openingerpsfuture

What does Consona's acquisition of Compiere mean?

2010-06-18T08:28:00.000-07:00

Since the announcement of Consona’s acquisition of Compiere, many people have asked me for my thoughts and comments. What does this deal mean for the open source ERP market, the ERP industry as a whole, and for the Openbravo community? I am keen to answer these questions and share my thoughts.

First, my interpretation of the nature of the acquisition. Everything I have read and heard about it reveals that the driving rationale for Consona was to acquire the technology, and not the open source element of Compiere, and so I predict this will mean the end for Compiere's community. Am I happy about that? No, not at all. Besides the disruption that this will bring to many people, I am a firm believer that at this stage the more successful open source ERP companies there are, the better. This is not good news at any level.

My second observation is about the predictability of this end game. Compiere's business model, organization and management style - specifically in product development, sales strategy and channel management – always resembled that of a traditional proprietary vendor, rather than one suited to an open source provider. Open source must never be used merely as a marketing tool - if you don't believe in open source and invest heavily in its development, then you don't create an open source culture within the project team and therefore cannot leverage its many benefits. Open source isn’t something you can just dabble in.

But I would like to sign off with some positive messages for the open source ERP industry. At Openbravo we are as excited and positive as ever. Open source has always been and will always be the very core of our business. This dedication and commitment is what helped us lead this market. Our purpose is to improve the efficiency of businesses around the world by bringing an ERP to every company. And for this reason our ambition has always been to create the leading web-based open source ERP company. We are strong believers that horizontal ERPs are a commodity and should be free; that value is in the services and industry specific solutions; and that openness and a strong community is a requirement for building better software in the 21st century. Success with open source ERP requires a collaborative, organic approach that unleashes synergies between the community and commercial use of the product, without artificial barriers. Rest assured that we will continue making it happen.

Ultimately, this acquisition means one less open source ERP player, reaffirming Openbravo’s leadership in this market and our genuine commitment to it.

The Openbravo World Conference happening in 10 days

2009-04-07T03:47:00.000-07:00

Dear community,

In 10 days we will be having our Openbravo World Conference in Barcelona. Please let me share my excitement since:

It is the first edition of this special and free event, which was long overdue to unite our international community
We have over 300 attendees already registered, traveling from more than 30 countries worldwide
The theme of the conference “Empowering the Ecosystem” is more relevant than ever to Openbravo since we are convinced that the industry needs change, and thanks to the participation of our vigorous community, we are making it happen. We expect to discuss many interesting topics which will help push our community further such as our new 2.50 release, our new forge among others
The event is bringing to Barcelona fellow open source innovators from Pentaho, Alfresco, Talend, IBM, Sun, ProcessMaker, Ubuntu, JasperSoft, … which you will all be able to meet
And last but not least, we are expecting to have a celebrate our first Community Awards and have lots of fun

For more information about the Conference, take a look at:

If you still have not registered, please make sure you do by Thursday April 9th when registration closes in here
The event is nearly at full capacity, so reserve your seat before it’s too late!

Open source comes of age: Jesper Balser joins Openbravo board

2009-02-21T05:06:00.000-08:00

Since Openbravo was founded in 2006, the adoption of open source enterprise applications has been increasing at an unstoppable rate.

The commitment of our team, community and partners is reflected in the calibre of our executive leadership, which was further strengthened by the news that Jesper Balser will join the Openbravo board of directors, Navision co-founder and former head of strategy at Microsoft Business Solutions.

The news has been well received. On the CNET ‘Open Source’ blog, Matt Asay says “Open source has clearly gone mainstream. It is attracting some of the best and brightest from the proprietary-software world, as they see the writing on the wall for incumbents.”

The VAR Guy, meanwhile, says the news signals “growing momentum for business-centric open source applications” and “highlights Openbravo’s continued investments in its IT channel partners.”

A decade ago, proprietary software companies poured scorn on claims about Linux’s reliability, support, mainstream adoption and ROI. But it didn’t stop users, businesses and governments all switching to Linux in droves, precisely because of its reliability, stability, security, cost-effectiveness and innovation.

More recently, open source business applications came under the same sort of fire. But adoption has still been unstoppable, and for all the same reasons. It’s no longer a question of ‘going mainstream’: open source applications are already there. If you wish to form your own opinion, you might want to attend the upcoming Openbravo World Conference in Barcelona, April 18-19th.

Jesper has the insight, the experience and the ability to guide Openbravo to the next level of enterprise adoption. We’re delighted to have him on board and we hope you’ll join us in welcoming him to Openbravo and to the open source applications community.

Openbravo hits the millionth download... Yes, we can!

