Hello, As you may have noticed, we just release version 5.0 of Open ERP. This mail explains all the changes that are related to this new version.
About the Software ------------------ I suppose you already know most of the changes that have been applied in the Open ERP software. This new version focused on the following elements: * ACCESSIBILITY & EASE OF USE : the version comes with tooltips on most fields, a complete documentation (1500 pages) linked with contextual help, configuration wizards, pre-configured access-rights, reviewed interfaces, simple/extended mode. This should allow people to start working with Open ERP much more easily. * BETTER INTERFACE: especially with the web client with the drag&drop calendar, the gantt charts, the process view, reviewed look, better dashboards, etc. * TOOLS FOR INTEGRATORS: to allow you to integrate Open ERP by doing parametrization, not develoment: screen/object designer, server actions, workflow editor, etc. * MATURITY: about 1200 bugs have been fixed within the past 5 months. And, of course lots of new modules and features. About the marketing ------------------- We splitted the (allinone) Open ERP website into two websites, to target different kind of users: * Open ERP : for customers, to promote a product or a solution. You will find on this website: features, online demonstration, success stories, services offers. * Open Object : for the community, to organise collaborative efforts. New things on this website: irc channel, extensive launchpad use, technical keypoints. These websites are all related to the same code/software. We can say that: * Open ERP is a product * Open Object is a project * On Demand is a service We think it's important to have a different communication according to the target market. Customers will want to see advantages, ROI, services offers, success stories whereas community will want to see forum, IRC, current bugs, branches of development, ... We also launched new services: * OpenERP.tv : a place for the community where you can upload your screencasts You can post your blog on blip.tv with the tag openerp, and we will validate it to integrate in the screencasts section. * Evaluation-Matrix.com : A pragmatic and collaborative comparison amongst most advanced ERP on the market. * Doc.OpenERP.com : a 1500 pages of documentation with the following books available: enterprise management (The Open ERP book), the community book, the installation book, the BI book, the modules list, the features list. We splitted the planet into 2 planet, the goal is to allow every partner to contribute on the openobject planet: technical issues, new modules, customers, announce of events, ... The communication for the Open ERP planet will be done by our marketing team by reviewing, improving and filtering others contents. If you want to send your own announce to our news section, please do the following: 1. Create a blog where you will post your announce (or a website having rss available) 2. Send a link to your blog or rss by email to Philippe ([email protected]) 3. Our news system will automatically fetch your announces on your blog, filtering on posts that have the openobject keyword. We request only english messages on our news. If you want to announce in another language, please create 2 posts, and tag with 'openobject', only the english message. About the Sales --------------- As to provide you more prospects, we worked a lot on an improved lead generation program. You can get the available leads on the portal (about 2000 new leads per month). These leads come from the following sources: * From the form on our website * From the poll at installation of the software * From email sent to [email protected] We apply a semi-manually filter on emails, so that you don't have spam in the portal, but only real leads. About the partnership --------------------- The partnership contract has been changed to be more reliable. We kept the same ideas than the preceeding contract but improved on some points, mainly the point (units) system. We simplifed the unit system to be much more easy and understandable. We got inspired by the ezPublish model. Now, units are computed based on all services you resell to your customer (or buy yourself), making a certified module, maintenance contracts, trainings, etc. This points system is the reflect on your activity on Open ERP: * reselled maintenance contract => number of customers * quality certified modules => number of good modules published * trainings & support => your knowledge on Open ERP This new contract will take effect at the end of your current contract. Please note that we will be more strict with the partner level: sliver/gold. We will review the partnership level every 3 months, based on your real activity. So, people may increse their level/decrease their level according to their real activity on Open ERP in 6 months. Our goal is to be very fair and apply exactly the same rule to everyone. The new rule to be starter/silver/gold/platinium are: Platinium : 5% of the top partners having the most points Gold : 15% of the top partners having the most points Silver : partners having more than 1500 points Starter : new partners It's better because it scale efficiently with the growth of the partner network. We also re-evaluate partners level once every months. In this situation, the partner level is less related to the amount the partner purchase but more to the activity and sales the partner generates. The commission on all our products (maintenance, trainings, ...) has changed too: * before it was 20% on all our products * we increased to 25% splitted like this: 15% direct discount, 10% to be reused to buy others products (maintenance contracts, support, trainings, ...) The commission is applied on direct purchases, or on purchases made by your customer. If one of your customer buys directly the service on our online shop, contact us to say it's your customer and we will pay you the commission at the end of the month. About the module certification ------------------------------ In version 4.2, we had lots of troubles due to the quality of the modules published. Some where not fully finnished (proof of concepts), some