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."

GNU Enterpise

[seanmeister]

It's a work in progress, but it's there (link [gnu.org])

Compiere

[OpieTaylor]

http://www.compiere.org/ [compiere.org]

"the most popular Open Source business application - usually among the top 10 of the 60,000+ projects in SourceForge"

I looked at it a couple years ago for a grad school project, and the documentation was limited. However, now the technical docs look solid, and there's classroom and on-line user training.

GNUe and Compiere

[hellgate]

AFAIK Compiere (being FOSS itself) still relies on proprietary backends (Oracle); this was meant to change at some point, though.

http://www.compiere.org/ [compiere.org]

http://www.gnue.org/ [gnue.org]

Also check the Kernel Cousin for information:
http://kt.zork.net/GNUe/index.html [zork.net]

Compiere?

[GOD_ALMIGHTY]

Not sure if it does everything the poster is looking for. It's more of a financials package (ERP and CRM), but it is targeted at the small to medium business environment the poster asked about. http://www.compiere.org/.

I personally think only the largest businesses are going to use an all-encompassing customizable framework to base all of their business apps on. Most will use pieces that do one thing well and integrate them. All in one types like SAP let things play together nicely but you duplicate effort that might have been done in a more targeted package, assuming no one wrote a SAP module that does this.

Just my $.02

First Problem is 'scope'

[nurb432]

The idea of 'enterprise' systems is rather vague in general. It means different things to different people..

First define EXACTLY what you need, then look at what's available with a *little* bit of looking..
(compiere, sql-ledger, gnuenterprise, nola.. ).

You will find none do what you need, so plan on having someone dedicated for a while to coding the missing component..

Re:GNUe and Compiere

[plum001]

The Open For Business (OFBiz, http://www.ofbiz.org) project on sourceforge uses open standards and provides a great framework for developing CRM and ERP applications for business. They have a good E-Commerce application and are working on other applications. The project uses an MIT license which is very flexible for businesses to create their own vertical applications or tie into existing legacy systems. Developing and interfacing with CRM/ERP applications for several years, I think OFBiz provides an excellent framework to create business applications. I also think OFBiz is a better solution than Compiere because it doesn't require proprietary components. Brett