Si Chen

Is Blockchain the Ultimate Open Source Disruptive Technology? Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures has been talking a lot about the blockchain recently, so I decided to learn more about it.  I read the Marketing the Blockchain e-book, watched The Grand Vision of a Crypto-Tech Economy video and the video keynote of Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne at the Bitcoin 2014 conference, and did some more research on my own.  While far from an expert, I do see some interesting similarities to the adoption of open source software. Here’s what I’ve learned — please comment and tell me if I’m wrong: What’s the Big Deal about the Blockchain? Blockchain is a distributed ledger system using crytography and open source software. The goal of the blockchain is to allow anonymous and secure record-keeping. But here’s the big thing: instead of those records being kept in one central, alleged... (more)

opentaps Open Source ERP + CRM Quarterly Update

Easier to Use and Better Looking We’ve introduced a new keyword search feature for opentaps, based on Hibernate search, Apache lucene, and Google Web Toolkit We’ve also enhanced searching for invoices, payments, accounting transactions, and orders with new fields you can search with We think the new look for opentaps applications is a lot better and hope you agree. For Java developers, we’ve added support for hibernate caching and Java wrappers for ofbiz services and Java classes for constants to make your code easier to write and easier to maintain. Try opentaps in the Amazon C... (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)

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)

Can NoSQL Databases Cure Us of Software Complexity?

If you’ve worked with Apache OFBiz or opentaps 1.x, you’ve probably had moments like this: Q: What’s the difference between internal name and product name? A: If your company wants to maintain an internal name for products that’s different than the standard product name, then you can put it in internalName. Otherwise you should keep them the same. Welcome to software complexity. When we design software, we’re making choices.  Do we add features for people who need them?  Or keep them out to make things simpler for people who don’t?  As much as we’d like to keep things simple, we ... (more)