where made by contributors and not maintained efficiently, ... It was a bad image for the product. We also get requests from customers and partners to get evaluation and feedback on their own modules. The certification is based on a procedure of 150 technical and functionnal tests and reviewed by 2 people from our quality team. After the certification: * We promote your work through a news on Open ERP * We tag your module as quality certified in the module list * We send you technical and functionnal feedback * We include it in maintenance contracts (for corporate contracts) or send you a yearly proposition for the maintenance of the module (migration to new versions, bugfixing, ...) It allows you to have a professional review on the quality of a module to avoid: * Complexities to migrate the module for futur version of Open ERP, * Having a module that do not fits Open ERP standards and is not used by the community, * Discovering bugs and problems once in production, * Queries that slows down the user interface when going on large production environment, etc. Once the quality of a module is certified, we offer second level maintenance contracts on this module to ensure module lifecycle during years, migration and bugfix guarantees. The advantage of using certified modules are: * They are bugfree and the editor provides bugfix guarantee contracts, * You will not have migrations problems for next versions of Open ERP, * They are scallable and have been tested in production environments, * We made stress tests to check they run with big databases, * They are used by the community, so they will evolve and others will contribute. The price to certify a module is 800 EUR, but we provide discounts for big projects, having lots of modules. Note that you also have 25% discount on modules certification. Of course, that's not something you should buy. It's better to resell it to the customer as a quality label. At the end of the certification, we provide you two documents: the quality certificate (for the customer) the detailed feedback (for you). About the maintenance --------------------- We setup a second level maintenance contract, that can fit your first level maintenance/support contract you provide to the customer. It's a service contract (not required to use Open ERP) you should resell to the customer to get some guarantee and to work on a professional way. In these editions, we provide: * bugfixes guarantee : according to the contract level, we guarantee a delay to manage a bug. Within this delay, we assigned a full time developper on this bug that will fix it in an average of 4 hours. On previous versions of Open ERP the bugfix was at the charge of the partner (from your support hours in your partner contract). By doing this, you get an unlimitted and free bugfix, paid by the customer and not you. We setup an automated migration system within the server that can automatically download new versions and apply fixes. * Life cycle guarantee : with these new editions, we are able to provide up to 5 years of maintenance on a particular version of Open ERP. It's a guarantee for the customer they will not have to migrate at each new version. (nobody likes to be forced to migrate often a working ERP system) * Security and bugs alerts : we changed all our internal procedure to be able to report to customers (or partners, you decide) new security alerts and bugs. We send the report about the security issue or bug with the fix of the problem. Our service stops here. The application of the patch or the training of the customer if things change should be in your support contract. In this way, the maintenance contract may (or not, you choose) generate more work to be invoiced to the cutomer to apply, test and train on these changes. * Automatic Migrations: the maintenance contract include a guarantee on the automatic migrations from one stable version to another stable version. It already works with current 4.2 versions. We provide you the automatic migration system and the service to help you to migrate if needed. Please note that these editions are only services. The Open ERP code used is exactly the same between all editions or for the community. We will always continue to use bazaar and launchpad to push what we do to the community. But I think we can not achieve these 4 services and guarantees without a service contract. The big change with version 5, is that this effort (migration, bugfixing, life cycle guarantees) is not anymore at the charge of the partner but the end-users. You can compare the different contracts here: http://openerp.com/index.php?option=com_content&id=8 Note that you also have 25% discount of maintenance contract. More explanation ================ In reaction to the post of Ferdinand: > So I suggest to find a bettter term for "No guarantee" > "Supported" A 'guarantee' is a service ! We can not offer 'support' for free, it's not reliable and scalable ! It does not mean we do not provide the code or bugfix, it's just mean if you want a guarantee you need a maintenance contract. Because a guarantee is a service. I want to provide everything for free, that's my business and my passion but I consider that a service must be paid. No matter of the form of the service. But, things that have been achieved with this service are pushed to the open source community for free, once it's done. We used to work like this for the code, it will be the same for the bugfixes, the maintenance and the migrations. I underdand it's a big change and people do not like the changes. But note that last year, partners where complaining of the invert. Before this, bugfixes requested in an emergency by partners had to be charged in the partner contract. So the reaction was, why should the partner pay to bugfix something. This maintenace contract set the basis of a strong model where: * the partner do not have anything to pay (it's the customer that purchase the maintenance) * the editor can organise himself and offer a strong and guaranteed quality of services for the different maintenance aspects, because he is paid for this. On v4.2, the more we had bugs, the more profit was generated for the editor, because the