2008-11-10T01:53:00.000-08:00

What a journey we have undergone since Openbravo opened to the world in April 2006 with its code publication on SourceForge. 2 ½ years later, we are proud to say that thanks to the support of our incredible community of developers, partners, and customers, we've already reached the millionth project download. It's incredible to have achieved this milestone in such a short period, which is a confirmation of the soaring adoption rates of open source, but most importantly of the growing ecosystem fuelling Openbravo ERP and POS solutions.

Undoubtedly, the company is undergoing substantial expansion, with a partner base of 90 worldwide and a growing number of localizations, 20 of which are completed, and another 30+ in progress. Openbravo has become an ERP of reference to such a large ecosystem because, put simply, it offers more value for money. It beats other leading ERP packages due to its lower cost or better adaptation to customer needs for the same budget.

The 1,000,000th download also marks the beginning of a new era with several exciting initiatives that further support and enhance the Openbravo ecosystem:
• Modularity to encourage individual contributions part of Openbravo 2.50
• A new development Forge for Openbravo projects and downloads (to be released soon)
• A range of knowledge-sharing opportunities, and the launch of our global community event, the Openbravo World Conference

All of these actions are to get people to join and participate within the community more easily. So, if you're not already part of this flourishing ecosystem, NOW is the time to get involved with Openbravo, either by contributing to the product, joining our partner network, or by implementing Openbravo in your business so you too can benefit from working with our solutions.

This special day for Openbravo coincides with another special and, judging by the near unanimity of the news, historical day, the election of Mr. Barack Obama as president of the United States of America. Regardless of the political preferences of each, there is no doubt that the arrival of the first African American to chair USA is a fact that breaks barriers, brings hope to those who have not always had a voice and sets the beginning of a new era of change (we hope it will be for the better), similarly to the philosophy that has continuously driven us towards opening the world of ERP's: Yes, change is already happening!

In times of crisis...

2008-10-27T09:17:00.000-07:00

Dear Openbravo Community,

Over the course of my career, I have personally seen markets from the United States to Australia, from Asia to Latin America; all go through ups and downs that ruin a family retirement, that ruin a business’s future. When markets plunge, everyone can become vulnerable.

I also know, that while certain “fear based” news capture the world’s attention, we must begin to understand what lies beneath for tomorrow. For those with the ability to think long term, there are genuine opportunities that come with the current type market shift:

The opportunity to focus on what’s truly important
The opportunity to cut costs and reduce needless spending
The opportunity to prepare for when the market recovers increasing your competitive position

Above are 3 values any family can apply, but how do they specifically relate to open source, ERPs, and Openbravo? How is the System Integrator going to survive this time period? Let me begin by sharing a few thoughts about the ERP market and Openbravo.

As I look forward I still see an enormous market potential for System Integrators and Openbravo Partners. Analysts estimate that the underserved ERP market for SMB is worth USD 30 to 50 billion worldwide.

The next question becomes, are customers thinking about investing at this time? Keeping market emotions aside, the fact is that Openbravo leads steadily continue to increase (even in the last weeks). This shows that end customers see the opportunity of our unique offering: get your ERP at a lower cost, or invest these savings for a customized solutions. In this market, this could mean implementing now to save money and further customizing when the market turns.

A solution that is by definition better since it allows customers to focus their investments on the aspects that really matter (adapting a solution to their needs) and support (Openbravo Network) your business, instead of just paying licenses. A solution that is better and can be more easy to discover in economic downturns where budgets are even more limited. And in this case, let me just give you a couple of types of leads that have increased in the last weeks:

Leads coming from larger companies which already have an ERP at headquarters. They switch to our solution instead of extending SAP. For these companies, they receive a fully customized ERP, fully adapted to their needs, and without the licensing costs.
Public Administration sector interest is also growing as fast as Openbravo. In times of crisis governments maintain or even increase their spending on technology, and this holds true for open source technology. Looking in my backyard, Openbravo has been supporting the growth of city halls arround the world, Public Tourism and also become a requirement for companies attempting to bid on government contracts.

The outlook shows that companies will need to keep critical IT projects going. As a result of the market condition, they will be forced to look for new alternatives. When they do, companies will find products do to the same or more, but at a lower cost. My message is that when companies search, they will find that an open source solution is the professional ERP alternative they have been looking for. I truly believe this alternative is, and will continue to be Openbravo.

Calling all Openbravo Partners!

2008-10-06T08:50:00.000-07:00

It is with great pleasure that I announce our first Partner Conference Call, taking place this Wednesday and Thursday:

English call: 16:00 to 18:00, October 9th
Spanish call: 16:00 to 18:00, October 10th

This new initiative will bring Openbravo closer to its partners, while providing additional marketing and business support to help them build a stronger practice. This bi-monthly Conference Call is targeted towards our partners’ CEOs, and will serve the following objectives:

Share new offerings/assets which help guarantee partner success
Learn from fellow partner success stories and experiences
Cover market alignment and improving sales approach (e.g. key client segments to focus, product pitching, …)
Ensure regular communication and feedback and identify new collaboration opportunities

This is yet another initiative demonstrating our commitment towards the Openbravo ecosystem, for which our partners hold an important role. Because we know that our success relies on that of the ecosystem, we believe that with increased collaboration and communication we can all achieve superior results, which holds true for all community members. That is why we strongly encourage all of our partners to attend every conference call to maximize their business potential.

