Open Source Strategies, Inc.

The first proof of concept application is now available.  This new application is based on Apache Geronimo 3, OSGi Blueprint, and openJPA server side and HTML5/Javascript/CSS client side technologies.  Facebook integration is built into the application:

You can try the opentaps v2 Notes application at notes.opentaps.com or see a YouTube video for the new opentaps v2 user interface.  For developer documentation, please see our wiki pages about opentaps 2.

Fedex and Endicia Shipping Integration

The new opentaps OFBiz FedEx integration module provides FedEx web services integration for both opentaps and ofbiz.  Important: because the current Ship Manager Direct API will be discountinued by FedEx on May 31, 2012, you will need to get this module to continue shipping with FedEx.

opentaps Endicia integration module now supports generating USPS shipping labels from opentaps or ofbiz.  See shop.opentaps.org for this and other modules to improve the capabilities of your opentaps system.

opentaps In The Cloud now Available on Amazon EC2 m1.medium Instance Type

opentaps in the Cloud, our popular Amazon EC2 deployment option for opentaps, is now available on the Amazon m1.medium instance type.  This new instance type was introduced recently by Amazon and offers the equivalent of 2 processor cores and 3.75 GB of available RAM and can be used to host opentaps for a small organization.  To use this new instance type, subscribe to the opentaps Mini AMI and choose m1.medium on startup.

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A recent GigaOM post about iPhone’s momentum vs Android was interesting, because it suggests that the Laws of Software may have been overturned.

Since the early days of the PC, the software industry has operated according to a pattern described in Michael Cusumano’s classic The Business of Software: The successful software companies are the ones which gathered the largest number of users.  The best practitioners were Microsoft and, later, Google.  Both followed similar strategies: lower costs, add distribution partners, add users, and branch into related products.

Apple was the oddball.  Its dogged attempt to make hardware and software together made it look like a throwback to the age of the minicomputer.  Its quaint insistence on user experience and quality made one want to grab Steve Jobs, shake him, and yell — “Can’t you see the user base is all that matters?”

So… what happened?  Could it be that

1. Low switching costs (suggested in the GigaOM) article made it important for software companies to keep the users happy?
2. Computing has become so inexpensive that users can and will pay for a product that made them happy?
3. The emergence of consumer computing over corporate computing made the user’s happiness important?

Are software companies finally in the user-happiness business?

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My New Year’s Resolution: Make building enterprise software fun again.

The Old Way

Almost all enterprise applications follow the same architectural pattern: a single all-encompassing framework housing the data, logic, and presentation layers.  When applied to large-scale applications such as enterprise software, which must cater to the needs of lots of users with many different features, it creates some problems:

1. Everything that you use in the application must be written in this framework.  You might really like X, but if you want to use in your application, you’d have to re-write X in its framework.
2. No framework is optimal for all possible features.  For example, order processing and accounting are highly structured, whereas web content management deals primarily with non-structured data.  A relational database driven framework that is well suited for traditional ERP could thus be poorly suited for web content management, and vice versa.

This is why we often hear enterprise users say “We chose [fill in name of your software] because it was good at [fill in the good features], but it’s really not too good at [all the other stuff].”  Conversely, because vendors think this is the only way to build software, they often have to bundle so-so features with their core strengths to create a competitive “enterprise offering.”

A Better Way to Do It?

Sometimes it just takes a shift in the perspective.

Could enterprise software could be built as mash ups of components based on open standards?

Would that make writing business software as easy–and as fun–as putting together blogs with videos, tweets, and maps?

Let’s Try it with Open Source

We’re going to try to do exactly that with opentaps 2.  We plan on building off the OSGi standard and the new Apache Geronimo 3 application server on the server side and the new HTML5 standard for client side applications to create this new kind of enterprise software.  Take a look at our plans for opentaps 2 and follow us.

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When I first wrote opentaps 2.0 Planning, my goal was to come up with a new architecture that would make enterprise software more modular and more reusable.  But we will need to do much more in a mobile and API-driven world, so here are some of the guiding principles behind the architecture of the new opentaps:

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Take a look at this chart from O’Reilly Radar: You say you want a revolution? It’s called post-PC computing:

We are entering a new computing wave, where a new technology platform will revolutionize software.

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There’s an interesting story from SoftwareAdvice.com about the origin of ACT!, the first contact management and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software.

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A product is useless without a platform, or more precisely and accurately, a platform-less product will always be replaced by an equivalent platform-ized product.

But making something a platform is not going to make you an instant success. A platform needs a killer app.

Accessibility [is] the most important thing in the computing world.

The. Most. Important. Thing.

- From Stevey’s Google Platforms Rant

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You should read the Occam’s Razor blog’s post about measuring social media.  It suggests that you try to measure social media interactions as conversations, amplifications, and applauses from your readers.

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According to The Wall Street Journal, Yahoo!’s problems stem from the declining value of content:

“People tell me that content is king, but that is not true at all,” says Rishad Tobaccowala, chief strategy and innovation officer at Vivaki, the digital-media unit of Publicis Groupe SA. “Most people make money pointing to content, not creating, curating or collecting content.”

Which begs the question: If content has no value, then why are we creating it?  Why are so many online marketers rushing to create blogs, forums, videos, tweets, etc. — in other words, content?

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European and Latin American companies looking for a fully-featured, low cost, and flexible business management system can now leverage the power of opentaps Open Source ERP + CRM, which now offers improved support for Value Added Taxes (VAT) and Spanish translations. These enhancements make it easier than ever before for companies in these regions to use opentaps as an alternative to expensive, inflexible, or outdated commercial ERP or CRM systems.

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