Introduction
Welcome to the new-look Openbravo Community Newsletter,
Openbravo Vision!
Openbravo Vision will provide you with regular, exclusive insights into our collective ambitions, successes and future growth.
The past few months have been as successful as they have been busy. Not only has Openbravo completed the key acquisition of Librepos (formerly Tina POS), we also launched version 2.3 of our ERP at LinuxWorld 2007 and won three prestigious awards.
Openbravo's success is in no small part down to you - our highly valued community. The recent Openbravo Get Together event, held for our community and partners, was a resounding success with more than 150 participants traveling from 18 different countries.
Matt Asay, an influential Open Source blogger and VP at enterprise content management specialist Alfresco, used his keynote speech at the conference to illustrate how the end users of commercial Open Source projects benefit from participating in and contributing to Open Source communities.
Here at Openbravo we will continue to encourage this level of participation, building and enhancing our tightly-knit community. As always, we are interested in your input about our newsletter, so please send your ideas to: vision@openbravo.com
With thanks and warmest regards,
Manel Sarasa
CEO, Openbravo
Customer spotlight: worldwide increase in Openbravo adoption
We have been very excited to witness just how rapidly Openbravo
adoption is increasing and expanding all over the world. Today, we estimate
that Openbravo is used in more than 300 organizations worldwide and experiencing
steady cross-market growth. Important new clients have adopted Openbravo,
including two subsidiaries of a large multi-billion dollar retail chain which
operates supermarkets, gas stations and sports stores, plus a leading economic
and market information service company.
You can find further detailed information about all of these customers in the improved success story section of our website, here: www.openbravo.com/customers/success-stories/
Success stories and customer testimonials perfectly demonstrate the real-world benefits of adopting Openbravo. We really appreciate it when any of our happy customers share their Openbravo experience with the wider community. Please send us your own stories so that we can publish them on our website: customers@openbravo.com
New awards
Openbravo's fully functional, integrated, web-based, open source ERP has recently won three highly prestigious awards. We are of course very proud to receive this continued recognition, both for the product itself, and also for our community as a whole. Awards such as these provide additional energy to all the members of the broad Openbravo community and keep us all working hard. Such acknowledgement encourages us to continue leading our effort to open the world of ERP.
Firstly, Openbravo was presented with a LinuxWorld.com Product Excellence Award for 'Best Integration Solution' by LinuxWorld.com and IDG World Expo in San Francisco to recognize our product and service innovations. Winning 'Best Integration Solution' is a great endorsement of our interoperability, our approach to distributed computing and to the commitment from our community. LinuxWorld is the main event of the open source calendar and was the perfect opportunity to demonstrate our latest software to the market, and to get involved in the buzz of new technologies.
Next, Openbravo was presented with an InfoWorld Best of Open Source Software award for Best in Enterprise Resource Planning software. InfoWorld's awards, also known as 'The Bossies', were created to recognize the best open source software for enterprises of all sizes. To be considered for the award, InfoWorld's test center had to run a thorough examination of Openbravo to identify the most innovative and cost-effective solutions for IT organizations.
Most recently, leading international Open Source software development website SourceForge recently chose Openbravo as its Project of the Month for September 2007. SourceForge hosts more than 160,000 projects and over one million users. Out of all of these projects, Openbravo has retained its position in the Top 10 projects across all software categories since April of 2006. We are also on track to surpass half a million downloads by the end of the next quarter, having already exceeded 375,000 downloads.
First international Get Together Community: a terrific
success!
Openbravo's first Get Together, held in Barcelona on October 26th to 28th October received a fantastic response from every partner attending the event.
We were delighted to see so many like-minded individuals
trading ideas, developing new opportunities and network at such a vibrant event.
Sessions including the unique preview vision of 'Openbravo Green' and the exploration
of Openbravo's broad range of interactive community services really highlighted
the steps that the Openbravo community is taking to advance our software in new
and exciting ways.
At the event, there were more than 150 participants traveling from 18 different countries. Attendees were from locations across North America, South America, Europe, Africa and Asia. More than 60 participants attended the partner day and more than 150 community members on the community days.
A succession of partner-focused conferences and workshops
were followed by activities and presentations for the broader community,
reflected Openbravo's commitment to maintain its solid and professional partner
network, while concentrating on community.
Thank you to all of you who attended and contributed to this - the first of many Openbravo events.
You can find all presentations at http://www.openbravo.com/ob-event/.
Make sure you don't miss your chance to attend any of our exciting future events by reviewing the dates featured at the foot of this newsletter, and regularly visiting the Openbravo event diary at: www.openbravo.com/about-us/press-room/events/.
Growth of the Openbravo team
In the past quarter Openbravo has grown in terms of key staff, partners and office location in order to better support our strong growth by building a best-in-class team of high caliber professionals.
Recent key recruits include chief products officer, Paolo Juvara and software architect Adrián Romero. Paolo joined our team from The Oracle Corporation, where he worked for 14 years, most recently as a senior director. Paolo will be responsible for Openbravo's product roadmap, engineering and integration projects. He brings valuable experience in terms of developing products for global markets, a major boon for Openbravo's ERP software line-up. Adrián joins our team from Meta4, where he worked for 12 years and brings an enormous wealth of experience. He also was the founder and main developer for Librepos/Tina POS. Adrián is now a software architect in our engineering team.
