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Odoo: The new OpenERP

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Re: Odoo: The new OpenERP

#41

Post by thematt »

kepano wrote: post #40

Not sure the rebrand is what will attract new customers to OpenERP. A couple months ago, I evaluated ERPs for our business. OpenERP was one of the main contenders but ultimately the manufacturing module failed to meet our requirements and custom development would have been too costly. I was also shocked to get a glimpse at OpenERP's internal corporate structure. Despite the open source nature of the project, their bu…

Exactly. Every company's business process has it's own uniqueness, so if you try to evolve it into a mass-market tool (as opposed to designing for it up-front), you end up with a Frankenstein system that is enormous and complicated. Then your company starts morphing to match what you're selling.

If some YC'ers want to make some serious cash, go build the JIRA of ERP. Make the system: pluggable, VERY configurable, give it a sexy UI and don't require an army of consultants to implement. Want some reasons? Pretty much all your potential customers hate their existing ERP system. Your competition is staffed by sleazy salespeople that sell nothing but snakeoil. Your market is filled with companies of all sizes who will literally throw cash at you to make them more efficient.

Re: Odoo: The new OpenERP

#42

Post by toomuchtodo »

kfk wrote: post #36
jamesmcintyre wrote: post #21

If you look around there is no "beautiful ERP" solution out there and the status quo is "you can make a very capable ERP or a "pretty" ERP but not both". I understand the the difficulty of striking that balance but I think by applying the right kind of modularity to the app design (sort of like openERP but even more granular and forgiving) you can arrive at a solution which invites businesses of all-sizes but can gro…

This is nonsense. An ERP has to run your business and operations. It has to be extremely reliable. Users couldn't care less about it's UX, in fact, the standard ERP solution, SAP, looks terrible, but it is also quite ok to use. In a big company an ERP error/fault can generate millions worth of damage, are you still thinking a prettier UI is a great start up idea for an ERP? Finally, you forget that IT departments in…

> Finally, you forget that IT departments in big companies are just a tad above trained monkeys and your software solution has to take that into account

This generalization is the equivalent of "Every SF startup engineer is a high schooler who happens to know some javascript".

Think before painting with a broad brush, especially when its that department that might have to give signoff for your product.

Re: Odoo: The new OpenERP

#43

Post by saturdayplace »

nathanstitt wrote: post #30
ritonlajoie wrote: post #6

What are the alternatives to OpenERP today ? (I mean, free and open sources ones, with acceptable UI)

I'll take the opportunity to plug my attempt, Stockor @ http://stockor.org/ It's built in Ruby and currently uses ExtJS for the UI. I'm currently rebuilding the front-end in Backbonejs.

Would you mind talking about your reasons for switching from ExtJS to Backbone?

Re: Odoo: The new OpenERP

#44

Post by nathanstitt »

saturdayplace wrote: post #43
nathanstitt wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll take the opportunity to plug my attempt, Stockor @ http://stockor.org/ It's built in Ruby and currently uses ExtJS for the UI. I'm currently rebuilding the front-end in Backbonejs.

Would you mind talking about your reasons for switching from ExtJS to Backbone?

Sure.

The biggest driver is that I want it to work equally well on mobile, including phone sized screens.

The other is the file size and load speed. Right now the build is pushing almost 3mb, and takes around 10-20 seconds to load. That's kind of ok, since the workspace is intended to be a very long running app that folks will use all day long, but it still really sucks. You can view a demo of the ExtJS workspace at: http://stockor.com/demo

Plus it's just kind of ugly in my opinion. It looks like a desktop app that's attempting to be delivered in a web browser, which fair enough it is. I'd like it to be something more stylish though.

As for why I'm picking Backbone vs Ember or Angular, that's a bit more complicated. The main reason is that I'm very familiar with Backbone and have used it for years (I'm a contributor to DocumentCloud).

When I made the decision to rewrite for mobile, I did do a pretty in-depth framework comparison and Backbone still comes out ahead in my opinion. It's light enough that it's super easy to understand and figure out why things aren't working the way you like, while giving you just enough structure to keep the app on the correct path. I am going to use a view/model binding lib though, but haven't settled on which one as of yet. Probably backbone.stickit.

Email me at the address in my profile if you'd like to chat more about it, glad to answer any questions you might have.

Re: Odoo: The new OpenERP

#45

Post by jlnthws »

codeape wrote: post #38
ddorian43 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they still use their custom-own-built orm ?

I cannot understand why anyone would not use SQLAlchemy if they're building a database-backed Python application.

True today, but not 10 years ago :)

Plus Odoo ORM and SQLAlchemy have different purposes.

Re: Odoo: The new OpenERP

#46

Post by conception »

tixocloud wrote: post #17
conception wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The phrase I've never heard once in my IT career is "I love my ERP."

Why do you think that is?

I think the amount of work that goes into them, regularly I hear 12-18 months, and that they aren't usually engineered towards intuitive processes or interfaces. I imagine features rather than experience is a driver.
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