451 CAOS Theory 
A blog for the enterprise open source community
Open source ERP in a box
Matthew Aslett, October 18, 2007 @ 5:52 am ETWe’ve had the database appliance, the business intelligence appliance, the systems management appliance, and the CRM appliance, so I suppose it was only a matter of time before the arrival of the open source enterprise resource planning appliance.
Openbravo has announced that it is teaming up with rPath to build an ERP software appliance for small and medium businesses, with the aim of simplifying deployment and ongoing maintenance.
The product includes a management interface for scheduling backups and performing system updates, while it will also automatically receive tested and packaged updates from Openbravo.
The latter functionality is the Spanish ERP vendor’s first steps towards the delivery of Openbravo Network, a support service scheduled for roll-out next month.
It’s interesting to see Openbravo maturing and trying the appliance route as it looks to widen its opportunities. Open source continues to rise up the stack and crack into markets that were previously seen as locked-down by dominant vendors (database, systems management for example).
The ERP market will be a tough nut to crack, but clearly there are always opportunities for new deployments, and the mid-market space has been under-served by the industry giants that dominate the ERP space. While they may see the mid-market as their best opportunity for growth, and have acquired accordingly, that does not guarantee success.
Meanwhile Openbravo, Compiere, and xTuple are amongst those mounting an open source challenge.
Categories: Software
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Hi Matthew,
xTuple has offered an ERP appliance and managed network services, including backup and automatic updates, for some time. See http://www.xtuple.com/pricing …
Best,
Ned
Cheers Ned. What’s the uptake been like?
A good number of our direct customers subscribe to the Remote Server Maintenance service. We’ve also had our VAR partners resell that service - and of course, a number of them provide similar services as well. From our perspective, we don’t care where the server lives - whether it’s onsite or in one of our partners’ data centers, it’s easy to layer in basic network services into the ERP offering.
Cheers,
Ned
[...] Read more at 451 CAOS [...]
The Major ERP Vendors have failed to meet the aspirations of Small and Medium Industries vis a vis cost, performance, flxibility and ease of use. Over and above high costs, SMEs are forced to acquire large servers, highly qualified technical personnel, pay user based fees and recurring license costs etc.
The core intent of SME of optimizing cost is lost the moment they are fooled into going for a oversized, underutilized, misfit ERP.
Only open source ERPs like SYS-APPS (http://www.excltechnologies.com), designed to totally de-clutter operations and integrate Planning, Purchase, Inventory, Production, Sales, Accounting and HR into well knit, smooth running departments, can serve SMEs effectively and help them realize their goal of improved efficiency, with lower input costs.
[...] EC’s attitude to open source) I was surprised to see that the fourth most popular post was this one about Openbravo’s deal with rPath to create an open source ERP [...]