Baan IVc/V - The First Open-Source ERP? 114
SlickJim asks: "Baan, up until recently a major name in the Enterprise Resource Planning [ERP] Market, is in trouble -- last time I checked market capitalization was down from a high around $8 billion to something around $0.5 billion.
as shown in this company profile. Possibly it will be bought out by one of the usual "strip 'em milk 'em" suspects -- CA, Geac or some other big business software vendor. A buyer would have to make an enormous investment, in technology and marketing, to restore confidence in the product. This investment would probably wipe out any likelihood of making a profit by selling licenses. So what would happen if Baan released the code for their ERP platform under an Open Source licence?"
Advantages of open source ERP (Score:1)
Open source ERP has many advantages, despite the arguments to the contrary. I am an ERP consultant, and am aware of some of the difficulties in implementing ERP solutions.
The benefits of Open Source ERP are somewhat different than those of other open source software. Most of the proprietary ERPs come with source code, so availability of source is not the main factor. Though cost could be a factor, the cost of purchasing an ERP is significantly smaller compared to the implementation cost.
So any new ERP should be focussing on reducing the implementation costs and this is where open source comes into picture.
An ERP system is *huge*. It tries to generalise all operations of various different companies into a single package. In traditional ERP packages, all these operational areas (aka, modules) are tightly integrated. So upgrading an ERP to a newer version is as painful as the initial implementation. Some ERP companies discontinue support on older versions thus forcing you to upgrade or live with all the problems. Even though the source is available, it may not be possible for every company to maintain these software without proper vendor support.
With an Open Source ERP system, it would be possible to build it fully modular, so that you can purchase different modules from different vendors, but still the system will work coherantly. It would also be cheaper for smaller companies to implement since the competition in the consultant market will drive the prices down. It will also make consultant's life easier, since he can share his work with others and benefit more from the other experience.
This is the idea behind the new GNU Enterprise [gnu.org] project which is still in early stages of planning.
Anyway, I don't think open sourcing Baan or any other properietary ERP is a very good idea. This will still have vendor dependancy and none of those were designed for a open source style collaborative development.
-Sivaraj [tamil.net]
Close that <i>!!! (Score:1)
How about adding a </i> to end of the story? You're throwing the rest of
Re:a very intelligent move for them (Score:1)
It won't work like this, for two reasons. Firstly, if you buy Oracle Financials, what you get is a) the support of Oracle Corporation and b) a big pile of PL/SQL. Then, using (a) when you need it, you modify (b) so it fits in with your business processes, legacy systems and whatnot. Oh, and most large corporations insist on escrow for vendor supplied source - i.e. "we'll put the source in the hands of lawyers, and if we go bust and cannot fulfil support arrangements, you can have it".
So, it doesn't need to be open source so you can alter it to suit you. And making it open source so the "community" can work on it is pointless, since you can't do that without knowing how it is to be implemented, each of which is bespoke.
Oh, and can you imagine the average linux d00d boasting on #warez (or wherever IRC users hang out, I dunno) that he got some k-rad accounts payable sK1Lz in his kernel???
Re:Nothing (Score:1)
Well, I would :) Of course, it's quite hypotethical, but being familiar with company-to-company matters, it would pay off big time if your consultants/support company wouldn't be able to threaten you to remove/disable part of the system, or even *hide* any part of it.
Sure, it would be dumb to expect the local admins/operators to develop further the system, should the support company leave you alone, but it'd make sense when your people are able to get the whole thing in operation until you find another company which is more responsible...
Baan Bid (Score:1)
This week there will be a annual shareholders meeting where the bid will be discussed..
Won't happen (Score:1)
Corel, like a lot of other companies, relies in 3rd party libraries to do the things they have no expertese in. By using this method of development, they can often lessen the development time of a product.
Think of it like using a binary X server (such as the Intel i740) -- as a user, you don't care, as a developer, it pisses you off!
PeopleSoft (Score:1)
PeopleSoft sells a Student Administration package that allows college administrators to manipulate classes, student records, etc. Most PeopleSoft users interact with the system via a proprietary Windows front end that communicates with the servers via ODBC or BEA/Tuxedo. This front end allows users to interact with different screens and menus (ie AddNewStudent, etc.). The panels are generated with a GUI tool and are stored entirely in a database (no source code to edit). There are COBOL and SQR batch processes that run the server(s) to generate different reports too. What is nice about this is that PeopleSoft provides all the source for the COBOL, SQR scripts, and one can modify their panels to your heart's delight. This can be very useful if your business needs aren't exactly what PeopleSoft has in mind and/or if something is broken and they haven't released a fix yet (this happens a lot).
Like most of PeopleSoft's other packages, this can be web-enabled, which involves a java client that does the same sort of job that the windows client does (via BEA/Tuxedo) or an ASP plugin that translates the panels into HTML and handles interacting with the user. Taking a PeopleSoft panel and putting it up on the web isn't very difficult and like everything, it can be customized.
It certainly sounds like your University spent a lot of money on consultants to put it together and didn't do much for usability testing during the installation.
Mod this guy up. He's been there. (Score:1)
We're currently halfway between SAP and Oracle. Going towards Oracle at the moment. (re-implementing loads of application functionality) and it still won't do what the business wants. Now it looks like we'll be going back to SAP (once Oracle is up and running of course) which also didn't do everything that the busness wanted.
I reckon a complete losed (Score:1)
ERP appears to be "put all your data in a single database, now make sure thats its a damn reliable setup. Beat all your sub departments into submission and force them to merge all their little fiefdoms of data into one single corporate wide one and off you go".
Dunno if anyone would care if it went OS, perhaps the big corps could share it amoung themselves, but I doubt it would have any impact for the likes of me or you.
C.
Re:What would happen? (Score:1)
Would be nice (Score:1)
This would mean that it would be less voluntary as classical devel has done, and more company XYZ pays hacker to work on it and turn over the code back to Baan Community.