After successfully launching our innovative Partner Program in Cebit last April our Partner Network has increased to more than 50 partners which currently have capabilities to implement Openbravo in more than 40 countries worldwide. You can visit our partner map for detailed information.
Finally, the Spanish city of Barcelona, named one of the "best places to do business in the wired world" by CNNMoney.com, recently joined our list of international city locations in a bid to further build our SMB customer base and forge alliances with key European partners.
The Acquisition of Librepos (formerly Tina POS)
We are thrilled to announce that we have acquired the leading
open source POS product, Librepos, which was formerly titled Tina POS and had
over 100,000 downloads on SourceForge. Moving beyond ERP, we will offer an
integrated solution and add what will now be known as Openbravo POS to our
product line. This move will allow us greater exposure in the lucrative retail
and hospitality markets.
By combining the two leading open source ERP and POS projects, our goal is to speed up change and strengthen our position in the retail software market against proprietary software solutions. As mentioned, Adrián Romero, founder and main developer for Librepos/Tina POS, has joined Openbravo where he will continue supporting and developing the software and we could not be happier with his addition to the team.
Our community has just grown, with the Librepos community joining us, so let us all join together and welcome our new community members with open arms!
You can download Librepos at https://sourceforge.net/projects/librepos/.
Become a Pioneer!
Last July, Openbravo launched an international partner acquisition program called Pioneers, aimed at recruiting the first partners in countries without any partner presence. Partners in the Netherlands, Australia, Finland, Serbia, South Africa, Botswana, the Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia have now signed up, with numerous successful localizations released in Spain, the US, Italy, China, Germany, Brazil and Australia.
But there is still the opportunity to become a Pioneering Partner in many countries. Don't miss out on your chance to be a genuine Pioneer - fill out an application today!
Product updates
Latest version of Openbravo
Openbravo has been extremely busy on the product front. Version 2.3 was launched at LinuxWorld 2007 and was met with a warm reception. Release 2.35 intended for production use was released early in November. This latest version includes a more intuitive user interface, improved accounting modules, more localization, and newly integrated JasperReports to deliver rich content reporting. User message management has had features added such as more user-friendly messages, and model validations enabling exceptions to be clearly communicated via email. Revised alerts and data validation, communicated to users via pending alert windows and sent over email have also been added. In collaboration with the Open Solutions Alliance, of which Openbravo is an active member, a single sign-on designed to integrate with other corporate applications is now included with the latest version.
A new path to installation, upgrades and maintenance: with rPath
Openbravo has partnered with leading software appliance specialist rPath, to simplify the deployment both in physical and virtual environments and maintenance of its software for the Openbravo user base. Users will no longer have to worry about downloading the most recent version and all commercial customers will automatically receive updates once tested by Openbravo's quality assurance team. Routine system maintenance tasks such as scheduling backups or performing system updates will all be possible via a simple browser interface. rPath's technology will allow Openbravo to tailor the operating system to the application's needs, thus maximizing overall hardware performance.
Upcoming events and training dates
Based on your feedback we have planned the following training sessions:
- "5 days - Openbravo Get Ready" (Hyberabad, India, Dec 3-7 '07, in English): Intensive training starting with a session providing invaluable insight of the Open Source Business, to continue with overall training on the Openbravo ERP on both functional and technical sides. Attendees will be able to complete their knowledge later with the aid of special self-training materials and training environment.
- "2 days - Accounting in Openbravo" (Madrid, Spain, Dec 10-11 '07, in Spanish): Intensive classroom training to gain in-depth insights about the Openbravo Financial Module, including Receivables and Payables, Accounting, and Assets Management.
- "2 days - Openbravo POS Training" (Madrid, Spain, Dec 17-18 '07, in Spanish): Training for partners, potential partners and users looking to install, customize and start using Openbravo Point of Sales.
- Additional Web-based Training sessions (mid Dec'07 -to be defined, in English):
Openbravo in the news
Point-of-Sale Systems Going Open Source? - TechIQ
Fast forward to the present, and open source is trying its hand at disrupting the POS market.
In OSS, 'The ERP Market Also Rises' - Ebizq
"I had an interesting conversation this week with Josep Mitjà, the chief operating officer of a small but growing ERP company - Openbravo - of Pamplona, Spain."
Open Source ERP: Today's Hottest Emerging Technology? - CIO Magazine
What's the most exciting technology of the next few years for the enterprise? Open source ERP, say some pioneering information technology leaders.
Openbravo executives open up on the ERP solution - PC World (Australia)
GoodGearGuide gets behind the scenes of this successful business, with some of its key executives.
The 451 Group reports about Openbravo
The 451 Group, an independent technology industry analyst company focused on the business of enterprise IT innovation, has published some reports about Openbravo and the Open Solutions Alliance in its website.
Openbravo Podcast interview by Scott Mace
Scott Mace - editor at IT Conversations and Information Manager Journal - conducted and interview with Manel Sarasa and Josep Mitjà, CEO and COO of Openbravo respectively, at LinuxWorld San Francisco.
LinuxWorld Expo 2007 report by Andy Oram
Andy Oram - editor at O'Reilly Media - talk in O'Reilly ONLamp.com blog about two organizations he met with and their members - the Linux Mobile Foundation and the Open Solutions Alliance.
In this issue
TRAINING SESSIONS
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