So, I hope to talk to all of you at the conference. Details for the conference will be send to Openbravo partners in the next days.

For those of you who are not part of Openbravo’s global network of partners, the Partners Conference Call is yet another great reason to join. Please do remember that our Partnership value proposition is aimed for companies which want to exploit the big business opportunity around our products by building a large business practice in coordination with our company. Main discussion topics are business driven since as you can imagine general product related issues are fully managed in the open and properly discussed in our already available Community Channels.

ERP Today at full capacity

2008-08-01T02:19:00.000-07:00

Last Wednesday we held our first ever End-Client event in Barcelona which turned out to be a great success! Close to 50 Spanish SMEs attended “ERP Today”in our first session in Barcelona, and listened on as we demonstrated Openbravo’s professional open source ERP, displayed its related benefits, while hearing a few of our customer testimonials. The idea for the event came naturally as we were experiencing a high demand of potential users wanting to learn more about Openbravo products. We got great feedback from our first ERP Today and look forward to holding many more of these, namely in Madrid and Valencia this September. For registration please click here.

We understand what a daunting task implementing or changing an ERP can be, but, like our customers Productos Montblanc and Galenicum explained so well through their testimonial, the benefits of having Openbravo ERP has drastically improved the way they do business and taken their companies to the next level. From a century old family business like Montblanc, to a young international sourcing and product development pharmaceutical company like Galenicum, Openbravo ERP can increase efficiency, profitability and customer satisfaction across companies of all shapes and sizes, namely thanks to the support we get from our global network of partners who are specialized in adapting Openbravo to each company’s needs.

Part of the advantages of being an Openbravo partner, besides the professional support and tools Openbravo provides, is to get the chance to attend events like ERP Today. Our local partners Capri Software, openTrends and Praktics had the opportunity to meet with potential users face-to-face and asses their needs, while exploring the possibility of working with them in the future to optimize their business processes with Openbravo ERP. All this ties in to Openbravo’s vision of bringing better fitted ERPs to companies worldwide, regardless of size. Everyone should have the right to own their ERP, and Openbravo is working hard to build the ecosystem to make it happen.

Meeting Yossi…

2008-07-08T13:55:00.000-07:00

Some weeks ago I was interviewed by Yossi Bhardi, the person behind the Open Source ERP Guru blog. I not only enjoyed the interview, which you can find here, but also having the chance to talk to Yossi for the first time. Yossi is one of those committed volunteers who invests his personal time in following the ERP Open Source revolution. The work he does from his blog is a great contribution in building the OS ERP market and therefore something that helps the whole industry. As I always mention when talking about other OS ERP players, the more successful we all are, the bigger the open source ERP stake of the market will become, for a greater number of customers to enjoy an offer which is more valuable, fair and easy to understand when compared to proprietary ERP solutions.

Thank you Yossi and keep up with the good work!

What a great OffSite!

2008-07-03T15:29:00.000-07:00

From the day I started working in Openbravo, we have been periodically conducting Offsites with all company employees. These are full day events in which we gather all Openbravo members who can make it (this year we had people in Miami that could not attend), in one place to:

Celebrate achievements and progress together
Give a brief update on the current status and plans for the coming months. Alignment of priorities are key to continue serving our community well.
Work together on selected topics which are important to our business and people
Participate in fun activities together. You know what they say… those who work hard, play hard! ;-)

This last OffSite has again brought me lots of good feelings and positive ideas to keep on making it happen. If anyone wants to understand what Openbravo’s biggest asset is… I’ll tell you right now... join Openbravo (whether as a community member, a partner, a customer or as an employee) and discover our amazing team!

I feel extremely proud on the almost 100 professionals from 15 different nationalities which are currently employed full time by the company, in a multitude of locations around the globe. Our people are highly professional, have the optimal knowledge and are passionate and committed to making it happen. And I tell you this … there is no better asset in a company like ours than people. People who work hard, play hard, and have fun doing both!

Ps_ Because the SanFermines holiday was right around the corner (the famous running of the bulls fair taking place in Pamplona), we had this Offsite in a bull fighting venue. This photo was taken in the arena where many Openbravo employees braved the bulls! By the way … nobody got hurt.

Freedom is a much powerful change agent than dictatorship!

2008-06-03T04:54:00.000-07:00

This Sunday I watched again V for Vendetta, the comic written in 1982 by Alan Moore and David Lloyd and brought to the cinema by many of the filmmakers involved in the Matrix trilogy and directed by James McTeigue. If you like fiction, politics and films with a powerful message, you need to watch this movie. Here are some takeaways that I think perfectly apply to nowadays world of software:

1) Dictatorship tries to force what a reduced number of people believes is right. Freedom, on the contrary, gives choice to people and allows for new ideas to appear.

