeHRM - Human Resource Management
9. webERP web-based ERP Accounting
10. FreeMind
Five of the top ten projects are ERP solutions (I see HRM as an element of ERP in this context). That’s quite surprising given how many people doubt on whether Open Source ERP is really option.
Some of these projects have been around for quite a while, i.e. OpenBravo ERP or ADempiere ERP (a fork of Compiere). They are also on EOS Directory, together with WebERP, OpenERP, SQL Ledger, Compiere and some others. Depending on what needs of a small to medium sized company, these solutions can clearly be seen as an alternative to proprietary solutions such as SAP, Microsoft/Navision or Oracle.
PostBooks ERP was new to me on this list. According to the description of SourceForge it is a free open source ERP, accounting, CRM package for small to midsized businesses. The client runs on Linux, Mac, and Windows (built with open source Qt framework). The business logic resides in PostgreSQL database. International ERP, accounting, and CRM tools. It has been registered with SourceForge in May 2007 (two years ago) and has been downloaded about 250′000 times since. Maybe it’s a coming star. I would be interested to know whether anybody from our readers and users has come across it.
But, long story short. ERP is one of the areas where Open Source is not yet really a peer of the best commercial alternatives, there’s still work to be done. Go for it!
Entries (RSS)
July 2nd, 2009 at 3:51 pm
I think it’s important to point out that these are the top projects by activity, not downloads. This doesn’t suggest a lot of user interest in open source ERP, it suggests a lot of development activity. I’m not saying that there’s isn’t user interest, but I think these numbers are a better indicator of investment.
Cheers,
Ross
July 13th, 2009 at 11:20 pm
I’ve been a implementing ERP solutions for close to 20 years. I began researching and playing with xTuple about 6 years ago. At that time it was called OpenMFG and while the source was truly “open”, the open source offering, PostBooks, took the open source version of the product to a new level. There is an amazing amount of functionality delivered in PostBooks. Recently, xTuple also rolled out the xChange, which is an App Store for the xTuple solutions. A company can implement open source PostBooks, then purchase add-on functionality such as Point of Sale or Batch Processing.
Take a look at the Community site postbooks.org and see for yourself how powerful this package is.
I’ve spent my career implementing some of the “best commercial alternatives” and I’ll put the xTuple solutions up against any of them.
July 13th, 2009 at 11:21 pm
Good to hear that xTuple’s Open Source ERP solution Postbooks is on your radar. We have been involved with xTuple for the past four years and can attest that clients are using Postbooks to run their businesses.
Regards,
Norm Jekubik
Yellow Dog Consulting Inc.
July 14th, 2009 at 12:50 am
The origin of PostBooks is found in a commercially licensed, open source ERP suite which has been on the market for some years. The free, open source PostBooks product benefits immensely from the proven, functionally rich, commercial parent product. It was ‘born’ a complete, production ready suite with substantial, field tested function in place from day one.
As the workstation component of the software is the same for all versions (both free and commercially licensed), PostBooks benefits from contributions to product function from the PostBooks community as well as its related commercially licensed ‘relatives’ and receives the same care (bug fixes as well as many of the enhancements) as the parent products by default.
There is a growing and very active community in place with great forums as well as completely visible issue reporting and tracking for users of PostBooks (see http://www.xtuple.org). Staff at xTuple (see http://www.xtuple.com), the originating company, are very active and frequent contributors to the community as well as being proactive in seeking input re product development direction.
Unlike some other products with a commercially licensed parent, PostBooks offers a well rounded functional subset. It is a complete system that will handle the ERP needs of many SME organizations re accounting, distribution and light manufacturing very effectively and in a durable fashion. xTuple has packaged the PostBooks suite and the supporting database and deployment tools in easy to install packages - just download and launch the installer for your choice of platform.
It is definitely worth downloading to give it a try (and do have a look at the community resources too).
John