451 CAOS Theory 
A blog for the enterprise open source community
Open source ERP: the next big thing?
Matthew Aslett, December 18, 2007 @ 10:09 am ET2008 could be a very good year for the likes of Compiere and Openbravo if 451 CAOS Theory’s blog stats for this year are anything to go by.
I’ve just been taking a look at the most read stories of the year, and following the usual suspects (Oracle Unbreakable Linux, the Linux desktop, the 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 appliance.
While Openbravo’s ERP appliance is an interesting project, there is nothing particularly controversial about it, which makes its inclusion amongst the most-read blog posts all the more surprising. More people were interested in that post than Novell’s deal with Microsoft or the patent battle between NetApp and Sun, or Barack Obama’s promise to support “universally accessible formats”, for example.
While it is impossible to guess what drove the readers to that post in particular, one has to conclude that there is significant interest in open source ERP software. This suggestion is backed up by the fact that the phrase ‘open source ERP’ was the sixth most popular search term to have driven people towards the 451 CAOS Theory blog.
UPDATE - As if to prove the popularity of open source ERP, within three days of its publication, this very post had become the eighth most popular 451 CAOS Theory post of the year, with a good chance that it could climb even higher before the year is out - UPDATE
Meanwhile, Glyn Moody recently noted that ERP could provide a happy hunting ground for open source software, at least in the UK. Moody pointed to figures from the Office for National Statistics that indicate only 6.5% of 8,000 businesses surveyed were using ERP systems in 2006, providing open source vendors with a significant number of greenfield sites.
More evidence of the interest in open source ERP comes from the number of vendors and projects. As well as Compiere and Openbravo, a quick Google search also throws up:
What is also interesting about these projects is that they are so far largely self-funded. Compiere pulled in $6m Series A funding from New Enterprise Associates in June 2006, while Openbravo raised 5m euros ($6.6m) Series A funding from Sodena in January 2006, but that’s about it. At the very least you can expect further funding in this area in the next year.
Categories: Funding, Software, The 451 Group
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[...] Check it out! While looking through the blogosphere we stumbled on an interesting post today.Here’s a quick excerpt 2008 could be a very good year for the likes of Compiere and Openbravo if 451 CAOS Theory’s blog stats for this year are anything to go by. I’ve just been taking a look at the most read stories of the year, and following the usual suspects (Oracle Unbreakable Linux, the Linux desktop, the 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 appliance. While Openbravo’s ERP appliance i [...]
With the increase in interest shown by the corporates as well as individuals for frowth and development, there is no doubt that 2008 would be a grt year for the ERP players.
Thats “growth and … and not frowth…
What is ERP ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_resource_planning
The question is not *if* but *when* …
ERP is tough market, lots of solutions, very opaque and once a new ERP is running (more or less) without big problems companies are *very* reluctanct to switch to another ERP.
But my bet is (obviously) Apache OFBiz with it’s Open Development style which brings lots of developers/contributors/testers etc.
P.S. The correct link for Apache OFBiz is http://ofbiz.apache.org
Thanks for the link
A quick mail to the guys at ERP5 revealed that their Express version, which is a hosted (SaaS) version for small businesses should be feature complete by the end of January. Currently they only provide some HR and CRM features for Express but by the end of January.
ERP5 Express hosted ERP for small business