Dictatorship in the world of software is represented by any company that thinks that through 100% vendor centralized approach they can satisfy the needs of all clients. Don't you think that the world is too large to be able to accomplish this by only a single vendor?.

2) You are free when you really have a choice to decide and, sometimes, human beings forget about being true to what they really want.

There is too much FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) around software. Extensive FUD from proprietary vendors to open source projects. Some FUD from open source projects to proprietary vendors. At the end, users decide. Our role as IT professionals, regardless of what is our origin (proprietary or open source vendors), should be to ensure that users can decide freely without so much FUD generated and allowing to be honest about what they need and want. In that mindset, I am sure the right choice will always be made.

3) The power of freedom is in the community (and if not, watch the movie until the end: GREAT!) built by people/ organizations that have made their choice and join forces.

This is by far the most important idea that open source brings over the table. An open source project with a successful community will always win in competition against 100% centralized proprietary vendors. The change proprietary players need to push within their organizations to adapt to the new paradigm of collaboration sometimes breaks the principles in which they were created. This is what I like about Openbravo: we are strictly built on the principles of open collaboration with users, partners and individuals who can contribute their ideas at will. Our principles are built on top of our competitor's weakest points.

Finally, for the ones that have seen the movie, I love the sequence when the inspector has that feeling of "I know what is going on here", "everything is connected". I sometimes have the same feeling. And the feeling is great because is when you discover that all facts, feedback that you get from the community, partners, clients, VCs, employees,.. plus your own thoughts come along into building a disruptive model: the leading open source ERP movement. ;-)

Anyway, this is what I wanted to share with you from this weekend. If you have seen the movie or you see it, please don't forget to leave your comments here.

Long live to V!

Resuming my blogging experience

2008-06-03T04:43:00.000-07:00

It has been a while since my last post and I want to apologize because of this. Although I am not the kind of person that has a natural blogging gene, I promise I will still try to keep on sharing with you my thoughts around Openbravo.

To resume my blogging experience I want to tell you two quite obvious things:

Openbravo is doing great and as a result of our growth we have successfully closed our second financing round. A round which was planned from the day we acquired our first investors in Jan 2006 . And a round that does not only give us additional resources to invest on our products and community but also strengthens our Board and gives even a more international profile in line with the nature of our opportunity.
My second obvious message is a logical one and is for you: Thank you so much for your interest on our products, your decisions to adopt them, your willingness to contribute your experiences and above all your willingness to be successful in opening the world of ERPs. We will continue to be faithful to our vision and continue to improve all the things we do with professionalism and emotion as we have done from day one.

Talk to you soon!
M

Open Source rocks and Openbravo does not stop!

2008-02-04T08:15:00.000-08:00

First my apologies to all the readers for not having posted any messages since quite a long time already. My only, hopefully valid, excuse is the enormous workload we had to close the year 2007. Now, what can I say that has not been said by other bloggers, analysts and press in the last days?. Three short comments that have attracted my attention over this period:

I think we all will agree by now that Open Source has consolidated as one of the most important forces that today is changing the software industry. Just look at some of the transactions that the industry has had in the last weeks ranging from Zimbra, Xensource, MySQL or Trolltech. By the way … isn't it strange that with the latest news of Microsoft bidding to acquire Yahoo, Zimbra could become part of Microsoft? I am curious to see what will the implications would be.
Further, the initially successful Netsuite IPO has brought even more attention than there already was into our space: the world of ERPs. Specially proving that there is a huge opportunity for the company or companies that are able to deliver something new and compelling to midmarket companies.
Openbravo has had a marvelous 2007!. I would suggest that all of you read the round up press release that we just published today. We are proving that there is a better and more efficient model to satisfy the hundreds of thousands of traditionally under-served small and mid-sized companies around the globe.

2008 looks incredibly promising for Openbravo. I have no doubts that with our product, community and hard and good work we will continue to advance very rapidly. Bear with us my friends!

By the way, do you know that we have been presented with yet another award, this time in the Open Source Meets Business Conference?

Will SAP help grow the SME ERP market?

2007-10-01T08:36:00.000-07:00

After long delays, SAP has finally presented a new additional product targeting SMEs. For a long time the product, code named A1S, now comes to life with a new brand name: SAP Business Bydesign. Although many things are still unclear (how much is slideware vs. real product with optimal performance, what will be the future of SAP Business One, what will be the role of SAP midmarket channel partners, will SAP achieve its aggressive targets,…) this movement is a recognition that the industry is changing and web-based technologies are the future, as we saw many years ago from our foundation back in 2001. Additionally, we believe that SaaS makes a lot of sense for many SME clients which are not IT experts and look for an affordable, easy to configure solution without IT hassles. And therefore SaaS is here to stay and I am sure SAP will be a great contributor/ enabler in growing up this market.

