Open source's hottest 10 apps part 2

By David M Williams
Thursday, 21 June 2007 11:52

Open Source

#2 – Openbravo ERP

Openbravo is a hugely comprehensive web-based business application, being a complete free, open source enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. ERP is typically associated with monolithic, multi-million dollar suites like the well-known SAP. To find a good, working free open-source ERP system is like uncovering treasure in a cave. It is a testament to the altruism and talent of open source developers that it exists at all.

For those not in vogue with TLAs ("three letter acronyms"), ERP systems strive to integrate all the data and process of an organisation into a single unified system. ERP systems are not constrained by a company's size, or its business or charter. As ERP systems are so vast, they are modularised to make it easier for businesses to pick and choose the components they wish to use. Nevertheless, all modules integrate with each other.

The most common ERP modules include manufacturing, logistics, distribution, inventory, shipping, invoicing, sales, marketing, human resource management, financials, payroll, project management and customer relationship management. Additionally, ERP systems attempt to implement best practice, based on proven methodologies and frameworks. Check out Wikipedia for more detail. Suffice it to say ERP systems are huge and can make a huge difference to a company over using many diverse packages with the need for redundant data entry and storage and varying processes. This is why it is so remarkable, and impressive, to find an open source system - and especially one  which has such a level of activity that it is the second hottest app on SourceForge right now.

Implementing an ERP application is no trivial undertaking. The Openbravo team have considered this and provide comprehensive documentation explaining how to get started setting it up, how users can work with it, and a comprehensive entity-relationship diagram depicting the database and all its tables and fields.

Openbravo has active forums, a roadmap for the future and a team of translators making it a genuinely global app. It is entirely operating system independent being a Java and JavaScript app, with either a PostgreSQL or Oracle backend database required.

Openbravo is a must-see system. It covers every major business function and thus posesses awesome potential for everyone, whether in part or in whole.