ERP Journal on Ulitzer

For some time now I have been tracking the change in popularity of the top open source platform and I noticed a curious trend. At the beginning of the year ADempiere ERP was the top open source project. Looking down the list you would have found PostBooks at 8, Openbravo ERP at 9, webERP at 17 and OrangeHRM at 21. At that time it was mostly on my unconscious mind and had not “realized” it. But slowly the trend became more pronounced. Five of the top 7 open source projects are ERP. This is how it stands –order in which it is ranked in Source Forge:

1. PostBooks
2. Openbravo ERP
3. ADempiere ERP
4. – (others)
5. webERP
6. – (others)
7. OrangeHRM

I decided to check on what other analysts have to say on this and found 2 posts which echoed similar thought.

• 2009 the year for open-source ERP? by Matt Asay
• Open Source ERP Applications: They’re Real and They’re Spectacular by Thomas Wailgum

Here is another interesting post which I came across today – “Stripped-down” open source ESBs still solid middleware engines

Open source seems to be everywhere!

Here is an interesting exercise which you can try:

1. Think of top 20 (or top 50) software product brand – do not count versions or variant separately – example Windows OS is one
2. Classify them as Proprietary vs. Open Source
3. Also Classify them as Last Millennium vs. This Millennium – Use the first popular release as the date – example Windows 3.0 (1990)
4. Fill the names in the following 4 quadrants – I have put few names (my dates may be debatable) – you can fill-up the rest

What do you see?