Open ERP - A New Generation of Open Source Business Model

Here is a presentation in a few slides of the Open ERP business model for 2009. The goal is to sustain the growth of the product and the quality of the services to satisfy the community, the customers and the partners.

Open Source Business Model of Open ERP

Improved Documentation

Hello,

We continue our efforts to release a very good documentation on Open ERP. Today, we just uploaded an improved version of our different documentations:

* The user book on enterprise management,
* The developer book,
* The community guide,
* The modules documentation.

You can access these documentations on: http://doc.openerp.com

If you want to contribute in the documentation process, please join the launchpad project: http://launchpad.net/openobject-doc

Community IRC Meeting

Hello,

We will organise a community IRC meeting every month to discuss all aspects related to Open ERP & Open Objects with our partners, the community and the management at Tiny. The first one will be organised the 10th of March at 2p.m., belgian hour (GMT+1).

We will use the official community IRC: http://openobject.com/irc/
Join us on IRC to start proposing subjects for the next meeting. We will review and post a proposition of subjects to cover. The expected duration is about 2 to 4 hours.

Thanks,

Open ERP maintenance and migrations

With the version 5 of Open ERP, we setup a second level maintenance contract, that can complete partner's first level maintenance/support contract provided to customer. It's a service contract (not required to use Open ERP) to get some guarantees and to work on a professional way. In these editions, we provide:

bugfixes guarantees : according to the contract level, we guarantee a delay to manage a bug. Within this delay, we assign a full time developer on the bug that will fix it in an average of 4 hours. On previous versions of Open ERP the bugfix was at the charge of the partner (from the support hours in the partner contract). With this new system, partners get an unlimitted and free bugfixes, paid by the final customer. We setup an automated migration system within the server that can automatically download new versions and apply fixes.

Life cycle guarantee : with these new editions, we are able to provide up to 5 years of maintenance on a specific version of Open ERP. It's a
guarantee for the customer they will not have to migrate at each new version. (nobody likes to be forced to migrate often a working ERP system)

Security and bugs alerts: we reviewed all our internal procedures to be able to report to customers (or partners) new security alerts and bugs. We send the report about the security issue or bug with the fix of the problem. The application of the patch or the training of the customer should be provided by partners through their support contract.

Automatic Migrations: the maintenance contract include a guarantee on the automatic migrations from one stable version to another stable version. It already works with current 4.2 versions. We provide you the automatic migration system and the service to help you to migrate if needed.

Please note that these editions are only services. The Open ERP code used is exactly the same between all editions or for the community. We will always continue to use bazaar and launchpad to push what we do to the community.

But I think we can not achieve these 4 services and guarantees without a
service contract. The big change with version 5, is that this effort
(migration, bugfixing, life cycle guarantees) is not anymore at the charge of the partner but the end-customer.

You can compare the different contracts here:
http://openerp.com/index.php?option=com_content&id=8


More explanation

In reaction of a post we had on the forum:
> So I suggest to find a bettter term for "No guarantee" > "Supported"

A 'guarantee' is a service ! The editor can not offer 'support' for free, it's not reliable nor scalable !

It does not mean we do not provide the code or bugfix, it's just mean if you want a guarantee you need a maintenance contract. Because a guarantee is a service.

We, as an open source editor, want to provide everything for free. As a CEO, that's my business but also my passion. But I consider that a service must be paid. No matter of the form of the service. But, everything we achieved through this service is pushed to the open source community for free.

We used to work like this for the code, it will be the same for the bugfixes, the maintenance and the migrations. Of course, we continue to have R&D budgets to develop new features and improve the quality. I am just talking here about urgent bugfixes that are part of our SLA.

I understand it's a big change and people do not like changes. But note that last year, partners were complaining of the invert. Before this, bugfixes requested in an emergency by partners had to be charged in the partner contract. So the reaction was, why should the partner pay to bugfix something.

This maintenance contract sets the basis of a strong model where:

• the partner do not have anything to pay (it's the customer that purchase the maintenance)
• the editor can organize himself and offer a strong and guaranteed quality of services for the different maintenance aspects, because he is paid for this.

