Your company has identified a clear business need for application software–perhaps related to ERP, CRM, Document Management, etc.–and has a budget. You’ve sat through a few vendor demos, and have also selected a popular commercial open source project for consideration. So far so good.
In Part I of this 3-part series we stressed the importance of finding an open source service provider that serves companies of your size and type, with the specific services you need. This article will consider the “engagement model“, which is the default way the provider works with its customers.
In Part I of this 3-part series we noted the importance of finding an open source service provider that serves companies of your size and type with the specific services you need. In Part 2 we considered the “engagement model”, and gave examples of how misalignment in that area can trip you up.
We close in Part 3 with an important consideration that is very specific to open source: the relationship between the service provider and the open source vendor. In this article we focus specifically on the case of an ERP project being used by enterprise (mid to large) customers, a scenario where we have extensive direct experience.
Openbravo is the world’s most complete and scalable open source ERP Platform, featuring modular architecture and a model-driven core that automatically generates a powerful browser UI and REST web services based on your data model. Openbravo embeds a fully integrated set of best-in-class open source IT building blocks including workflow (Activiti BPM), reporting (JasperReports) & analytics (Openbravo Analytics), as well as an integrated mobile web framework — making Openbravo the most productive way to build end to end, multi-device user experiences that both end users and enterprise IT will love.