Compiere Blog

Compiere eLearning: New Open Items and Payments

In response to our customer’s learning needs, Compiere is providing a new eLearning Module that covers Open Items and Payments. The latest eLearning module teaches users to quickly retrieve information on the current “Open” or unpaid invoices as well as past due invoices. This module will also cover adding a bank and a bank account, receiving payments from customers, and submitting multiple payments to multiple vendors at once.

The new eLearning module is included in the Compiere eLearning series. You may purchase the entire series or simply purchase the “Open Items and Payments” eLearning module separately.

Learn more about all twelve modules by visiting the eLearning Page. To try eLearning products before purchasing, check out ‘Navigation in Compiere’ free of charge.

Compiere Available through the New Red Hat Exchange

The Red Hat Exchange, or RHX,is now open for business. RHX is a new marketplace for leading integrated business application solutions such as Compiere. We are excited and honored to be among the initial 13 open source solutions offered through the exchange. For additional discussion around Compiere on RHX, read Compiere CEO Don Klaiss' blog entry on the Red Hat News Blog, or the Red Hat's press release.

We want to thank Matt Mattox, director of product management for RHX, and the rest of the Red Hat team who worked tirelessly to make today's "grand opening" a success.

Compiere Expansion

Compiere announced today our expansion into Europe in addition to expanding Compiere's executive team.  Having an office in Germany will allow us to better serve the Europe, Middle East, and African markets with a local presence to focus on sales, support and solution delivery for our channel partners and customers throughout the EMEA region. As general manager of Compiere EMEA, Yves Sandfort will lead efforts to further increase our reach and the productivity of our partner network to our 20+ authorized partners within the EMEA region. With our expansion into Europe, we will also begin holding training classes in Europe again with the first class tentatively scheduled for the June / July timeframe.  We will post more details about the training class on our website in the next few weeks after we have finalized the dates and logistics for the training session.

We also announced the addition of three people joining our executive team in our U.S. corporate office:

• Kyle Rosier, director of sales for the Americas, will oversee channel activities and lead direct sales in the Americas.
• Sunny Gosain, vice president of development and customer support, has global responsibility for product development, customer support and information technology.
• Bill Freedman, director of marketing, will lead outbound marketing efforts globally.

When Compiere had only a few people employees, the number of initiatives we could focus on was very limited. This expansion gives us the ability to focus on a larger number of initiatives including more focus on product development, support, global sales programs, and marketing.

We welcome Yves, Kyle, Sunny, and Bill to the Compiere team!

 

Compiere is a Key Player in ERP

In the month of February, two major industry publications listed Compiere as one of the top ERP vendors, and we are in good company with a number of top vendors on each of these lists.

CRN, a publication targeting VARs and integrators, put together a list of the 6 key players in ERP.  The  article and list associated with it was targeted at the small business market, and Compiere was one of six vendors on the list along with Microsoft, Sage, Intuit, and others. In addition to making the list, CRN made a couple of great points about the ERP market and Compiere. CRN stated that “In the SMB sector, the ground is slowly shifting to open-source ERP alternatives. Solution providers are exploring low-cost open-source ERP alternatives because they have full control of the software and can easily differentiate themselves.”  This is certainly a trend that we have been seeing at Compiere.  As more customers look for flexible solutions, they are naturally turning toward open source products.  CRM also points out that “Compiere is an out-of-the-box ERP product, but with an unusual twist—the software uses a generic model-driven architecture to change the application and add new features.”  This model driven architecture in addition to having access to the Compiere source code is what provides our customers and partners the flexibility to create customized solutions to meet a particular need.  One of the biggest advantages of Compiere in the SMB market is our ability to scale.  A company can start with a Compiere solution when they have only a few employees, and the same solution can continue to scale as the company moves from small to medium to large enterprise without the pain and cost of migrating to a new ERP provider.

CIO magazine put together a list of Open-Source ERP's Big 3 with Compiere featured prominently at the top of the list as the oldest open source ERP vendor.  The article states that “at least five open-source ERP projects exist today, but just three of those—Compiere, Open For Business and Openbravo—have gained traction, analysts say.” Compiere “has the most adoption and 'has grown into a significant level of functionality,' says Paul Hamerman, a Forrester Research analyst.” This list was part of a broader article answering the question “Is Open Source the Answer to ERP?”   The short answer is: “A growing number of mid-market CIOs say yes. In the wake of recent ERP vendor consolidation, open source promises flexibility for the future. Plus it fits the need to customize—affordably.”

A big thank you to Wilfrido Solano at WOSS Business Solutions, one of Compiere's new partners in 2007, for reminding me to blog about these articles!

Compiere Expands Support Offerings

Compiere has just announced our expanded support offerings.  I see this as a natural evolution of the company as we expand into additional markets. Compiere has historically been focused on the small and medium business markets, but lately we have been talking to and closing deals with large enterprise companies.  The new support offerings were designed to provide enterprise level support to those large customers with complex installations while still providing offerings attractive to our small and medium business customers.

Compiere support is available through our partners or directly from Compiere. The following levels highlight Compiere’s basic support offerings, and Compiere partners may offer additional support services that build on these three offerings.

• Self-Service Support is designed for smaller customers using Compiere under an open source license. Self-service support is aimed at customers who have the resources and desire to complete a significant portion of the implementation and ongoing maintenance work without assistance from Compiere, but still want access to migration tools.

• Standard Support is aimed at the needs of most Compiere customers. Standard support customers can choose the EULA which among other benefits provides indemnification. Additionally customers can choose from standard edition databases, such as Oracle Standard Edition (SE) and other databases and receive access to releases prior to the general release.

• Extended Support is designed for enterprise customers with large or complex installations. Extended support customers can choose the EULA which among other benefits provides indemnification. Additionally customers can use enterprise edition databases and application servers and receive access to daily build releases.

We have been hiring new people, and as we expand and grow the company, I think we are really in a position to take the company to the next level.  Offering a variety of support services, including extended support for enterprise customers feels like a step in the right direction for Compiere.

Keep watching for our press releases and reading this blog.  We expect to have more news for you in February!

New Partner Program

On January 9th, we announced our new Authorized Partner Program at Compiere.The newly expanded partner program offers a variety of benefits including lead distribution, discounts on solutions that partners resell, Compiere partner logo usage, advertisements on Compiere’s Web site and more. The program is divided into three tiers to accommodate a variety of partners:       

• Authorized Partner Program is designed to play a dual role and serves as a great entry point into the multi-tier partner program or for use by low-volume partners requiring basic support.
• Authorized Silver Partner Program is designed for  partners whose core business revolves around implementing and supporting  Compiere’s ERP & CRM business
• Authorized Gold Partner Program is the elite designation for Compiere’s top partners. These are high-volume partners that have not only differentiated themselves by the outstanding quality of their implementation and on-going support of Compiere’s ERP & CRM business applications, but have additionally made significant contributions toward the evolution of the product suite itself. These elite partners are recognized by receiving additional partner benefits, including click-through advertisements and distribution of additional sales leads.

It can be a challenge to design a partner program within an open source company and find creative ways to achieve the balance between providing enough revenue to sustain business for Compiere and our partners while creating product offerings at appropriate price points for customers without relying on revenue from product license sales. The new partner program is designed to provide the resources partners need to build their businesses by providing consulting services, training, and support.

I am excited about the new partner program. Compiere's business is driven by our partners, and I think that the new partner program will help both Compiere and our partners succeed in 2007.