Link correction, sorry (Score:1)
Re:Does anyone really do this? (Score:1)
Heh, talk to Hershey. Last I heard, they were having district sales managers calling individual stores asking if they could fax a copy of their latest order, because they couldn't get it from their SAP system.
They're apparently the poster child for How NOT To Install SAP -- they implemented everything (sales, inventory, distribution, accounting -- everything!) all at once. Common wisdom has it that you implement one thing (say accounting) first, then run that in parallel with your existing system for a few months, then go on to the next part.
As far as BAAN going open source, I wouldn't count on it -- most ERP systems ship a basic code base, which is then heavily customized for the individual clients. Having a FAIB solution out there (especially a major player like BAAN) would probably cut pretty deep into the other player's pockets. Look to SAP or Oracle to snap up BAAN if things get too bad, just to prevent this sort of thing from happening.
Re:Could be good but...new ERP companies!!! (Score:1)
- software cost is minimal, compared to the
- real big money charged for tailoring
This is the Open Source dream! This is what is always touted as the business model for the OS or GNU or etc software specialists.The benefit here is that the industry is already accustomed to paying for the follow up service. The license cost is the entry price, and if it's $0, then smaller organisations may come in. They know that it's not an off the shelf product that anyone can just install (sound familiar?).
I could imagine a group of people getting together, taking on the open source management of the ERP (BAAN or whatever, maybe even working on the current projects such as http://linas.org/linux/xacc/projects.html [linas.org] or like the business specific attempts such as http://linudent.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net] and http://freshmeat.net/appind ex/1999/10/05/939153658.html [freshmeat.net]) and then giving it away for free and making money from the tweaking. Start your own SAP killer, targeted at small businesses and build up from there...
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
Re:Baan = nasty... (Score:1)
It's always the people and organizational commitment that is the key.
Linux-Kontor (Score:1)
The web-site is [linux-kontor.de]
Re:Linux-Kontor (Score:1)
Re:I reckon a complete losed (Score:1)
Re:Does anyone really do this? (Score:1)
Currently I am working at a growing telecom company that is still using all the little apps it wrote when it was tiny. There are major planning system written entire in MSAccess, even Excel. And there are literally hundreds of such systems.
ERP is supposed to come along and clean all that up. Get all your data in one place, and provide uniform reporting and access to that data.
The reality of it all is that hardly anyone actually uses one vendor for all it's data. Having my HR data in the same database with my supply chain data doesn't really buy me much. Usually companies pick 'best of breed' vendors in specific areas - manufacturing/supply chain, financials, etc...
-josh
Re:interesting idea (Score:1)
--Charlie
ERP reality (Score:1)
ERP is also used by companies that have fallen for the usual big software house hype (our software makes you sexier and gets the chinchbugs out of your lawn!) or who think they are bigger and more important than they really are.
Most software of this genre is incredibly poorly coded. The source was accreted over many years in response to market surveys and customer feedback, and if it runs on the operating system for which it was originally developed it's because that operating system is very feature-stable (Hello MVS and HPUX!) and therefore essentially antiquated. The coders were typically wage slaves, usually poorly motivated Wallies and Dilberts, and often punished if they looked beyond the scope of their immediate assignment.
So, if they opened the source there would be great embarassment (from Baan) and horror (from their customers). Just like any major CA product.
--Charlie
Baan IVc/V is *NOT* the first Open Source ERP ... (Score:1)
A few months ago a group of people in the AS/400 community started an Open Source ERP project called WyattERP.
Check out http://www.opensource400.org/wyatt erp/index.html [opensource400.org] for more information.
Re:AS/400 (Score:1)
To summarize: Unscheduled downtime ... Tandem 1.7 hrs/year, AS/400 2-5 hrs/year, Unix 23 hrs/year, NT Server 224 hrs/year.
The AS/400 isn't the sexiest system in the world ... but it sure is one of the most reliable.
Here's another one.. (Score:1)
it's in no way as complete as Baan or SAP, but the project has just started 2 months ago and we are already having quite some useful features.
(Currently only projecttracking, but other, more ERP-like features will be implemented soon.)
It's open source, webbased (php) and it has a cool name.
Check it out at www.achievo.com [achievo.com]
Greetings,
Ivo
Baan is being bought by Invensys (Score:1)
Invensys wants to start up a software division based on Baan (at least that's what they claim).
Re:Price is not an issue with this soft of softwar (Score:1)
Re:Price is not an issue with this soft of softwar (Score:1)
A consultant doesn't walk in and install something like SAP, Peoplesoft or BAAN. A team of 50 consultants working for 12-24 months work fulltime to get it up and running.
The business often re-engineers many of their business processes to fit in with the vendor's view of the world.
It would be decidedly non-trivial to rip out one ERP and replace it with another. It would be extremely expensive and could break the business.
Also, a typical ERP application has many millions of lines of code, and many of them are written in Cobol. Not necessarily the most attractive proposition to the typical open source developer.
Re:This one won't work (Score:1)
Yes, it would be many thousands of person years of development. Hopefully, their build processes are well documented and so even if their build teams have left they can still build it.
"ERP Software is still in the era of vt100's and those green and white stripy A3 fanfold printouts"
Most ERP packages now offer GUI clients and many offer Web clients.
"But the fact is that ERP is something that only large companies need, and they are unlikely to embrace open source for something like this"
Just FYI, SAP does have an edition aimed at small to medium sized companies of only a few employees, but it isn't their main market.
I agree, open source seems very unlikely for ERP applications - the size, complexity and specialist knowledge makes it very difficult. If the big consulting firms don't take it on, it is unlikely to be used. License fees aren't important to ERP companies, consulting on a massive scale is.
These things aren't (currently) written in C, C++ or Java either. Non-sexy Cobol mostly.
