 Introduction
Welcome to your fifth issue of Openbravo Vision, the newsletter that brings our ecosystem together. With 2008 behind us, Openbravo is already off to a fast start in 2009.
Over the past year, Openbravo has increased its software downloads, community, partner network and customer base worldwide. In early 2008, we launched Openbravo Network, a family of annual subscription services targeting businesses of all sizes seeking professional support for Openbravo ERP. Each edition includes access to certified updates and upgrades, a lifecycle guarantee, bug fixing guarantee, and IP indemnification. We have increased the amount of interaction with our community, hosting intimate 360º Business Tours throughout Europe, Latin America and the United States. As well as extending the Get Together event to Miami, we held the event once more in Barcelona, where we underlined our commitment to open source with the announcement of the Openbravo Manifesto.
Now it's time to look forward to another productive year for Openbravo with our partners, customers and community. In January we welcomed Cees Poortman as our new VP of Global Commercial Operations, as well as Jesper Balser to our board of directors. Both appointments bring a depth of expertise and insight that will strengthen our position as a leader in the ERP market. In April, we will be hosting our first Openbravo World Conference, our largest event to date, and I very much hope to see you there. We're also planning some exciting updates to our ERP which will introduce a modular approach, starting with Openbravo ERP 2.50. We also have advanced plans to launch our own hosted Openbravo community collaboration and development destination, the Openbravo Forge.
In 2009, Openbravo will concentrate its efforts on 'Empowering the Ecosystem'. All our work - creating products, hosting events and building our Forge - will help weave a vibrant ecosystem around Openbravo. We will provide the best possible support for the diverse community of individuals and businesses that develop the products, services and knowledgebase that make Openbravo what it is today, and what it can become tomorrow.
I look forward to connecting with you throughout the coming year.
Manel Sarasa
CEO, Openbravo
We're always interested in hearing what you'd like to read in Openbravo Vision. If you have any suggestions please send them to: vision@openbravo.com. Past newsletters can be found here.
Corporate news
Jesper Balser to join Board of Directors
 Openbravo has announced that Jesper Balser, previously co-founder and CEO of Navision, has joined Openbravo's board of directors. He has been actively involved in Openbravo's business for six months, but in his new role will provide guidance on strategic as well as operational issues.
Jesper Balser said: "The open source space is maturing and Openbravo is in the perfect position to challenge the established ERP players in the SMB market. I am impressed by the very high quality of the people at Openbravo and the drive to win; which reminds me of my time at Navision."
Manel Sarasa, CEO of Openbravo, said: "Working closely with Jesper is an important step for us in building Openbravo's position as a leader in the ERP market. We have much to gain from his expertise, drive and insight, including his impressive track record in developing and executing the channel strategy for Navision."
Read more...
New Vice President of Global Commercial Operations
 Cees Poortman has joined Openbravo as VP of Global Commercial Operations. In his new role, Poortman will be responsible for the global partner ecosystem and international subsidiaries. Cees will define the company's global channel strategy, attracting and developing the very best partner network as well as defining key growth initiatives in developed and emerging markets.
Poortman boasts twenty years' experience in the ERP industry, which includes defining international go-to-market strategies, setting up subsidiaries and building channels for international software vendors such as Navision and Microsoft. Prior to joining Openbravo, he held executive positions such as managing director of Navision Netherlands, director for Microsoft Business Solutions, and most recently responsibility for the launch of Microsoft Dynamics Entrepreneur. He also held executive positions in a series of successful entrepreneurial ventures.
Read more...
Product Updates
Openbravo ERP 2.50 now available
Openbravo ERP 2.50 was recently released in alpha status, introducing many significant architectural enhancements, including the much anticipated modularity support.
Modularity is a very significant step forward in the progression of the Openbravo ERP project to unleash the full potential of open source. With modularity developers can easily extract, package and redistribute their extensions. Users are then able to browse public extensions in a central catalogue, and install them directly, very much like they currently install browser plug-ins.
If you are a developer, a system integrator, or an independent software vendor, modularity enables many new features, including: distributed development; lower barriers to contribution, a shorter time to market; global reach for all contributors; licensing freedom; community collaboration; development scalability; and drive-by contribution.
If you are a user, modularity will bring you the following benefits: a broader and deeper functional coverage; better localization support; lower total cost of ownership and improved ROI; reduced implementation time; and faster ROI.
Openbravo is currently running the 2.50 Modularity Program. This program has been launched to make sure that when 2.50 reaches production quality, everything is ready for our partners and community to build their extensions, localizations and vertical solutions. Participants were asked to create a simple module with Openbravo support. They were given a specific time frame to complete the task, and are providing valuable feedback along the way.
