Si Chen

In this presentation, Si Chen will discuss the key trends in the enterprise software sector, including vendor consolidation, on-demand delivery, and the transition to a Service Oriented Architecture, and how they are creating opportunities for open source applications.  He will then showcase opentaps, the Open Source Enterprise Applications Suite (www.opentaps.org).  opentaps is a Java open source application suite with ERP, CRM, Manufacturing, eCommerce, and Supply Chain Management features which is built around SOA and can be deployed on any database or platform.  The presentation concludes with a disucssion of future opportunities for open source software in the applications sector. ... (more)

A Brief History of CRM

This is actually pretty cool: a timeline history of CRM, from Software Advice.  From the early days of the PC: To our much heralded (hyped?) social web 2.0 future: It’s fun to trace the history of technology and Customer Relationship Management applications: Early 1980’s: Personal Computers -> ACT!, desktop single user sales automation software, 1986 Late 1980’s: Client/Server -> Siebel, multi-user CRM, 1993 1995: Netscape and the Internet -> Salesforce.com, web-based CRM, 1999 2010: Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing -> ? What, indeed, will the future bring?  Even bigger changes. If y... (more)

Quick Comparison of eCommerce Platforms

eCommerce Journal on Ulitzer We’ve been working on an integration of the Magento e-commerce platform for opentaps Open Source ERP + CRM, and some of our long-time users have also talked about integrating opentaps with Spree. I took a quick look at both and make some notes about them. Since we’re not developers of or service providers for either one,  and we plan to support integration with both in opentaps, I hope you’ll consider this an unbiased if somewhat “bird’s eye” comparison of Spree vs. Magento. Spree Spree is lightweight and easy to use, and the user interface for both t... (more)

opentaps Open Source ERP + CRM Quarterly Update

In this edition of the quarterly update, I’m happy to tell you about the: opentaps 1.4 Release New opentaps.org website, forum, and training video store opentaps-Magento integration Development goals for opentaps 1.5 A proof of concept for opentaps 2.0 based on OSGi, Spring dynamic modules, and maven Amicon Technologies and IntegratingWeb join opentaps as opentaps Partners opentaps in China opentaps 1.4 is Released opentaps 1.4 was officially released in March 2010. This release features many new features in CRM, manufacturing, supply chain management, and financial accounting; i... (more)

Can Open Source Make ERP Better?

Derek Singleton at SoftwareAdvice.com has written an interesting article entitled Can Open Source ERP Succeed? He brought up some of the hurdles for the adoption of open source ERP software. Having developed open source ERP and CRM for over five years now, I’d like to ask a different question: Can Open Source make ERP better? The ERP Challenge To answer this, we need to look first at the fundamental challenges of business applications such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP): They’re complicated.  Businesses are complicated, so ERP, which must be support all the functions of a b... (more)