Open Source for Enterprise Management?

acooks asks: "After a recent talk on Open Source software to a class of MBA students, someone came to me with a huge opportunity to use Open Source to manage business processes. What they want is SAP, but for small to medium sized businesses and at a price that a small business can actually afford. Furthermore, they realised that Open Source isn't going to go away anytime soon and that they might as well try to use it to save costs (If IBM is embracing Linux and SAP & IBM plays nicely, then maybe it's worth finding out more about Linux). The questions that were raised basically boils down to this: Is there Open Source software available to manage a business or some of the business processes? Where do you start looking for something like this? I realised that this isn't something that you can quickly download from SourceForge or Freshmeat, so now I'm asking Slashdot."

Comments

One size fits none.

[grunthos]

Looking for one package that does everything is usually a wild-goose-chase.

Every business has special needs. See the recent discussion right here just a few days ago.

Compiere and SQL Ledger sound promising, though.

Not everything is open source

[spRed]

The slashdot crowd might not want to hear it, but not every task is suited to OpenSource. Most open source projects are technical in nature, because the people who work on them are techies. No news here.

There are a number of afforable (< $50 a head a month) online service providers for this stuff. I used to work for one. It is hard to compete with a product that has dozens of man years of engineering time honed by hundred of man years of use and feedback.

There is some hope that an open source alternative will eventually match the commercial offerings. Many opensource projects just copy features found in closed source products. It takes a long time before the free versions out last and out innovate their monied competition.

My recomendation to small businesses is pay for one of the existing products, they are good.

If enough free software folk scratch their itch there will be an open source product worthy of use. But as Linus has said of using bitkeeper vs cvs, it is stupid to hamstring yourself by using an inferior product merely for ideological reasons. Of course, only the end user can decide if it will benefit your business more to use a for-pay versus open source project. And don't forget to check freshmeat every once in a while to see if the balance has changed.

Re:Not everything is open source

[GigsVT]

It is hard to compete with a product that has dozens of man years of engineering time honed by hundred of man years of use and feedback.

The horse and buggy had dozens of man-years of engineering time and hundreds of man years of use and feedback, and yet you don't see those on the road very much any more.

it is stupid to hamstring yourself by using an inferior product

Indeed. Anyone who would hamstring themselves by using proprietary software, or even worse, an ASP which could go out of business at any time and leave you stuck, is very stupid.