"The Openbravo Modularity Program helped me understand Openbravo ERP modularity and walked me through the process of creating custom modules for Openbravo. After attending the program, I now greatly appreciate the modular architecture of Openbravo ERP 2.50 and see how helpful it is for customizing Openbravo ERP for enterprise needs.”
Jignesh Shah, Sun Microsystems, ISV Engineering
Please do not forget to give us your feedback by posting your comments in the Early Releases Discussion forum.
Read more...
Partner News
With 2009 fully underway, we are excited to continue to lead in Open Source ERP. The past few months have seen us travelling throughout Europe and the United States to great cities like London, Paris, New York, Chicago and San Francisco. Feedback we have received has been overwhelmingly beneficial to creating, strengthening, and leading better partnerships for our ecosystem.
With continued growth, great news, and many more people looking towards Openbravo solutions, we invite you to visit us for the latest updates on community events held in your part of the world.
New partners
We're thrilled to welcome these latest additions of partners since our last newsletter!
We'd also like to congratulate the following partners; Corratech, Intecna Solutions, Kenzo & Associates, Kennovation Services Inc., OpenTRES, and REDK, for being upgraded to GOLD Partner status! SILVER status has also been awarded to Asgard Technologies, Business Momentum BV, Conasa, Microgenesis, S.A., TicTech Consulting. We have done this in recognition of the commitment they've shown to Openbravo and because of their excellence and dedication in spreading the adoption of professional open source ERP and POS products. With these milestones, we look forward to announcing more status upgrades in the very near future!
You can visit our partner map for detailed information.
Customer Corner
The word about Openbravo ERP is indeed spreading fast and as a result it is being implemented not only in all corners of the world, but across an increasing number of industries. We are therefore delighted to be able to share a new success story with you, this time from a company in the Industrial Equipment industry - the first Openbravo ERP implementation in Venezuela!
Implementation done by:
Maquinarias Lorenzi, C.A., founded in 1973 in the city of Barquisimeto, Venezuela, specializes in the sale and service of machinery and equipment for construction. Over time it has become one of the strongest groups in this sector with more than 2,000 customers, including government agencies and construction companies.
The company required an ERP system to manage all business processes in an integrated fashion, increasing efficiency in daily operations and providing tactical and strategic management and decision-making.
The flexibility and adaptability of Openbravo ERP to the business was a key factor in the decision to implement Openbravo ERP. The product was required to help it achieve its primary goal - expanding the company - whilst constantly adapting to the legal, financial and administrative provisions of its country. Additionally, Openbravo ERP was employed to maintain control of core areas of the business and its processes, and to provide real-time visibility for the directors, wherever they are located, at any given time.
The benefits have been more than apparent, increasing efficiency in all daily operations from the organizational capacity of each department, to the business processes of the company as a whole.
Maquinarias Lorenzi now has greater control over all operations; legal, financial and administrative. Furthermore, the company has benefited from a decrease of 70 percent in manual activities, plus the incorporation of remote users through the web-based feature now allows growth of the business, regardless of location.
To read more customer success stories, please visit our success stories section.
These customer testimonials provide the real-world benefits of adopting Openbravo. If you have a story to tell, please send an email to us so that we can publish it on our website: success.story@openbravo.com
Community Information
Community Awards
We recently announced the inauguration of our Community Awards in order to give something back to our fantastic community. The Openbravo Community Awards have been created to recognize individuals and companies for their outstanding contributions to Openbravo ERP and POS projects.
There will be two types of awards. The Individual Awards will acknowledge people that have allocated time and resources to improving Openbravo projects, while the Technology Awards will recognize outstanding projects led by any company or organization built on top of Openbravo technology.
The winners will be awarded during the last day of the Openbravo World Conference, taking place Sunday 19 April, 2009. The nomination of candidates will open on March 2, 2009. Details concerning the voting process will be online leading up to the event.
Read more…
Concepts for Openbravo ERP Redesign
 We are continuously improving our products and raising the bar with every release. Recently we started to look at some very fundamental parts of the user interface of Openbravo ERP and came up with some fresh ideas for a future redesign. User feedback told us that there was a need for a new powerful and flexible search functionality. We also learned that many users like to edit the grids (table) directly in the cells and that switching between different records at the same time would be very useful.
Here we would like to give you a sneak preview of the stuff we are working on and give you the opportunity to provide your own feedback. Our approach is holistic: we believe that all functionality should work in the context of user journeys rather than just plugging in new features. That's why we also want to propose a complete new 'Master-Detail' concept in which all other functionality is embedded.
Images say more than words so direct yourself to
http://www.openbravo.com/concepts and give us your feedback!