Re:Could be good but... (Score:1)
Baan are already loosing money and I doubt they'd be interested in ploughing extra people at the task of weeding throug other peoples suggestions and code tweaks when they are not directly bringing revenue in.
That these big companies have access to the source code mean they are part of the development system - not that it's open source.
Open source works well with large technical user bases or small dedicated developer teams. ERP already apes the latter but I can see businesses failing if they blindly follow the open source mantra.
AS/400 (Score:1)
Re:Price is not an issue with this soft of softwar (Score:1)
What were the results? My experience is that as a rule, public forums are far better (faster, more accurate, even more polite) than paid support.
It depends, of course, on the product.
Re:Does anyone really do this? (Score:1)
Yes, companies really do this, and it gains the big ones that implement intelligently millions of dollars per year.
How about a few analogies to explain the "supposed" benefits:
It's like using a network file server instead of using floppies to move files between computers.
It's like using NIS to sync all your users instead of adding every user manually.
There are many benefits to using an ERP system, with most people finding the most benefits in a manufaturing company. It would be swell if there were only two fields to fill in to run ERP software (employees and sodas), but there are usually hundreds.
I used to implement ERP software(SYMIX [symix.com],Glovia (CHESS) [glovia.com],Baan [baan.com]), and then programmed for Baan...The software is big and does so many things. "Enterprise Resource Planning" _is_ descriptive. For your entire enterprise(business) - whether one site or a hundred sites of hundreds of employees, machines, departments - you can manage/decide/plan how each of those resources (including money) should be allocated and assigned to achieve your business objectives.
Go here and read: What is ERP [buffalo.edu]
Geac buying Baan (Score:1)
The Geac bottom-feeder strategy follows Nature's successful model of a parasitic worm that eventually kills its host. It works like this. First, you find a struggling company with a large existing base of customers. You buy it on the cheap (there are plenty of such companies for sale). You fire everyone you can, especially all the admin types, to cut the run rate as low as possible. HR, accounting, etc., gets consolidated into Geac headquarters in Markham, where you flog a bunch of underpaid admins to try to service the increased load. You put hiring and wage freezes into place at the acquired company, which pretty much guarantees that high-salary engineers leave by attrition.
You get rid of most of the field service people. You consolidate what you decide to keep into Geac field service. Of course, this means you most often send Geac techs to service the software/equipment from the acquired company. Naturally they don't do a very good job at first, but don't worry -- they eventually learn via on-the-job training.
Finally, you raise the cost of service to the existing customers so it becomes extremely profitable. This causes every customer who was even marginally unhappy with the acquired company's service or product to drop out in disgust, but so what. What remains is a (declining) service base that generates an enormous amount of cash.
You're happy if the acquired company makes new sales, but even if they don't, they generate cash from service -- lots of cash -- for a number of years.
Naturally, Geac companies managed this way always have flat or declining sales. Eventually they die.
But in the meantime, you've generated a huge bunch of cash onto your balance sheet, which you use to acquire more struggling companies that you strip in the same way to generate more cash.
Loop.
Unfortunately, Geac seems to have forgotten this highly successful, though disgusting, model. These days Geac appears to believe that it's a real software company, especially after the D&B acquisition. Classic case of a parasite forgetting its mission objective!
That's OK, though. The guy who thought up the original model retired several years ago, a multi-millionaire.
Baan and Invensys (Score:1)
Not gonna happen (Score:1)
I don't think that competition like SAP is going to release open-source products either. We have nothing to expect from these commercial businesses.
What we *can* expect is irritated ERP-customers. ERP-products are often bought by management, to get the company organized in one form. However, not every part of a company wants to use an ERP-solution. It ties them to one software manufacturer (SAP, Baan,
Re:FreeERP exists (Score:1)
It looks like they've been stalled in development since summer of last year, from looking at the web page.
Which is a shame, because it's probably unlikely that BAAN is going to go open-source given the imminent buyout.
The concept of an ERP is an interesting one - the company I work for is implementing Lawson in a half-assed and backward-headed way over the next year, and it looks like if you're a company that works with heterogeneous goods and services, you can really use it to manage costs, consumption, and efficiency.
The thing is, the ERP market seems to be dominated by Big Blue-style MBA-having professionals. Not a whiff of geek around any of the companies I've seen. The earlier comment that ERP specialists are like gold makes me wonder if I shouldn't look into this stuff more...
-carl
Re:WyattERP (Score:1)
I would rather be drawn and quartered than deal with an AS/400 on a regular, professional basis.
Don't they still use EBCDIC for god's sake? You can't get more legacy than that...
-carl
Re:I reckon a complete losed (Score:1)
On a side note, I believe the REAL issue in the traffic sense is that all of these enterprise-level suites of apps are still client-server or batch processes (that is, most of the processing is highly automated and centered on the on the server/mainframe)and require a VERY stateful/transaction-based model of traffic rather than the Internet model of distributed/thin client computing (most of the processing happens off- or different- line and then completes/rejoins the ongoing process) resulting in a stateless and connectionless requirement. Maybe the 'gunking' or slowing of the Internet/Web is as a result of the previous gentleman's comment, as these apps are very bandwidth intensive.
Another OSS ERP project (RELIABLE)... (Score:1)
Don't knock it. ERP is big. (Score:1)
We have to understand that ERP is a broad catagory of software, and it is still in its early stages. Check out the issue of the April issue of the ACM
<http://www.acm.org/cacm/0400/0400toc.html>
Hopefully when ERP gets good we can eliminate half the government
Joe Shmoe: "Yes, I noticed a discrepency on my income tax return. I filed a complaint with the local Linux ERP server and it cleared the matter right up."
Hmmmm (Score:1)
I think that thier competitors would rip through the code and put the things they don't have into thier product.
Next, they would bury them.
OSS doesn't make sense in a *LOT* of places. I can't think of a *single* vertical market where OSS would flourish. If a vendor was to OSS a particular vertical package it would likely kill them. Remember, most vertical software vendors rely solely on one market and one product to sustain themselves.