On v4.2, the more we had bugs, the more profit was generated for the editor, because the partners had to pay per hours. (of course, it was not our goal) It was good for the editor but not for the product, nor the partner. That's why we wanted to change this for version 5.

With these maintenance contracts, the more bugs we found, the more it costs to the editor ! Because we sell fixed price contracts, no matter of the number of bugs. Trust me, we will organise ourself to provide VERY good code and quality of service. And that's very good for maturity of the product.

Now, bugs-migrations-security issues will not cost anything to the partner, so they can control their costs more easily on customers projects.

So, the goals of these changes and the version 5 are:

IT'S TIME TO BE MORE PROFESSIONAL AND RELY ON A STRONG BUSINESS MODEL THAT WILL INCREASE THE QUALITY OF THE PRODUCT AND THE SERVICE, WHILE SUSTAINING THE GROWTH TO DELIVER A BETTER PRODUCT TO THE COMMUNITY.

> Automated migrations must be available to the community

I fully agree with you ! Migrations must be available to the community.

But I also consider migrations guarantee as a service and a big cost to GUARANTEE this in the future. So I thought about a mix to satisfy customers (that need guarantee, quality, quick and direct services) and the community that want to migrate for free.

That's why I think migrations should be seen like the 'Shared Funding Projects':

• Those that needs a professional environment, a guarantee on the quality of services and code, have to purchase the maintenance contract.
• When the maintenances contracts reimbursed the R&D costs of these migrations, we will publish them as open source for the community.

So, I estimated that we will be able to release the migration scripts with 3 to 8 months, according to the success of the editions. If it takes more than 8 months, I will take the costs at my charge and distribute everything online for free. So that the community have a 'guarantee' on waiting maximum 8 months.

This remark is only for migrations scripts and shared funding projects. For all the rest (new developments, bugfixes, ...) we push what we develop directly on launcphad.

New version 5.0

This post explains all the changes that are related to this new version: partnerships, migrations, new features, etc.

About the Software


I suppose you already know most of the changes that have been applied in the Open ERP software. This new version focused on the following elements:

• ACCESSIBILITY & EASE OF USE : the version comes with tooltips on most fields, a complete documentation (1500 pages) linked with contextual help, configuration wizards, pre-configured access-rights, reviewed interfaces, simple/extended mode. This should allow people to start working with Open ERP much more easily.
• BETTER INTERFACE: especially with the web client with the drag&drop calendar, the gantt charts, the process view, reviewed look, better dashboards, etc.
• TOOLS FOR INTEGRATORS: to allow you to integrate Open ERP by doing parametrization, not develoment: screen/object designer, server actions, workflow editor, etc.
• MATURITY: about 1200 bugs have been fixed within the past 5 months.

And, of course lots of new modules and features.

About the marketing


We splitted the (allinone) Open ERP website into two websites, to target different kind of users:

• Open ERP : for customers, to promote a product or a solution. You will find on this website: features, online demonstration, success stories, services offers.
• Open Object : for the community, to organise collaborative efforts. New things on this website: irc channel, extensive launchpad use, technical keypoints.

These websites are all related to the same code/software. We can say that:

• Open ERP is a product
• Open Object is a project
• On Demand is a service

We think it's important to have a different communication according to the target market. Customers will want to see advantages, ROI, services offers, success stories whereas community will want to see forum, IRC, current bugs, branches of development, ...

We also launched new services:

• OpenERP.tv : a place for the community where you can upload your screencasts You can post your blog on blip.tv with the tag openerp, and we will validate it to integrate in the screencasts section.
• Evaluation-Matrix.com : A pragmatic and collaborative comparison amongst most advanced ERP on the market.
• Doc.OpenERP.com : a 1500 pages of documentation with the following books available: enterprise management (The Open ERP book), the community book, the installation book, the BI book, the modules list, the features list.

We splitted the planet into 2 planet, the goal is to allow every partner to contribute on the openobject planet: technical issues, new modules, customers, announce of events, ... The communication for the Open ERP planet will be done by our marketing team by reviewing, improving and filtering others contents.


