Open ERP version 7 has been released recently. It seems there have been quite a bit of UI related improvements. Not sure yet about the parts related to business logic.
We have started to look into this ERP package relatively recently. Actually we did look into the possibility of developing OpenERP related business before, but at that time we did not get to conclude that it was for us - it seemed to us that the software was a bit short of handling business process in the way our clients would want. Over the past couple of months, however, we have heard from a few business contacts that they were actually doing business with OpenERP, which got us interested in exploring this product.
Albeit being an open source software, OpenERP does certain things better than ADempiere for having a company (i.e. OpenERP s.a.) manage those areas which may fail without someone's leadership, otherwise. I personally think this approach (i.e. paid services for certain areas) should work better for an ERP package but some ADempiere community members seem to be have been kind of traumatized by the failure of Compiere (I'm saying this with zero Compiere experience but that's so they say). We will keep watching how these packages evolve going forward.
It looks to me that OpenERP has been successful with presenting themselves well in areas such as promotion, documentation, product QA and etc. This is in that they have been enticing solution providers into becoming their partners and users into buying subscriptions with them. Even though there seem to be some buggy parts in their product and some documentation not fully caught up when you look in detail, it is just impressive how fast they have grown over the last few years. Positive spiral of developing/enhancing product, gaining customer base, collecting feedback and buying community engagement must be working strong.
One interesting thing about OpenERP (or any other open source ERP packages) is that Japanese market has been very underdeveloped compared to the rest of the world. Despite their claim to be having more than 400 partners in 70 countries according to their website, they seem to have only one official partner in Japan at the moment. I am sure that the language barrier must be playing the major role here more than anything else, but I am guessing that there will be one point this barrier is somehow cleared and this product flood into this overly conservative market. Facebook was very little know in Japan up until a few years ago, but it is now the most popular SNS platform after they put some effort in localizing this. Of course an ERP package can never be comparable to an SNS service, but it still tells you something.
Despite all the positive things about OpenERP, I find their "Sorry SAP Campaign" which they carried out for the release of version 7.0 a bit out of context. For me SAP is still the most powerful and reliable ERP solution for large international companies which require strong data integrity in both front and back offices. My impression on OpenERP is a bit short of providing strong data integrity when company's business structure is very diverse and complex. Simply put, SAP weighs more on collecting consistent data from various organizations and business scenarios for analysis purpose, while OpenERP puts more focus on streamlining business transactions among colleagues and business partners by providing excellent user interface and useful functions. Focuses and strong points being different, these two products should probably continue to have different types or users for the time being until their products evolve to strengthen their shortcomings and eventually start eating into each other's domain, which should still take some time.
We have started to look into this ERP package relatively recently. Actually we did look into the possibility of developing OpenERP related business before, but at that time we did not get to conclude that it was for us - it seemed to us that the software was a bit short of handling business process in the way our clients would want. Over the past couple of months, however, we have heard from a few business contacts that they were actually doing business with OpenERP, which got us interested in exploring this product.
Albeit being an open source software, OpenERP does certain things better than ADempiere for having a company (i.e. OpenERP s.a.) manage those areas which may fail without someone's leadership, otherwise. I personally think this approach (i.e. paid services for certain areas) should work better for an ERP package but some ADempiere community members seem to be have been kind of traumatized by the failure of Compiere (I'm saying this with zero Compiere experience but that's so they say). We will keep watching how these packages evolve going forward.
It looks to me that OpenERP has been successful with presenting themselves well in areas such as promotion, documentation, product QA and etc. This is in that they have been enticing solution providers into becoming their partners and users into buying subscriptions with them. Even though there seem to be some buggy parts in their product and some documentation not fully caught up when you look in detail, it is just impressive how fast they have grown over the last few years. Positive spiral of developing/enhancing product, gaining customer base, collecting feedback and buying community engagement must be working strong.
One interesting thing about OpenERP (or any other open source ERP packages) is that Japanese market has been very underdeveloped compared to the rest of the world. Despite their claim to be having more than 400 partners in 70 countries according to their website, they seem to have only one official partner in Japan at the moment. I am sure that the language barrier must be playing the major role here more than anything else, but I am guessing that there will be one point this barrier is somehow cleared and this product flood into this overly conservative market. Facebook was very little know in Japan up until a few years ago, but it is now the most popular SNS platform after they put some effort in localizing this. Of course an ERP package can never be comparable to an SNS service, but it still tells you something.
Despite all the positive things about OpenERP, I find their "Sorry SAP Campaign" which they carried out for the release of version 7.0 a bit out of context. For me SAP is still the most powerful and reliable ERP solution for large international companies which require strong data integrity in both front and back offices. My impression on OpenERP is a bit short of providing strong data integrity when company's business structure is very diverse and complex. Simply put, SAP weighs more on collecting consistent data from various organizations and business scenarios for analysis purpose, while OpenERP puts more focus on streamlining business transactions among colleagues and business partners by providing excellent user interface and useful functions. Focuses and strong points being different, these two products should probably continue to have different types or users for the time being until their products evolve to strengthen their shortcomings and eventually start eating into each other's domain, which should still take some time.