I expect I'll hear arguments that they shouldn't do business this way and they should diversify and compete on support alone. Well, people who say this are just niave. Many of these vendors have products that can get the job done. There is also a *lot* of competition in most (if not all) of these markets. They end-up winning contracts based on thier support track record. Most companys rely on word of mouth go do thier advertising for them.
It makes sense in horizontal markets such as OSs, word processors, web servers and MUA. But not for vertical markets. It would just end up killing the small guys trying to make a decent living.
Re:a very intelligent move for them (Score:1)
If you go into MySAP, it's main, "dashboard" area is able to integrate a number of different applications to be at the user's fingertips. Applications like email, web browsing and messaging are often external apps that are integrated into MySAP from other sources. Further evidence that the actual vendro's software is taking a backseat.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Could make the same argument for Corel (Score:1)
Re:This one won't work (Score:1)
I certainly hope that was an intended exaggeration. SAP R/3 4.6 has a rather nice, very (too) graphical GUI, interfaces happily with the web thru ITS, has support for running HTML as well as Java based GUIs, and other niceties.. when was the last time you looked at an ERP system?
-pf
Baan IVc/V - The First Open-Source ERP? (Score:1)
Information wants to be freeed. The cat is out of the baag now, you can't put the toothpaste baack in the tube.
giggle
Thad
Open Source ERP, ESR and 4GL (Score:1)
"For purposes of examining this question, it will be helpful to sort kinds of software by the degree of completeness which the service they offer is describable by open technical standards, which is well correlated with how commoditized the underlying service has become...(as)...services become commoditized, they will in turn tend to fall into the open-source infrastructure -- a transition we're seeing in operating systems right now." [tMC]
What is interesting for our argument is that the criteria Eric describes for a project to be open source are very similar to the criteria for a project to be executed with a 4GL. Open source software requires that the application be a commodity service with open technical standards. 4GL applications exist as a collection of commoditized components which communicate through open, standards based interfaces. He goes on to say:
"Finally, we may note that purveyors of unique or just highly differentiated services have more incentive to fear copying of their methods by competitors than do vendors of services for which the critical algorithms and knowledge bases are well understood. Accordingly, open source is more likely to dominate when (e) key methods (or functional equivalents) are part of common engineering knowledge." [tMC]
Once again, the conditions which create a strong preference for open source are the same conditions which create a strong preference for using a 4GL. The application which turns on your VCR from your web browser is a unique and highly differentiated service, while the critical algorithms and knowledge bases of double entry accounting are certainly part of common engineering knowledge. The example of accounting software is an interesting one, because the most successful commercial 4GL programs on the market today are extended accounting packages, sold under the generic name of "Enterprise Resource Planning" (ERP) applications. ERP applications are pathologically closed source; they are tightly controlled by the software vendor, difficult to implement, extremely difficult to customize, very expensive, upgraded infrequently, and always filled with bugs.
"Suppose you open-source that accounting package. It becomes popular and benefits from improvements made by the community. Now, your competitor also starts to use it. The competitor gets the benefit without paying the development cost and cuts into your business. Is this an argument against open-sourcing?" [tMC]
The answer to this question is no, and the proof is the Business Process Reengineering (BPR) which generally accompanies the implementation of an ERP package. While the person doing the BPR will probably charge three hundred dollars an hour, and may take (upwards) of a year to get to the point, what they will eventually tell you is that instead of trying to customize the ERP package to fit your business processes, you should just change you business processes to fit the ERP package. The fact that companies in the same industry, in the same market segment, would spend a lot of time and a lot of money, to achieve the same business process as their competitor shows that whether or not another company has the source code to your accounting software, the fact that the other company has the same binary version of your accounting software means that there is no possible competitive advantage from the accounting software in any form.
Ram Sadasiv
Exceprted from Linux Database Programming [jepstone.net]
Re:Is there a market for this? (Score:1)
Just like the value of a 3D animation artist is not in knowing e.g. how the rendering algorithms in 3D Studio or Lightwave work (most probably have no idea), but how to create an attractive animation.
My guess is that the only ones who might really benefit from Baan's open sourcing are going to be companies like Oracle and SAP that will be able to use that technology to improve their own products.
Is there a market for this? (Score:1)
Professionals who specialise in ERP are like gold dust, probably the most higly paid IT people out there.
Who would need an Open Source ERP solution? The amount saved by licensing is probably negligible compared to the total cost. I suppose it never hurts if we have more Open Source software, but in this particular case I am not sure if there will be any benefits either.
Baan may be bought by Invensys (Score:1)
Old news (Score:1)
Re:A couple of points (Score:1)
Re:Does anyone really do this? (Score:1)
There is. SAP [sap.com]'s R/3, one of the most successful ERP solutions, has been ported to Linux and has done quite well in the benchmarks.
Re:Does anyone really do this? (Score:1)
Quite probably. Small and medium-sized businesses usually do fine without ERP, although they sometimes buy it anyway, just so that they can brag with it. And it might do them a lot of good when one day they aren't medium-size anymore.
Can anyone tell me what it's really supposed to do. "Enterprise Resource Planning" isn't very descriptive. What do you do, type in the number of employees you have and it calculates how many sodas to buy for the company picnic? (sodas, ERP, get it?)
That would be one application. Another would be to find the ration between sales volume and number of sales-related employees for each of your 42 branches to see who's slacking. Or to automatically register each sold item in each branch, compute how much new stuff you need to order (centrally) and at the same time generate spiffy sales statistics.
Could someone at least explain what the SUPPOSED benefits are?
Less friction, less delay and more control when managing really huge businesses that have tens of thousands of employees.
