A Survey of Open Source Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems have been widely used in business organizations, and are especially ideal for small- or medium-sized businesses. This paper surveys open source ERP systems, using five criteria identified in the literature; namely: readiness for cloud computing as a Web-based system; completeness of commonly required ERP functionalities; ease of configuration on any operating system; existence of an active and large social network for users' community support; and the presence of other non-functional requirements. Using the five assessment criteria, the authors examine six well-recognized open source ERP systems on the market: webERP, Compiere, PostBooks, Opentaps, OpenBravo, and OpenERP. As an example of a simple and intuitive method for assessing open source ERP systems for potential user firms, the authors use star charts to compare the six selected systems. The authors conclude that there are differences among open source ERP systems, and that a good open source ERP system should be highly competitive in terms of the five criteria used in this study.

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