I conducted an interview with the CEO of Openbravo, Manel Sarasa. Openbravo is a free and open source software for enterprise resource planning.
We are talking about the story of Openbravo, localization of the software and the business model of the company. Openbravo has currently more that 1500 downloads a day and all together more than 500.000 downloads up to know. 70 partners are acting in more than 20 countries. The download of the software is completely free of charge. Customers can also customize the software and distribute it. The company earns an income by providing services and consulting. It received 5 million Euros funding from investors in the first round.
Our clients are organisations that have chosen to be the owners of their ERP solution and to only pay for the professional support they really need, when they need it. (May 15, 2008, www.openbravo.com)
60 people are steadily employed by the company. One third in the engeneering team, one third in the operations team and one third is employed in other parts, like in corporate services and in the internal consulting unit. "About the community, we estimate that there are thousands of people contributing to the project." Emerging markets and Asia, especially India and China, is a hot topic for Openbravo. "We start to have some good contacts there." The next step in increasing userfriendlyness of Openbravo systems is the one click install with an easy option to keep clients up to date.
Interview: Mario Behling // Camera: Stefan Koehler
Direct Link: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3941448881089759658
Openbravo is an open source web-based ERP business solution for small and medium sized companies that is released under the Openbravo Public License, based on the Mozilla Public License. The model for the program was originally based on the Compiere ERP program that is also open source, released under the GNU General Public License version 2. The company is also a member of the Open Solutions Alliance, a non-profit organization working for open-source standardization. The program is among the top ten most active projects of Sourceforge as of January 2008. Development decisions are made by Openbravo, S.L., located in Pamplona, Spain. (Version 22 March 2008, 18:31, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openbravo)
The interview was conducted at Open Source Meets Business in Nürnberg 2008.