Random Commentarry (Score:1)
People have said that if the code was free it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference. this is true and untrue at the same time. for a company that is big, with established processes, the frontend needs to be *heavily* customized. A startup, esp a manufacturing startup (yes, they exist, even in the US) could use a cleverly designed ERP right out of the box and make their processes match the ERP's processes. I think there is a market for this. I doubt Baan's is flexible enough to do it (but I havn't used it).
Several people have noted that ERP co's sometimes give away some source and sell propreitary modules, or service. This resembles the open source model in some interesting ways already. Someday somebody will write or release a set of good, generally applicable ERP like frontends for pg/MySQL, with a slick customization script, and will capture the low end of the market.
Why open sourcing ERP systems is a must (Score:1)
1. ERP systems have the ambition to automate as much as possible the operations of a company. In fact they can be seen as an extension of the general and analytical (cost) accounting systems to computer systems which also fulfill management information functions in other areas than just accounting (human resources, production, customer relations, supply chain etc). Most large companies make use of different computer platforms, whether because of the evolution of technology (there are still lots of legacy systems which one would not install nowadays if one would be faced with the same problem as in the mainframe age - these systems need integration in order to make all kinds of previsions through data mining, OLAP etc.) or because of different specialities of every platform (Wintel PCs maybe good for the secretaries, whereas the technical departements may prefer *nix based Alpha workstations and the marketing girls and boys swear by iBooks etc.) One immediately sees: there is a lot of diversity in hardware and software.
What is the right answer on this problem? Force everyone to use NT Workstation/Win 2000?
I do not think so. Instead: let every departement use the system they prefer at that moment and standardise the company wide automation -that's the "mission" of ERP- on web based clients and servers which are as open as possible. And what supports more open standards or has the perspective of supporting them in the future than a system which provides you with access to its code so you can build links between departemental etc. systems yourself?
2. Second argument in favour of open source ERP systems: purely economically practical. The only economic accomplishment of Internet technology we can already nowadays be sure of is business to business integration. Not just through electronic marketplaces which promiss cost savings in the area of parts & raw material (etc.) acquisition, but in the first place by standardising the document flow in company transactions. Internet technology succeeds where SGML (remember?) has failed. And in order to have different company computer systems understand each other there exists no better choice than open source. Again with open source one can create his/her own "open standards" even if there aren't any yet.
3. Thirdly: companies are linking up more and more whether because of joint-venturing or just sheer mergers. Again, if ERP systems are open source, it is a piece of cake to link them up as well.
What is your opinion?
JK junior :-)?
from a small country in the EU which lost the selections in European Soccer Championship. Guess which
reduced risk and increased timeliness would result (Score:1)
The advantage is that if the software is open source, many other ventures may spring up (like what has occurred with Linux) to make money from supporting it - in exactly the situations you have described.
If Open-Baan means more support organisations, competing for faster turn around time to customers, even if the cost is high, then perhaps that is important. As you mention, customers are more concerned about risk and timeliness than they are about inherent features and cost.
A downside is that the software may become bastardised and developed contrary to its original ethos.
I guess not... (Score:1)
Re:Is there a market for this? (Score:1)
The question probably isn't a financial one. (beer/speech)
You're correct about the licensing being negligable compared to the vast sums of money needed to pay for ERP implemenation contractors. The advantage might be that there would be more opportunity for the rest of us to take a look at these systems. Most companies won't let you even try - they know that you'll leave for a better job.
Re:Does anyone really do this? (Score:1)
In essence, ERP software is used to store and manipulate all the administrative data a company has to deal with - timeclock data, payroll, HR information (job titles, insurance, dependants, etc.), inventory management, org charts. Tons of stuff, really.
There's nothing special about the idea of using software to deal with these things. But what's interesting about ERP software packages is that they attempt to be nearly off-the-shelf solutions for problems that previously involved a lot of custom software. I say 'nearly' because the process of getting a company to use SAP (to pick the software I spent a year working with) still involves a lot of customization. But with SAP, that customization typically involves a lot more cut-and-dried configuration, and a lot less programming. The idea is that the $10 million, 20-person SAP implementation will be a lot cheaper than building a custom system from the ground up.
I'm not sure that this approach lives up to the hype. In practice, a great deal of effort has to go into documenting requirements, regardless of whether you're using off-the-shelf software or custom stuff. And working out how to configure SAP to meet those requirements isn't a whole lot easier than designing custom software - sure, the requirements map nicely to SAP's built-in code and data models much of the time, but you almost always find yourself dealing with requirements that SAP can't handle nicely, and end up resorting to messy hacks to make things sorta-work.
In the end, I'm not convinced that you come out ahead in terms of bang/buck when you use a package like this.
Re:Does anyone really do this? (Score:1)
We use Digital Unix at work and Oracle8i - but I use Linux and Oracle8i at home to do PL/SQL script testing - debug etc...
Works great.
Open Source, ERP and Product Quality (Score:1)
The big ERP vendors are legendary for bugs - SAP, BAAN, i2, Peoplesoft, you name it. I personally have done several implementations of J.D. Edwards OneWorld, and, frankly - Literally thousands of bug fixes required before going live. You wondered at points whether any testing was done at all prior to release.
Different people have mentioned "Don't knock it - ERP is BIG" and it is - my standalone version of JDE is 2.5 GIG. Obviously with software this large, a certain number of bugs are to be expected.
How would open source help in this instance. Would bugs get fixed faster? Proactively? Better initial software quality?
Re:Open Source ERP, ESR and 4GL (Score:1)
My belief is not to customize packages when you implement them - I liken it getting a tattoo, seemed like a good idea at the time, but you'll regret it later - you have no support from the vendor, etc.
However, what competitive advantage do you gain by implementing the same business processes as your neighbor? How can you possibly justify spending millions of dollars simply to stay in the same place?
Would open source ERP help in customizations, or modifying the software to meet your unique business practices? Again, I'm simply not knowledgeable in the ins and outs of open source.
