ERP systems and open source: an initial review and some implications for SMEs

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to further build up the knowledge about reasons for small and mid‐sized enterprises (SMEs) to adopt open source enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents and analyses findings in articles about proprietary ERPs and open source ERPs. In addition, a limited investigation of the distribution channel SourceForge for open source is made.Findings – The cost perspective seems to receive a high attention regarding adoption of open source ERPs. This can be questioned and the main conclusion is that costs seem to have a secondary role in adoption or non adoption of open source ERPs.Research limitations/implications – The paper is mainly a conceptual paper written from a literature review. The ambition is to search support for the findings by doing more research in the area.Practical implications – The findings presented are of interest both for developers of proprietary ERPs as well as SMEs since it is shown that there are defi...

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