About the partnership

The partnership contract has been changed to be more reliable. We kept the same ideas than the preceeding contract but improved on some points, mainly the point (units) system.

We simplifed the unit system to be much more easy and understandable. We got inspired by the ezPublish model. Now, units are computed based on all services you resell to your customer (or buy yourself), making a certified module, maintenance contracts, trainings, etc. This points system is the reflect on your activity on Open ERP:

• reselled maintenance contract => number of customers
• quality certified modules => number of good modules published
• trainings & support => your knowledge on Open ERP

This new contract will take effect at the end of your current contract. Please note that we will be more strict with the partner level: sliver/gold. We will review the partnership level every 3 months, based on your real activity. So, people may increse their level/decrease their level according to their real activity on Open ERP in 6 months. Our goal is to be very fair and apply exactly the same rule to everyone.

The new rule to be starter/silver/gold/platinium are:

• Platinium : 5% of the top partners having the most points
• Gold : 15% of the top partners having the most points
• Silver : partners having more than 1500 points
• Starter : new partners

It's better because it scale efficiently with the growth of the partner network. We also re-evaluate partners level once every months.

In this situation, the partner level is less related to the amount the partner purchase but more to the activity and sales the partner generates.

The commission on all our products (maintenance, trainings, ...) has changed too:

• before it was 20% on all our products
• we increased to 25% splitted like this: 15% direct discount, 10% to be reused to buy others products (maintenance contracts, support, trainings, ...)

The commission is applied on direct purchases, or on purchases made by your customer. If one of your customer buys directly the service on our online shop, contact us to say it's your customer and we will pay you the commission at the end of the month.


About the module certification

In version 4.2, we had lots of troubles due to the quality of the modules published. Some where not fully finnished (proof of concepts), some where made by contributors and not maintained efficiently, ... It was a bad image for the product. We also get requests from customers and partners to get evaluation and feedback on their own modules.

The certification is based on a procedure of 150 technical and functionnal tests and reviewed by 2 people from our quality team. After the certification:

• We promote your work through a news on Open ERP
• We tag your module as quality certified in the module list
• We send you technical and functionnal feedback
• We include it in maintenance contracts (for corporate contracts) or send you a yearly proposition for the maintenance of the module (migration to new versions, bugfixing, ...)

It allows you to have a professional review on the quality of a module to avoid:

• Complexities to migrate the module for futur version of Open ERP,
• Having a module that do not fits Open ERP standards and is not used by the community,
• Discovering bugs and problems once in production,
• Queries that slows down the user interface when going on large production environment, etc.

Once the quality of a module is certified, we offer second level maintenance contracts on this module to ensure module lifecycle during years, migration and bugfix guarantees.

The advantage of using certified modules are:

• They are bugfree and the editor provides bugfix guarantee contracts,
• You will not have migrations problems for next versions of Open ERP,
• They are scallable and have been tested in production environments,
• We made stress tests to check they run with big databases,
• They are used by the community, so they will evolve and others will contribute.
  

The price to certify a module is 800 EUR, but we provide discounts for big projects, having lots of modules. Note that you also have 25% discount on modules certification.

Of course, that's not something you should buy. It's better to resell it
to the customer as a quality label.

Open ERP v5 is out !

That major enhancement of Open ERP can now answer to all the needs of a business. Open ERP V5 not only provides management functions, but also all functionalities necessary to a SMB, like : a process management by modules, a wiki, a webmail, a Business Intelligence (Cube OLAP), a Document Management System, an eCommerce, an idea box, etc.

Emphasis was placed on an extreme simplification of the software for the new users, a carefully designed ergonomy of the web client with, amongst others, drag&drop, Gantt graph, editable processes, etc., and more then 350 modules for specific sectors and big companies.

This new version comes with a full review of the web site giving access to more then 1500 pages of documentations on business management and a reorganisation of the community sources build upon the Open Object framework. Free cycles of conferences are planned with the version 5.0 release of Open ERP.

Unmatched functions

Thanks to its huge community, Open Object produce more then 20 modules a month. The Open Object community it is more then 1000 contributors, 126 development branches in parallel, an average of 400 new functinalities or bugfix per month, one commit every 5 minutes and functional and technical experts specialized by activity and working in teams.