Re:Could be good but... (Score:1)
One of our US partners is such a company, and their hook is very minor; they integrate with a DMS and have to do it via a text file.
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Re:Does anyone really do this? (Score:1)
It will likely cost millions, take twice as long as planned, meet one quarter of the actual requirements and ultimately be declared a success because too many execs would lose face if it wasn't.
While the ideas are noble, it certainly seems that the whole thing is a rather tenuous undertaking.
- They just pay me. I don't actually _do_ anything.
Re:Baan = nasty... (Score:1)
This would not work open source.... Those of us who have it seen it know!!!
Re:Baan bought? (Score:1)
Re:Does anyone really do this? (Score:1)
Baan = nasty... (Score:1)
My company attempted to implement Baan last year, and failed miserably. We're of the opinion that it isn't ^possible^ to successfully implement it!
If Tux takes this beast on, he's going to have his hands full... Baan is a mess.
Just my tupence....
~wmaheriv
FreeERP exists (Score:1)
rr
Re:I reckon a complete losed (Score:2)
ERP installations and operations probably accounted for 50% or more of the total IT market in the Western world 1990-2000. Particularly 1998-2000 when large corporations finally realized that their 1960's vintage business code really couldn't be fixed for Y2K. Even today, total WAN traffic for most large enterprises is probably 90% generated by the ERP system, 10% by Internet. Therefore total datacomm traffic (again in the Western world) has been driven far more by ERP demands than Internet.
I know this sounds strange if one is working in a small academic environment or for a small company, but the system requirements of a large enterprise don't scale from small examples. As with much of IT.
sPh
Invensys is buying them (Score:2)
They are currently being bought by Invensys, a british firm. They own a shitload of compagnies, quite diverse in nature. Imagine Baan under the same umbrella as, say, Westinghouse Train Brakes :-)
More details on this baan webpage [baan.com]
greetings,
Reinout
OS ERP doesn't make a lot of sense! (Score:2)
All in all the real costs of ERP are in the analysis and installation phase. The software costs are almost incidental. Look at a company like SAP and one of their large installations. GM spent hundreds of millions of dollars for SAP analysts to come in and adapt the SAP software to the company. The big moolah goes into maintaining this horde of specialists for the months and years it takes to install SAP.
Given all this, Open Source ERP software is about as useful as Open Source Space Shuttle "firmware".
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
Price is not an issue with this soft of software (Score:2)
I have been working with a major ERP vendor's product for the last few years - PeopleSoft. What companies want is support, stellar support, that returns answers within hours.
As a corporation, if my union payroll run crashes, or my month end financial processing bombs I want someone to fix it, NOW. I don't want to post a question on Usenet and wait four days. Union employees won't wait that long for a paycheck.
So free ERP packages would have a very limited market. Most corps can afford to pay, because they have the money, and believe it or not, properly implemented ERP packages can actually _save_ money for a coporation.
-josh
OSS ERP = Widespread adoption of Linux/OSS (Score:2)
I work at a chip design firm (Theseus Logic [theseus.com]) and 90% of our applications run on Linux or Solaris all from a single Linux server (although we looking to add a 2nd server or a NetApp box). Outside of those programs used by 30-35 engineers, I spend 75% (or more) of my time messing with stupid Windows applications for the admin staff, a measly 7 people (even though the Engineers are 90% of the traffic and data).
From a $30K accounting package (Deltek Advantage) with its own NT server that cost more than our Linux box (and may require a 2nd one soon for stupid Citrix Winframe), to stupid little $2-5K/each Windows software packages here and their for inventory, stock options, etc..., I'm going up the wall. Especially when updating software (never goes right, unlike our UNIX EDA and other tools) and I pull my hair out. Everytime I bring up ERP I get told that since we've already spent >$50K plus another $50K on consultants, so we're not changing. Of course I brought up the point before we spent this money so I get the underlying "crying over spilt milk" or "quit rubbing it in my face" attitudes nowdays.
I can argue TOC with ERP, but for companies like mine that have already spent >$100K on disseparate Windows packages and don't want to pay anymore, a free/OSS package is the only way to get it in house. I sure wish companies would realize that maintaining disseperate little (and even big) Windows programs are just a pain in the @$$. I'm sorry but all it takes is 6 months of UNIX administration and sysadmins realize that UNIX maintainance is just 10x easier (thank God 90% of our engineering apps run on UNIX).
Thank God projects like GNU Enterprise [gnu.org] and the Java-based Kontor Project [linux-kontor.de] have sprung up. I'd say if you want to help Linux get inside corporate America, look to donating your time on these projects. And you don't have to even be a developer to do so, I'm sure both projects are looking for a lot of bookeepers and accountants for most of the design.
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
As is too typical... (Score:2)
Baan would have garnered a lot more attention and integrity if Baan had open sourced their work from a position of strength.
interesting idea (Score:2)
In a way this situation is similar to what redhat and VA Linux do. Rather then selling linux licenses they make money by packaging it and supporting it.
Unfortunately there are always lots of dependencies on non open source software (e.g. commercial database systems, messaging systems). So being open source would probably not lower the cost of deploying and maintaining erp packages significantly.
So my guess is that open sourcing Baan would probably work but would not provide any immediate advantages other than: being able to swap support companies without having to buy a new erp system, being able to fix the software (not very relevant for most companies since many companies do not have personal capable of doing the changes).
Any company buying Baan will probably do so to gain access to their customers (e.g. Boeing) and expertise in the first place. The software is probably second priority.
Does anyone really do this? (Score:2)
Can anyone tell me what it's really supposed to do. "Enterprise Resource Planning" isn't very descriptive. What do you do, type in the number of employees you have and it calculates how many sodas to buy for the company picnic? (sodas, ERP, get it?)
Could someone at least explain what the SUPPOSED benefits are? All I ever see in the mags is "ERP" this and "OLAP" that. Never any explanation of what the benefits are supposed to be.