At the end, I believe SAP will help us grow the market and since SAP remains closed source (big surprise ;-) and I still think the new leaders of tomorrow will be companies who adopt a new and better way to develop and sell software the open source way …Openbravo is also here to stay!

Another great award for Openbravo!

2007-09-11T05:23:00.000-07:00

Today I just been informed of Openbravo winning a new award: the 2007 InfoWorld Bossie Award. It is great news for our project that in less than a year has already obtained three prestigious awards including this last one.

We know, as the article mentions, that in the world of ERPs “change happens slowly” and that's why we usually say that our business is more of a marathon than a sprint. And this is the reason why we like these awards since they clearly give to all the members of the broad Openbravo community additional energy to keep working hard whoever and wherever they are. Additional energy to continue leading this marathon towards opening the world of ERPs!.

I also feel very proud of our Engineering team who had a key role in the launch of our new release which incorporates many critical features which are being valued very highly. Finally, I want also to congratulate the other software applications that have obtained an award in the Best Application category together with Openbravo: SugarCRM, LifeRay, Alfresco, Scalix and Jabber and the rest of software companies awarded in the other categories.

Openbravo wants Apple engineers: The iPhone, a “breathtaking” experience!

2007-08-30T05:41:00.000-07:00

I had the pleasure to play with the iPhone this summer while at LinuxWorld San Francisco. As Steve Jobs usually says in his Macworld presentations: “it is breathtaking”. As of yet, I cannot purchase one because as you know, it is neither homologated nor active for European mobile networks. Although I couldn’t experience the device while it functioned working as a phone, what I experienced at the Apple store indicates that it is really an amazing product.

For me above all it apparently is:

1) A best in class benchmark in usability success stories (check the following video )

Your feel as attracted to the design as with the iPods
After 2 or 3 minutes of usage, you not only know how to use the device but also you experience incredible navigability features that are clear innovations in software applications. Features like zoom in zoom out, the capability to scroll up and down with inertia, the magnifier functionality that pops up when clicking a word with your finger to correct it...the list goes on.
The applications which are included by default in the device are just very well thought out

2) A device that redefines the mobile internet experience and makes you truly believe in it

The industry has been talking a lot about mobile data … I have not believed much in this industry (with the exception of the SMS), when experiencing the mobile data experience that other terminals would give you; but now wait until you experience the iPhone when…
… web browsing with a wi-fi connection … amazing! … this is really web browsing and not what we have experienced in the past
… experience other widgets like the Maps … you can easily find routes to places when traveling, …
… weather … you can easily get the weather forecasts (definitively a killer up for my wife!)
… Youtube … watch videos right away, and many more that make me think that this new iPhone really redefines how the mobile industry will evolve.

Overall, and obviously with a disclaimer since I still have not fully tried out the phone (things like the batteries,…), big kudos to the Usability and Engineering team at Apple. If anyone there is looking to join Openbravo, please send your resumes to careers@openbravo.com. We’ll be more than happy to talk to you! ;-)

SugarCRM targeting an IPO

2007-08-28T01:35:00.000-07:00

Martin LaMonica writes an article about SugarCRM quoting John Roberts, SugarCRM’s CEO, who already talks about a potential IPO. John anticipates in this article that the company, which now has 125 employees, can grow to $100 million in yearly revenue in the next couple of years. It is incredible how fast Sugar is growing if you take into account that the company was started three years ago. I think this is great news not only for Sugar but also for other professional start-ups leveraging the open source and SaaS business opportunity like Openbravo. The more we succeed… the more open the world of software will become!

From here… best of luck to Sugar (for sure they will still need to overcome many challenges) and all these companies.

Introducing Paolo Juvara to Planet Openbravo

2007-08-23T03:53:00.000-07:00

It is a great pleasure to post about our new Chief Products Officer at Openbravo : Paolo Juvara. Paolo is both a great professional and great individual, and I am proud he is part of the team. He joined us last Aug. 16th (see press release here) from Oracle, bringing a wealth of experience in diverse Product Engineering areas (from Financials to Business Intelligence, Manufacturing & Distribution, Supply Chain Management, and, for the past four years, CRM Service) and, having understood how open source is turning around the software industry, he joins with the right attitude to help us open the world of ERPs.

Some hours ago he has posted a message in one of our forums requesting your opinion about our product, feedback on our plans and desires for the future Openbravo. He joins with great ideas to inject in our roadmap that will obviously bring emotion in the sometimes too-burnt ERP world and I am confident that with your feedback they can only improve. Let's help him contributing with your suggestions here.

Thank you all!

Energy for the entrepreneur!

