Openbravo announced on Tuesday its next-generation enterprise resourceplanning (ERP) product, called “QuickStart,” an alternative to thecompany’s generally more labor-intensive community package.
QuickStart represents a change in strategy for Openbravo. Unlike the ERP product that bears the company’s name, QuickStart is not open source. It is proprietary, not covered bythe public license that covers Openbravo. [*Correction – Sept. 4, 2009]
The decision to go proprietary with QuickStart was basedon business preferences to not allow some module developers to extendthat functionality to QuickStart for free, according to Josep Mitj,COO of Openbravo.
“One of the nice things about open source is that people build on thework of others. ERP is a very fragmented market with a lot ofgranularity. Some of our community members wanted to build uponQuickStart, which raised some concerns,” he told LinuxInsider.
An Alternative
QuickStart adds no new functionality to the existing communityproduct, Openbravo. The goal of the new product is to help users tosave time, Mitj said.
“It’s for people who want to pay money for a product that will savethem time,” he said.
QuickStart runs on top of Openbravo. Current users of the open sourcepackage have no need to purchase the new release for itspre-configured features.
Configuration to Go
Product users have two options now. One is to fully customize the opensource version to their company’s needs. That takes on average from400 to 500 hours to do, Mitj explained.
The other option is to use QuickStart, which comes with all of thecustomization options already built in. The commercial versionincludes a user manual and online training documents.
“The difference in time savings is 40 hours compared to 400 hours,” said Mitj.
What It Costs
Openbravo QuickStart targets SMB companies where IT support and setuptime are lacking. It offers subscribers a simple, no-compromiseapproach for small businesses that want to invest in technology.
The Spain-based company based the purchase price on euros rather thandollars. QuickStart costs 1,500 euros (US$2,133) plus 500 euros ($711) per user.
The product is Web-based as a Software as a Service offering, so thereis no client-side operating system requirement. The delivered softwarecan be used on any user platform. On the server side, the product isoperating system independent.
The application layer generally runs on open source Apache or TomCatplatforms as well as others, said Mitj.
More to Come
Openbravo will add more functionality to QuickStart in upcomingreleases. One of the first additions will be localized features basedon the user’s country, Mitj said.
Users of QuickStart will also get software fixes, support and life cycle warranties with the product.
*ECT News Network editor’s note – Sept. 4, 2009: In our original publication of this article, it is stated that Openbravo ERP is covered by a General Public License (GPL). In fact, Openbravo ERP as a whole is licensed under a Mozilla Public License (MPL) with a “Powered by Openbravo” branding clause, known as the Openbravo Public License. However, some components of Openbravo ERP, which includes code developed by Openbravo and other parties, are published under different licenses like the Apache license, the GNU Lesser General Public License, etc.
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