Can Open Source ERP Succeed? - Software Advice Articles. Open source has been a great success for infrastructure software such as Linux, Apache and MySQL. Here at Software Advice, we’ve made use of all three. We’ve also made extensive use of open source development libraries like jQuery. For apps, however, we have either rolled our own or deployed commercial Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings. We’re not alone in that decision. Open-source applications have failed to gain mainstream acceptance.
Despite passionate communities and a compelling value proposition, businesses just aren’t buying open-source enterprise applications. With so many ERP implementations getting long in the tooth, many businesses are yearning to break free from vendor lock-in. Here I examine the challenges open source faces in the applications market. Enterprise Applications Are Sold, Not Bought Enterprise applications require sales and marketing to encourage widespread adoption. Enterprise applications are different. Again, the Compiere story is informative.
10 Ways Open Source Can Save Your Company - Linux and Open Source. Open source. It's the fruit of much labor by many people. It follows the tech world's latest trend of wanting everything and anything to be "open. " It could also be a boon for the enterprise. Open source, by its very nature, makes a program's code available to companies, consumers, or organizations to modify it as they wish. More companies are realizing that. So, it seems the market is pushing companies toward open-source applications. 1. Some trust needs to be placed in the community. 2. There's nothing better than having software that's updated constantly. 3. Open-source software allows companies to tailor an application to meet its desire. 4. Although many open-source applications aren't free, they are more cost-effective, in general, than their closed counterparts. 5. Open-source software tends to be more secure. 6.
In a closed application, design isn't always best. 7. One of the biggest issues many IT managers face with closed platforms is license management. 8. 9. 10. Compiere from the Source. In this second part of the series, I will discuss what options Compiere has to go forward as an open source product and what prerequisites there are for building a thriving community. The indication for an active community are (user) contributions. In this blog, I will cover why people contributed to Compiere and why not. In the first part of this blog series, I mentioned that one cause for the diminishing open source community for Compiere was the business model.
Compiere started out as free product with revenue generation via services and evolved to a free open source trial/entry product with "real" commercial product and services (Open Core). As mentioned this model only causes conflicts with the community and also customers as they see it as nothing else than a free trial/entry product with restricted functionality or access with the ultimate goal being to 'upgrade to a paid or enterprise version.
One of the biggest assets of an open source product is a thriving community. Forrester's five phases of open-source success | The Open Road. If you walk into the headquarters of open-source leader Red Hat, you'll see this quote from Mahatma Gandhi gracing the wall: First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. It's a poignant reminder to Red Hat employees that Wednesday's ridicule of open source has shifted to a market that seemingly can't embrace open source fast enough . Forrester Research has crafted its own "Five Stages of Open Source Adoption," as published recently in the May 15, 2009, edition of SD Times, which roughly follows the same pattern of doubt-giving-way-to-adoption that Gandhi suggested: I occasionally get requests from IT people as to how they can bring more open source within their organizations. But one thing is clear: the adoption will happen.
Indeed, borrowing from the Gandhi idea, open source has won. Now it's just a question of how much--and how, as The 451 Group points out--that victory will pay to its proponents.