2007-08-21T08:55:00.000-07:00

Since April 2006, date in which Openbravo published its source code, our team has traveled to the US in more than 5 different occasions. The last one was some days ago when we participated for our second consecutive year in Linux World San Francisco and won an award.

This short post is to share with you what I love from the US and more specifically from Silicon Valley. So here I go with the list:

I love the entrepreneurial culture and how entrepreneurs are recognized by society. Success is obviously positively recognized and failure is not perceived as disaster in the professional careers of those starting up new businesses
I love the large concentration of entrepreneurs that exists and specially the large pool of skilled software professionals ready to jump ships to new start-ups. Synergies between the corporate world and the university and research community are much more efficient
I love the attitude that successful entrepreneurs have to help others, their practical advise that often give you to help you grow your business into a market leader and overall the rhythm of conversations when you talk business with them
I love organizations that are ready to work with start-up companies both providing services (adapting their offering) and becoming your clients (being more exposed to start-up risks)
I love the large number of VCs ready to invest in new breakthrough ideas taking an active role in shaping them.

Conclusion: If you are an entrepreneur go charge your batteries from time to time with energy shots from the Valley. It is worthwhile!

Openbravo on TV

2007-07-25T13:38:00.000-07:00

Yes it happened Tuesday last week. The national TV of Spain broadcasted at 20:00 pm -prime time here- an interview with me and Ismael Ciordia our CTO and one of the three founders. The interview was part of a series of shows that talk about successful entrepreneurial ventures in Spain sponsored by Banesto and ICEX .
It is a short interview but it shows several things that I like:

It once again demonstrates how the dissemination works for an open source venture. Openbravo was picked because it illustrates the counterintuitive argument that giving away can result in profitable growth...and we obviously didn’t have to pay a single penny for the spot ;-). The full case is here.
We are presented as a success story in the country we started operations so I am happy that is not only foreign media such as RedHerring, SourceForge and international media that recognise our progress.
The case is focused on an area which in my opinion provides good lessons to many entrepreneurs: the important decisions that the founders of the company had to make to grow the company, including the recruiting a new external CEO (that is me) and other key executives. In my believe this is something that many founders hesitate to do, and results in a serious hindering of the growth potential of their projects. I must say that our founders acted wisely there (honestly, I really think so)
In the video you could see that there is good professional and at the same time friendly atmosphere among the team, which is a key requirement for a winning company ...
... and last but not least, very good shots of our new release 2.3 which is about to be presented in LinuxWorld San Francisco. Some of these shots show the ERP running in Chinese thanks to our Chinese community which has done the localization.

For the ones that don’t speak Spanish, we’ll figure out how we can translate the video.

Openbravo launches “Pioneers” an innovative Partner Acquisition Campaign

2007-07-23T15:33:00.000-07:00

One of the things that I really love about Openbravo is the team’s determination to redefine the rules on how ERP software is designed, developed and marketed in all areas. Over the next few days, we’ll be talking about the power of our next release (you can try our BETA version by downloading it here) and how we plan to continue innovating our Product area. In this post, I want to briefly talk about another important innovation that was introduced two weeks ago: the "Pioneers" campaign targeting potential partners who want to be the first to introduce Openbravo in their country.

Being the first Partner in a country not only means a clear first mover advantage, but also taking the responsibility to localize Openbravo to the specific territory. “Pioneers” is a campaign which targets the acquisition of a qualified partner in a country so that it can thus help serve the objectives of all of us: Community, Partners, and Openbravo as a company. So what do each of these parties gain?

The Community gains a free published localization pack (developed by the Partner with Openbravo’s professional support).
The Partner gains a once-in-a lifetime opportunity, as the first and only partner to get this offer, to benefit from all professional services required to build up its Openbravo practice. In addition, they naturally get a first mover business advantage plus the community recognition for being the first company to develop and publish the localization
Openbravo as a company gains a new qualified partner and takes a giant step toward opening the future of ERPs in each country.

I started this post elevating our team’s determination to redefine the rules of this business. These are rules that are redefined thanks to all those who form the broad Openbravo community: people, companies, partners, and obviously in this case, our team in Sales.

Please keep sending your feedback, regardless of your relationship with us as a company. We’ll make sure that we channel it adequately to continue with the innovation wheel. If you want to become a Pioneering Partner please submit your application here. Thank you all.

3 success factors and 3 things to avoid when building an open source business

2007-06-13T03:48:00.001-07:00

On June 7th Stephen Walli invited me through his blog to list three success factors and three things to avoid when building businesses using open source software. This is coming from a challenge initiated by Mikko Puhakka that tagged three people to jump in (one of them was Stephen) and there is already a good number of opinions being posted through this interesting pyramid (e.g, Marten Mickos, Javier Soltero, …). So here I go:

My three success factors for open source projects are listed as follows:

1. A great product at least equivalent to successful proprietary competition

Very obvious point but a must that becomes a "killer" aspect when combined with open source. A great product generates positive word of mouth from its users which is directly amplified through the natural dissemination mechanisms of open source.