Upcoming Events and Training
To be held on April 18 and 19 in Barcelona, Spain, and preceded by an exclusive Partner Day on April 17, this free conference, with up to 300 expected attendees from across the globe, aims to empower the ecosystem around Openbravo products.
The Conference will provide the ideal setting in which to learn best practices, gain insight into the latest and most ambitious projects currently being developed, share experiences by networking with peers, and celebrate achievements with the first edition of the Community Awards. Sessions will be delivered by Openbravo's chief visionaries, leading developers, and key players within the community, and feature great applications and platforms that integrate with or complement Openbravo products.
As Openbravo's largest community event to date approaches, more companies are announcing their collaboration. Among others, Gold sponsors DB2 Software, Elondra, Talend and Oracle have confirmed, while Silver Sponsor ProcessMaker will also be on board for this year's event. Openbravo will announce exciting new keynote speakers shortly, all of whom are sure to make this an event not to be missed. Seats are filling fast so make sure to register today!
To find out more, please visit the Openbravo World Conference website.
New Training Series
Classroom training courses for the first quarter will be held in Barcelona, San Francisco and Mexico, as well as the recent addition of Calcutta.
Our live classroom training is steadily increasing its offer to support demand. Training will be offered in English and/or Spanish, depending on location, and will include Basic Functional, Customization & Basic Dev. and Advanced Development.
Live classroom training is the best option for those looking to master Openbravo ERP technology in a shorter time frame. A total of three week-long intensive courses can be combined to fully grasp Openbravo ERP, or can be selected individually according to specific needs. The live classroom training offers continual interaction with a training specialist, so that students receive intensive training and thorough explanations. The dynamics of a classroom setting provide an ideal place to learn, network and build closer ties with fellow Openbravo community members.
Anyone interested in attending any of the live classroom Trainings, should please visit the Openbravo Training section for more details about location, dates, language, and course descriptions. It is recommended to register early as space is limited. Those unable to attend these sessions can try the recently-added online BFT course, or any other of Openbravo's online courses that are part of the eLearning program.
Openbravo webinars are now available to watch on-demand
Due to the volume of requests, our two webinar series - for prospective partners or prospective customers - are now available on-demand for anyone who did not have the opportunity to attend previously.
Each webinar leads prospective partners and customers through the unique value proposition that we offer. Interested parties will learn who we are, what products we offer, how to boost sales and maximize profits with our software, and why and how to become a partner or end client.
Click here for more details.
Openbravo in the News
The VAR Guy explored how the additions of Jesper Balser and Cees Poortman to the Openbravo team will help the company moving forward and add momentum.
Heise reports on the additions of Jesper Balser and Cees Poortman to Openbravo's team.
Matt Asay wrote about Jesper Balser joining the board and mentioned Cees Poortman. In it, he writes that open source is attracting some of the best and brightest from the proprietary-software world, as they see the writing on the wall for incumbents.
This Spanish National daily specializing in Economy reports the arrival of Jesper Balser to Openbravo's board.
Chinese press covers the latest Board member to join Openbravo.
Openbravo was mentioned in this article by CFO.com as an example of open source's increasing popularity in today's business.
Josep Mitjá, COO of Openbravo, is interviewed in an article examining how open source ERP has become a more attractive option for businesses during the downturn.
ZDNet, a branch of CBS Interactive which receives nine million daily unique visitors, wrote a piece on how Openbravo believes it can capitalize on the crisis and create a stronger presence in the US.
Openbravo was ranked in the top 10 for the 'best of the best' in open source.
Open source is listed amongst other technologies and Openbravo is listed amongst applications companies are moving to.
Matt Asay says that it's time for spending to shift to open source ERP to replace bloated ERP.
Cenatic, the National Reference Center for the Application of Open Source Information and Communication Technologies in Spain, featured Openbravo as one of the success stories in the open source arena.
In this slideshow by IT Management, Openbravo is featured in slide 3 on ERP and how companies are moving towards emerging open source projects.
Openbravo was featured in this radio program – focusing on the economy – as an example of an innovative company capable of attracting international talent to Catalonia. [Go to 21st minute – only in Catalán].
Openbravo was recognized by Spanish business magazine Capital in its Innovation Category.
CIO best practices webzine discussed advantages of open source software.
Article explored the positioning of open source companies in times of economic crisis.
Blog spot specializing in open source ERPs offered an in-depth review of Openbravo Network.
An article covering Emprendedor TV, a new Internet TV channel featuring successful entrepreneurial cases, on which Openbravo has already appeared.
This blog post discussed the growing presence of open source ERPs in American Universities. Openbravo was mentioned as an increasingly popular non-proprietary ERP software alternative in the SMB space.
Navarran periodical covered the Capital Awards, for which Openbravo was a recipient (Spanish Article).
© 2009 Openbravo
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