http://compiere.com/company/contact-us.php

-TVG

Precisely my point about going Open Source is to avoid jumping into the market without such spending. Been Free is not evil as much as paying some pretty girl to stand besides your Software in an advert.

If you can get free marketing and branding from the web open community as well as testing, bug reports and code contribution then you have a new software development as well as a business model.

To go back to traditional spending beats the case. Thus Compiere that survived over 2000-2005 with a staff of 1 is proof. So are a host of other new dotcoms post the big bubble burst circa 2001. Compiere’s owner Jorg Janke remarked in 2003 that he saved USD2m to become a household name that time. When he took venture capital and spend it this way, his ratings dropped, OpenBravo and then ADempiere came to sweep the mindshare.

If you spend millions to get what you can for free, you have to recoup that spending and it usually means some awry business plan that only make certain ‘bankers’ rich without really doing anything.

I know today people are using Open Source as a marketing ploy. Go free for a while like an open fishing net in a blue ocean, and then pull in when free riding fish goes in. Well in this new ocean, people switch with just a click.

The VAR Guy will prove in January 2009 that the open source IT channel is emerging. Details coming January 14.

But our resident blogger will also concede that the open source IT channel is like a baby learning to walk. Few players are running and no players are sprinting right now.

In the meantime, thank you for helping to drive discussion about open source in the channel.

I think he is admitting that open source is not going to be successful unless there are intelligent consultants, like himself, that show up on someone’s doorstep and say: ‘Hey, I can support this. Hey, I am local. Hey, this is going to save you money., etc,etc,etc

The biggest negative for open source in the channel is that it has been marketed to the enduser as free. And the channel player is tired of hearing the word free. Like free PCs. Like free Internet access, like free software. Sure Linux is free, sure there are free PC’s, sure there is free Internet access. But do you really want to click through ads? Do you want your business running on free software with no number to call? There are free web sites and there is free internet backup. The only thing that isn’t free is Classmates.com or Reunion.com who both tell me that I have quite a number of visits by some old classmates, but I got to pay to find out who was visiting my profile. Well, I am betting that it was not the hot chick that I had the hots for in high school, but rather it was the folks that I really don’t want to talk to in spite of the fact that I haven’t seen them for 25 years or it is a total scam where it was just some webcrawlers hitting my profile. As a result, they still don’t have my money.

I, as a business owner, will not put my trust in free, especially if my business depends on it….

And I would be nervous if I had something for free with noone to call for help.

As for the Compiere/SugarCRM and Talend solution, it is not about selling software, it is about building solutions that add business value for our customers. Our customers pay us to do this and in many cases our customers then choose to give back to the open source community. We are the systems integrators in the open source ecosystem – leveraging the technology provided by the open source community, adding value in the form of business functionality, which in turn drives innovation and growth. To be profitable and successful, being very good at this is paramount, we strive to be the best at bringing open source to the enterprise.

On the one hand, The VAR Guy commends some open source companies for starting to MARKET and ADVERTISE their products. Some open source pundits frown upon such age-old tactics. But let’s face it: Marketing and advertising is what makes the world go ’round (oh, and those advertising programs sometimes wind up paying The VAR Guy’s salary.)

But on the other hand, The VAR Guy needs to take a closer look at Compiere’s history, plus ADempiere, etc. Thanks for keeping our resident blogger honest and on his toes.

More thoughts on ADempiere, Compiere and other open source companies will surface in The VAR Guy’s forthcoming Open Source 50 report, slated to debut January 14 2009.

Compiere has had 100 partners in 2006 at the moment before it decides to go commercial. To wipe that achievement out is rewriting real history. Today its community fork, ADempiere is ranked top in Sourceforge, beating yet another compierean but commercialised fork, OpenBravo.

Money may talk, but it does not walk so fast as codes in cyberspace. Also, you have to pay back all those millions soon.

Now, for readers who haven’t taken the open source plunge… How does Levementum actually make money with the Compiere/SugarCRM and Talend solution? Our readers would value your thoughts.