2. Active and relevant community

Mandatory to properly leverage the two most critical aspects that open source enables from a business standpoint of view:

Facilitate the development of quality software
Facilitate the Sales & Distribution of software

3. Solid business plan executed by a great team of professionals

The business plan of any successful open source vendor should be build leveraging a mix of low touch-high velocity products & services sold arround the core open source product. An excellent team of professionals is the key ingredient to define, build and maintain the right business.

My three things to avoid:

1. Unbalanced leadership

A great product is developed by excellent product engineers. A great business is developed by a team of professionals with the right balance between technology and business skills. Typical business issues that should be well thought are: h2 build a leading brand in a world full of proprietary software?, h2 accelerate community growth and foster dissemination?, h2 acquire, develop and maintain best in class partners when starting up?, ...

2. Mismanagement of company growth

Open source by definition is international as of day one since software is available in the internet. If things go well … demand is much larger than the capacity of the start-ups behind the product to serve it. A well thought offering helps you grow your company without compromising quality service levels.

3. Unclear/ unfair policies that confuse your community on what is for free and what is offered at a fee

I love Marten Mickos presentation @ OSBC this year which said “Success in open source requires you to serve: 1) Those who spend time to save money and 2) Those who spend money to save time”. This is only achieved by being very clear, fair and open with your company policies.

People I have tagged to continue the challenge (I exclude the ones that have already been tagged by others such as Marten, Matt, Javier,…):

Fabrizio Capobianco (Funambol's CEO, open source guru, great entrepreneur and another European in the Valley)
Peter Fenton (One of the most experience Venture Capitalists in the space from Benchmark Capital, who has a very distinct opinion about the real drivers behind Open Source businesses)
And last but not least … Josep Mitjà (Openbravo’s COO and Open Solutions Alliance Board member … sorry Josep but lately you are not posting messages in your blog and the world needs food for thought!)

A great first year!

2007-05-14T12:15:00.000-07:00

Dear friends,
This last year at Openbravo has been an extremely exciting and at the same time a very encouraging experience.
It seems like only yesterday that we were releasing our code on SourceForge and hoping that there would be a receptive audience of people interested in helping us to build the world’s best open source ERP solution. Just one year later, the sheer volume of interest, support and success we’ve enjoyed has been amazing.
After publishing our source code in April 2006, Openbravo rapidly became one of the key open source ERP reference solutions, with consistent top rankings in every major metric of activity compared to all other software projects published on SourceForge. Since Openbravo passed the 100,000 downloads mark on New Year’s Eve 2006, download rates have continued to grow. We are now opening our second office, in Barcelona and have continued to expand our team with excellent professionals experienced in handling the growing international demand and opportunities that exist for Openbravo.
In September 2006 we officially launched our Partner Support Unit by unveiling our Friendly Partner Program. Distinguishing Openbravo from other start-ups in the space, this program allowed us to build a network of 20 partners with whom we have been expanding our services while fine tuning support processes and acquiring further partners to help scale up our offering. The confidence that Openbravo gained through working with our first partners and the constant help and feedback we received was crucial in guiding the design of our latest program and we very much appreciate every effort and continued support.
In April 2007, having successfully closed our initial friendly partner phase, we launched an unprecedented, breakthrough Partner Program. This new program, which I invite you all to review, incorporates some extremely innovative services that contribute in creating a secure and powerful network of international partners. Today, thanks to this program, we are able to attract best-in-class partners from all over the world. They rely on our expertise to extend our successes to a large array of end customers of all different sizes and from a variety of sectors.
These successes have not gone unnoticed. We’ve been discussed in magazines such as Fortune, CIO Magazine, and Enterprise Open Source Magazine. We were also invited to join the Open Solutions Alliance (OSA) as a founding member alongside companies we very much respect, including JasperSoft, CentricCRM, Talend, SpikeSource and Hyperic. We are extremely positive about the work being developed there to foster interoperability among different open solutions, and proud that our COO Josep Mitjà has now been invited to act as OSA Board Member. Other leading open source gurus and companies have also helped us in our plans, and it would be unfair not to mention the help we have received from them (you know who you are ;-) ). Thank you so much!
We’ve been fortunate enough to work with some fantastic developers and be assisted by a wonderful group of employees and friends. The success of the Openbravo project on SourceForge has been built upon through the creation of the Openbravo Wiki, while the demand to use and develop Openbravo worldwide has led to localisation projects for over 20 different countries. As requests have come in for features like PostgreSQL support and a web services interface, the incredible talents of the developers and supporters of Openbravo have continued to meet and exceed our goals.
While we are proud of our successes, we’re even more excited about the future. Forthcoming developments including a thrilling new web interface, revised focused ERP functionalities and interfaces to the other leading open source projects are being created right now and will be released over the next few months. In addition we are working on the next generation platform architecture of Openbravo, code-named Openbravo Green. You can see our progress and goals for Openbravo Green on our publicly-available roadmap. Making our roadmap public is just one of the ways that we aim to show how transparent and shared our vision is. We truly believe in open source development, and that a web-based open source ERP solution can not only match the proprietary solutions available, but surpass them and create a solution that redefines ERP software in the process. The only way to make our goals happen is through the continued hard work of many, many people. For those who have helped us with that hard work and invested their trust, time and effort in us, please accept our sincerest thanks.
For those of you now joining our broad community, we wish you a warm welcome and thank you for joining and opening ERP’s future!