The rise of Open Object and the diversity of the projects makes it an unmatched framework composed of more then 400 modules installable in a few clicks to cover all kinds of need or to simply start, with a simple module, to answer a simple need. Then, you can install other functionalities to come to a fully integreted and automized system.

Open ERP V5 is characterized by the appearance of many functionalities far beyond the perimeter of traditional management.

One can underline the following innovations:

• A integrated wiki.

• An integrated document management system.

• A Business Intelligence (BI) using a OLAP database.

• An integrated BPM (management of process).

• A web portal for clients and suppliers.

• Improvement of translations (1 translation file by language and module).

• A touchscreen point of sale.

• A full Ajax webmail .

• A shared calendar.

• Plugins for Outlook, OpenOffice, ms. Office, Thunderbird.

• An integrated eCommerce, etc
  
  

This new release offers 3 user interfaces :

• the rich application client for a day to day advanced use,

• the web interface allowing a remote access and an easy deployment,

• the QT client that perfectly fits in a KDE environment.
  
  

Numerous improvements have been added to the client interfaces, like :

• dynamic graphs and dashboards,

• really ergonomic calendar views,

• dynamic Gantt graphs for planning,

• workflows editors,

• a fully integreted documentation,

• a dynamic process view used for the end-user training,

• etc.

The web version of Open ERP includes numerous functions to modify or create your own application :

• an visual view editor,

• an object editor,

• a workflow (process) editor,

• an Open Office integrated report editor

• a statistics engine (BI cube),

• etc.

Restructuring websites

Open ERP have made a full review of its web sites for a better structure and organisation of the ressources and community projects :

- http://OpenERP.com : there you will find the different functionalities, the documentation, the Open ERP partners and the services proposed by the editor.

- http://OpenObject.com : Open Object, the Open ERP's framework, where is found all the community sources :

• documentation,

• Modules list,

• Forum, IRC, Bazaar.

A new IRC canal has also been opened for the community : irc://freenode.net/openobject

- http://ondemand.openerp.com : The « On Demand » offer, developped by Open ERP and Axelor. This is a « ready to use Open ERP » including hosting, maintenance and support.

Furthermore, Open ERP provides some new services to the community :

- http://doc.openerp.com : 1500 pages of documentations covering all domains of business management or about the developement under Open Object.

- http://OpenERP.tv : Screencasts dedicated to Open ERP consisting of presentation made by the contributors

- https://launchpad.net/openobject : The development plateform for Ubuntu, gathering all the developments of Open ERP and Open Objects. There is found the bugtracker, the FAQ, the ressources management, translations, etc.

Free Softwares overtakes proprietary softwares on the management softwares market

Open ERP V5 takes an unquestionable lead on its larger competitors like Microsoft Dynamix et SAP. Two very thorough studies have compared Open ERP with its proprietary and free competitors, showing an advance of several years for Open ERP:

• The ERP Open Source white paper by Smile : A study carried out over 6 months by experts of Smile.

• Evaluation-Matrix.Com: an community approach with a pragmatic evaluation of the management software company.
  

Need to know more ?

Free presentations and trainings are organized everywhere in Europe, in order to present Open ERP V5. The next dates in France or Belgium are:

• On February 16: Technical training and Open conference ERP in Grand-Rosière, Belgium.

• On February 20: Free Open ERP conference in Paris, France

• On February 25: Free Open ERP conference, Switzerland.

• On March 02: User Training (session 1) in Grand-Rosière, Belgium.

• On March 04: Free Open ERP conference in Grand-Rosière, Belgium.

• On March 23: User Training (session 2) in Grand-Rosière, Belgium.

• On March 25: User Training (session 3) in Grand-Rosière, Belgium.

• On April 01: User Training (session 4) in Grand-Rosière, Belgium.

• On April 05: Technical Training in Grand-Rosière, Belgium.

For any subscription, please contact Donia : sales@tinyerp.com

The Open ERP effect

I just made a small presentation that explain what's Open ERP.

The Open ERP effect