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Baan and Open Source not a good fit IMHO (Score:2)
First, ERP software was designed take your purchasing system, manufacturing system, distribution system, order entry system, etc. and merge them in to one complete package so every department is working with the same numbers and you don't have to develop and maintain interfaces between all these seperate systems. (which really is an issue at a lot of companies) IMHO it really isn't great at any one function but it does all functions reasonably well.
Baan does not give you the source when you purchase the software (unlike many other ERP vendors) You must buy it, and it aint cheap (meaning Baan really doesn't want you mucking around in there) If you DO happen to buy the source and make any modification (no matter how small) all bets are off on support from Baan on anything relating to what you changed. And to be honest I can't say that I blame them. I always think of modifications in Baan as a game of "pick-up-sticks". You can try to pull out one stick (modify one piece of code) but more than likely you will move other sticks (effect other things). Sometimes doing one simple little thing ends up being a MAJOR project because everything is so interconnected.
So, I guess my point is... If someone modifies something in Baan and it works great for them, I want that and install it on my system, I may have just blown-up 5 things I've previously modified. Not a big deal, but the more people have the code and modify it the more fragmented the product will become and the harder it will be to implement and support.
Re:BAAN is dead anyway! (Score:2)
Ummm, a few acronyms does not an ERP system make!
First of all all these things you just listed are just the latest buzz-words in management. Many companies do not give a flying fig about that stuff. Baan's strengths are in the Finance and manufacturing areas. In my opinion ERP vendors should spend their time fixing the problems they have in their BASE package and stop trying to throw everything and the kitchen sink in.
Customer support (Score:2)
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Could be good but... (Score:2)
As long as they're still getting their ERP via a trusted third party and paying a reasonable rate for supportand install what does it matter to them that the application is open source.
Another thing to bear in mind is what benefits open source would bring? ERP is generally modular in implementation with businesses leasing specific modules - so features are not the big driving force - if a feature is needed it's going to come from a business need within the manegment layer of a ompany not the technical layer which is where the bulk of the drivingforce for the creation of open source innovations seems to stem.
In short I don't think this matters that much - it wont save Baan either way since they still have to train people to specific standards and implement very specific installs of the software.
Re:Does anyone really do this? (Score:2)
In an organization with 500+ employees that ships hundreds of products a day, you can't give everyone Excel and say keep track of this stuff and leave a copy on the file server for everyone else to look at, like you can with a business of 10 to 20 people. ERP products allow for centralized administration as well as data tracking. Not to mention extreme uptime etc.
I know there is tons of stuff for AS/400/S/36/NT. Maybe opening this would allow someone to make something for Linux (I don't know if there is one now) THis could be very helpful if people want to put Linux in the enterprise as anything but a web server.
Marc
Re:Does anyone really do this? (Score:2)
IBM at the moment is doing an SAP conversion, and I can't get Netfinity servers. Not because they don't have the parts, but because they are having SAP problems and can't ship anything.
In short ERP is pretty important.
Marc
Re:Price is not an issue with this soft of softwar (Score:2)
Customer buys an ERP and support for lots of $$. Vendor gives limited support, but customer has paid so much for the software, it would cost more to switch to a new ERP. (I've seen this case twice)
In walks in Baan and their open source ERP. They're not selling software, so the up-front cost is that of the consultant to install and train. Customer then pays the same support amount and gets a better ERP, without spending any extra money. And since it's open source, everyone will have software that will let the ERP talk to real systems (like having mysql do a few queries to make some automated spreadsheets or something).
Re:Is there a market for this? (Score:2)
Unfortunately, it wouldn't do you much good. I've worked with ERP systems for a while, and just having your own, open sourced or not, wouldn't really do you much good. There's an enormous amount of configuration to do before even getting started; you muddle through that and end up with a system that really does you no good, as the tough part of being an ERP system developer is *not* the system itself (SAP for instance uses a rather simple langauge that doesn't take long to learn well), but rather how to achieve what you want to do -- the business logic part of it. The most '1337 4GL hax0rer in the world may not have a clue what to do if someone asks him to match up deliveries with schedule lines for current sales orders -- those things are what you *need* to learn, and I quite honestly doubt you're going to end up learning them unless you work in a real-world environment where things actually happen. I don't see ERP systems moving towards small businesses anytime soon; they're just not geared for smaller scale setups... so even if you made your own little fake-company setup on the system you'd never touch 10% of the stuff you'd be faced with at any company actually using one of these systems.
Sorry to sound so negative, but I think the only way to acquire the skills necessary to do ERP programming is to go work for a company with such a beast... and there are *plenty* of opportunities there, as long as you can prove that you're capable of learning. :-)
-pf
PS -- depending on the release of SAP you work with you may be faced with 10000-15000 database tables to pick from when you look for your data... just an idea of the enormousness of these systems.
SAP already 'open sourced' (Score:2)
SAP is more or less written entirely in an internal programming language called ABAP -- the only 'closed' part of the system is the actual lower level communication with the database and operating system. All the business logic, all the applications you run -- the source for those is wide open to anyone with developer access.
I'm not familiar with Baan, but it may be somewhat similar -- if not, I doubt they would allow for much customization and need to die anyway.
So, anyway, what's up with the 'Open Source' cry this time? Is it the generic reply to anything these days? 'Wow, Gadzoox lost business this quarter, they should Open Source their hardware to save their business!!!'
-pf
a very intelligent move for them (Score:2)
This move could give them long term market share, and give them lead over rivals in a market place that is not moving fast, but has sticking power - much like operating systems, because ERP systems are effectively organisational operating systems.
Various software, including MRP, MIS and so on have been predicting the impending unification of ERP software. The codification of business rules and operating procedures, now coupled with the emergence of electronic market places, suggests that _now_ is the time that ERP vendors should make the big push to secure long term positions. Oracle is very succesfull at the moment partially for these reasons - databases are part of the plumbing in the electronic economy.