The boring bits are a SAP's strength

2007-04-10T22:00:00.000-07:00

Last week, while still in Cannes, I read an article about SAP’s point of view on the impact of open source in ERPs. Henning Kagermann, SAP’s current CEO, declared in Computer Business Review that “Open Source is an option for operating systems and databases but not at the business application level”. This point of view does not surprise me since it is not a new statement coming from a top software executive. In the past, important executives such as Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer also disregarded the Open Source opportunity/ threat in the operating system world. But … you know … what really strikes me is the main rationale that Henning was using to support his point of view. He argumented that Open Source successful projects are those where developers like to work for “fun” and literally said “I have never seen anyone who likes doing that (referring to altering applications to cater for legal or regulatory changes such as Sarbanes-Oxley or Basel II). That is not fun. There is no choice. The boring bits are a strength of SAP” .
I am really astonished … Can we imply that SAP’s strengths against open source competitors are only built upon boring pieces?. Does Henning see open source competitors failing on their purpose because there is no fun on building ERPs?. If that was the name of the game … and you are working at SAP … please tell your boss that our growing community encompassing now more than 50 employees and more than hundreds of individuals working for IT companies around the world is really having “fun”!!!!. But please tell him that we are not having fun for the sake of fun. And here it comes the true reason why open source will make it in the world of ERPs: Fun for the sake of building Openbravo, the leading open source ERP Company in the space. At the end experience tells us that everything that can be built on open source, is finally built on open source (see other similar projects that are building business applications successfully with open source @ the Open Solutions Alliance )".

Anyway … I am convinced that we will see Henning in the future adapting its pitch as many others (read Gates and Ballmer) have done it. Don’t you think?

Red Herring Top 100 Europe

2007-03-21T07:31:00.000-07:00

Next Sunday I will be travelling to France on behalf of Openbravo to accept the “Top 100” award, presented by Red Herring. I am extremely satisfied with the award since it not only recognizes the work and results achieved so far; but also it points out to what I truly believe is one of the most differential elements that we have as a Company: the capacity to innovate! Opening ERP’s future and becoming the leading ERP in the space is a huge project requiring innovation toward building a solid and thorough business approach. And guess what … Openbravo guarantees this continuous innovation with one of the most professional teams that I have ever had. Allow me to celebrate with a big open applause or better yet, a big open bravo for our team. Guys … let’s make it happen!!!

Back in April 2006

2007-02-21T04:12:00.000-08:00

I think it is time to start my own blog and share with all of you the experiences, thoughts and ideas that I have as the CEO of Openbravo. It has been already more than a year since I joined this fantastic company and had the idea to start my own blog from that day onwards.

The idea was so strong that I was about to launch the blog the night we published our code in SourceForge. We had such a heavy workload that I judged at that time that the blog could wait. Today, almost 10 months after, we can not wait anymore and I would like to open this blog with the article I prepared at that time. The title of the post was obviously “Openbravo has gone live” and I continue to believe and feel strong on the reasons why Openbravo will make it happen!. The post prepared said the following:

Today is a great day for all of us, employees and community, since very early in the morning at 02:00 a.m. www.openbravo.com went live!. This website is the corporate website of a company that is committed to change the world of ERPs for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). But how come?. The answer is quite easy: combine a great product with open source and a great professional services company and you will get it … the future of open source ERPs opened!.

We know that this will not be as easy and simple as it is to say it but we know that 1) the arguments for change are too powerful to fail and 2) we are ready to make it happen!.

Arguments in favour of a management system really adapted to the needs of SMEs, in favour of not charging for functionalities that aren’t really used, in favour of recognising the critical role of IT services companies (often named as distributors by proprietary software firms), …
Our company background with more than five years of history, our vision and plans for the future and our people combining the right set of skills and excitement make us believe that we are ready!.

To finish this first article in our blog, I want to once again share our excitement with all of you; opening-up our ERP to the world; making it available to the community; building-up a professional services company; and directly delivering value to IT integrators and indirectly SMEs really thrills us up!. At this stage, we hope that you share our excitement and YOU JOIN OUR COMMUNITY!