Open Source Strategies Inc. Releases New ERP + CRM Suite

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12.05.08

Open Source Strategies Inc. Releases New ERP + CRM Suite

By Roberto Galoppini

Opentaps is a an open source ERP + CRM suite sponsored by Open Source Strategies Inc., and developed by full-time professional developers with the help of a community of contributors, recently adopted by Honeywell International.

Opentaps incorporates several open source projects, including Apache Geronimo, Tomcat, and Apache OFBiz for the data model and transaction framework; Pentaho and JasperReports for business intelligence; Funambol for mobile device and Outlook integration. Plus opentaps applications which provide user-driven applications for CRM, accounting and finance, warehouse and manufacturing, and purchasing and supply chain management.

Si Chen, opentaps project leader, gave me a quick history of opentaps.

The word "opentaps" is an acronym for "Open Source Enterprise Applications Suite.", but originally it was named "Sequoia ERP" and first released on August 23, 2005.

I started working on an open source ERP project about four years ago. My wife and I had started an online retail business called Gracious Style, and as a group we ended up having a lot of different programs to run the business. I counted that we had six programs in five languages, and I wanted something which could bring together all the processes of our business. So I got involved with an open source project that is now called the Apache ofbiz project, and eventually became one of the main developers of Apache ofbiz. opentaps grew from inside of ofbiz. At first, we added a couple of modules to ofbiz, one for CRM and one for accounting and general ledger. Over time, we've grown a bit more distant from ofbiz, because of differences in technical and project management philosophies. (Basically, we like object-oriented code and regular stable releases, and the other ofbiz developers prefer non-object-oriented XML code and no stable releases.)

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At this point we've had three major releases of opentaps and several hundred thousand downloads on SourceForge. One of the interesting things about being an open-source project is how wide the range of users has been: opentaps has been used by some very large organizations down to very small companies are just a few people.

Where it Opentaps been implemented, who support it?

It's been used in manufacturing, distribution, retail, and telecommunications projects all over the world. Our company, Open Source Strategies, is the lead developer of opentaps. We support our development through a combination of providing services, support, and relicensing for opentaps. I like to think of us as a trustee for opentaps - we run a for-profit company whose ultimate goal is to develop and promote an open source product that is available for everybody. We serve as an arbiter of opentaps and decide the general direction it's going and how to incorporate community contributions, while still creating a consistent and high quality product. The interesting thing about opentaps being open source is that we don't have to be the final word. Other developers can also take opentaps and advance it themselves independent of us.

Opentaps seems the classical open source projects starting by a personal itch, ending to be developed by the original author and supported by a larger community. Apparently also a European Commission-backed project named ToolEast is using it, but so far they didn't publicly release any product.

Continue reading this article.

About the Author:
In 2001 started up a small firm specialized in infrastructural solutions based on Open Source software. In 2004 launched the first Italian consortium of Open Source SMEs, becoming its president. Collaborates to academy research on Open Source organizational models and on Open Source meta-districts, keeps rubrics and writes articles on ICT magazines.

http://robertogaloppini.net