BAAN has, according to the press, been having problems: staff turnover, depressed demand (post y2k), and so on. Their major competitor is SAP, which recently embarked on a mySAP strategy - almost a portal for executives. You will note that Crossworlds was formed to plug the gaps between ERP software - although it has also had problems due to slow market development. This year is predicted to be the year of B2B, and their will be a shakeout, but B2B is a part of the continuing 'informationalisation' of organisations, and ERP software becomes a necessary ingredient in connecting the enterprise into the wider landscape of globally electronic resource connectivity.
One lesson from Open Source is that when software becomes 'infrastructure', then it is best served by an Open Source model - for various reasons. ERP software is reaching the stage of 'infrastructure'.
Open-BAAN would probably result in various ventures that would take advantage of the Open Source, and it could propell BAAN to market leadership. I think this would be an excellent move. The question that must be considered by BAAN's board is: how can BAAN gain from it, after all, BAAN answers to its owners with a P/L statement. Perhaps BAAN may choose a 'tempered' Open Source strategy ? The question now is: what strategies could/should BAAN adopt, and more fundamentally, can Open Source be seen to have categorisable 'styles', with each their own pros and cons.
ERP is an organisational operating system (Score:2)
ERP basically encodes operating procedures for an organisation: what used to be paperwork is now electronic screen work. It is a natural evolution from MIS, MRP, CRM and the spectrum of disparate software distributed around organisations.
For example, with ERP software you should be able to connect your organisation to digital market places quite easily. You should be able to track and automate resource chains.
Another example is that ERP software, like MIS, should allow for comprehensive data and status reporting. It may also help feed sales and marketing information back through to engineering and production.
When it comes to organisational automation, the pack leader at the moment seems to be Cisco - AFAIK from reports, the company rides upon a digital framework, where purchase orders can flow through to component suppliers without needing any human interaction. The boast is that Cisco can 'close its books' daily.
Eventually -- if not already -- you should be able to buy templates for standard organisation types off the shelf. The 'product oriented' organisation is largely a well known concept and largely the same all over the world - differences according to type of product and other factors are minimal: the infrastructure is the same.
Baan is already being bought! (Score:2)
This one won't work (Score:2)
I'm as positive abou the Open Source movement as the rest of the Slashdot readership, but I think this is taking it a bit far..
In the case of Baan, their technology is not necessarily their strong point! Thats why the company isn't worth anything. Open Sourcing their technology at this point will only give everyone something to laugh at. I mean, seriously, their stuff has probably been thrown together over 10+ years. There probably isn't even anyone left who can compile it
ERP Software is still in the era of vt100's and those green and white stripy A3 fanfold printouts.
If the open source movement want to develop an ERP system then it will, but to be honest, given the level of freely available database technology, ERP should be considered to be an application built on top of a database system. I can see using something like Postgres along with Java Servlets, Apache and JServ used to build a fairly reliable, scalable and portable system
But the fact is that ERP is something that only large companies need, and they are unlikely to embrace open source for something like this
WyattERP (Score:2)
Cheers,
Simon B.
Baan sux (Score:2)
Variables of a session (that's what a window, it's scripts etc are called in Baan) are often set from an include file which is shared with many other sessions. So if you have to change something at this place, you'll never know, if another session includes this file and will fail at the next compilation attempt.
Many developers told me that they spent up to 30% of their time in finding workarounds because the run time environment does not behave as documented.
Not to mention the crappy report tool that is not even able to create a interpretable error when compilation failes.
IMHO Baan is a piece of software at the end of its lifetime. Don't bother about making it open source or not, just let it die.
Re:What would happen? (Score:2)
Re:Could be good but... (Score:2)
There are a lot of coders exposed to this in a workaday fashion, currently going without the ability to make quick fixes or divine the essence of misbehaving or misused features. documentation can't answer every question, and sometimes you can't wait for tech support to 'get to it'. Not that the turn-around by these tech support people is slow!, but imagine it is the night before the 10k is due and a glitch finally rears its ugly head...
This step will only increase business efficiency a small percent, but that adds up to BILLIONS over the course of a year, across the economy. just ask Greenspan.
just my $.02, I don't even know how to use a 'computer' much less work with ERP packages. =)
:)Fudboy
Who gives a crap about the code? (Score:3)
GNUE Enterprise (Score:3)
What would happen? (Score:3)
Nothing (Score:4)
A couple of points (Score:5)
More importantly, "historically" (by which I mean in the 1970's and 1980's) ERP software (then usually called MRP II) was actually very close to the open source model. In that: (i) you received source code with your purchase (ii) you were free to modify the source code in any way you so desired, with the level of support from the vendor for your modified code varying depending on how complex your modification was and how much you were willing to pay (iii) vendors would capture thier clients' mods and often roll them back into the base product (iv) for some products, there was an active process of exchanging mod code among customers independent of the vendor.
(iv) is perhaps most interesting. Some vendors actively encouraged and supported the distribution of mods, some looked the other way, and a few tried to license or discourage communication among clients. A few vendors, such as ASK, actually encouraged their customers to communicate among themselves and form independent advocacy organizations.
Today the situation seems to be more restricted. A few vendors still distribute source code, but usually under fairly tight licensing restrictions. Most low- and mid-range vendors are only distributing executables now. High end is another story, but those contracts are all negotiated on an individual basis.
sPh
Re:Could be good but... (Score:5)
They won't be. Why? They get most of the source already.
No company is very alike and all their software must be customized. Companies like SAP and Solomon (I don't know about BAAN) Basically provide the source and allow for rewrites and tweaking to fit certain business models. Now most companies don't have people who can read it so it doesn't matter anyway. But in its own way it is open. When we deal with Solomon we have our own people writing modules along with Solomon people. This makes for a happier experience all the way around I will tell you :).
Marc