partners had to pay per request. (of course, it was not our goal) It was good for the editor but not for the product, nor the partner. In this v5, with maintenance contracts, the more bugs we have, the more it costs to the editor. Because we sell fixed price contracts, no matter of the number of bugs. Trust me, we will organise ourself to provide VERY good code and quality of service. And that's very good for the product. More over, now bugs/migrations/security issues will not anything to the partner, so you can control your costs more easily on customers projects. SO, the goals of these changes and the version 5 is: IT'S TIME TO BE MORE PROFESSIONAL AND RELY ON A STRONG BUSINESS MODEL THAT WILL INCREASE THE QUALITY OF THE PRODUCT AND THE SERVICE, WHILE SUSTAINING THE GROWTH FOR A BETTER PRODUCT TO THE COMMUNITY. I have 40 people working on R&D, maintenance, bugfix and partners services. Trust me, the yearly 1950 EUR we invoice to partners is ridiculously low according to our editors's charges. Currently, the company win his money on customers projects and loosing lots of money on the editor area. Fortunatly, we are also integrator ! > * we do not migrate to a product which does not support > ** UTF-8 printing (nobody else will migrate and even use V5) > ** UTF-8 document management As I said, you can not ask more and more for free to the editor. Most of the time we succeed to provide what partners and the community requests, and we will continue. But you have to understand we all worked by nigth to achieve these needs and it's not reliable in the long term. We need a strong busines model. You can not request more and more new open source features/modules, while asking free maintenance. It's not reliable nor scalable at all. The solution we proposed is very good for everyone: * The partner resell and, thus, don't pay for the service (+get a commission) * The customer get the guarantee and quality of services he need * The editor can start consolidating on quality of services and maintance because he is paid for this. * The result of all of this will be pushed to the community to sustain the growth of the product and his quality. Otherwise, it's not scalable, nor reliable. We have 15 new modules per month, the maintenance of all these modules become more and more complex. Trust me, it's really complex to achieve to growth we made (in feature and in quality), we have 40 very good people behing this. That's why I propose a big change in the business model. If we want to sustain the growth and the quality of the product, we need: * A win-win relationship between partners and the editor * Contracts that allow us to provide unlimitted maintenance & bugfixes * Push everything that have been paid by the customers to the community I think that these new propositions, for v5, fit perfectly into these needs. > The reaction of my most important - and meanwhile angry - 4.2 client > * you call this free? > * what are they going to charge next year ? > * if ever we migrate we might fund an open source module for migration. 1. Yes, it's free like in "free software", not like in "free beer". 2. Probably the same amount, or less if we have more customer to divide the maintenance costs on. The great advantage of open source is that the customer manage the offer. If the offer is too expensive, he can support it himself. Check at the competitors (Compiere / OpenBravo), they charge 8000 ⬠per year for this service. It's not expensive at all, we have 350 modules to maintain and a fast evolution of the product to control. I consider the "migration guarantee" as a service. Migrations are very complex to manage. We worked 5 months to manage automated migrations and the result is quite good; we automated most of our databases. But I also know that we need to provide a service for this because, either if the scripts are very strong, all databases are different and we may encounter difficulties on some installations. If we release for free, then people may complain it doesn't work in all cases. If we don't sell maintenance, I can not work on a specific customer request. We want to offer quality services and code/product. For maintenance and migration, the only possibility is to assign full time developpers on this that will work per customer requests. > The reaction of my most important - and meanwhile angry - 4.2 client If you have a problem with your customer, please understand that we don't guaranteed nor sold any maintenance nor support contract to your customer. You probably did it, not me ! I understand it's a very confusing situation for you. But the new maintenance contract have been setup to avoid this in the future. What we did with this V5 is to avoid such situation and provide the service you need to take everything at our charge, spreading the cost to the global number of customers. > * we do not migrate to a product which does not support > ** UTF-8 printing (nobody else will migrate and even use V5) > ** UTF-8 document management I do not know any other (proprietary or open source) ERP that support document management (or either UTF8 document management) ! > Automated migrations must be available to the community I fully agree with you ! Migrations must be available to the community. But I also consider migrations guarantee as a service and a big cost to GUARANTEE this in the futur. SO I thought about a mix to satisfy customers (that need guarantee, quality and direct service) and the community that want to migrate for free. That's why I think migrations should be seen like the 'Shared Funding Projects': * Those that needs a professional environment, a guarantee on the quality of service and code and the code directly available on new version, have to purchase the maintenance contract. * When the maintenances contracts reimbursed the R&D costs of these migrations, we will publish them as open source for the community. So, I estimated that we will be able to release the migration scripts with 3 to 8 months, according to the success of the editions. If it takes more than 8 months, I will take the costs at my charge and distribute everything online for free. So that the community have a 'guarantee' on waiting maximum 8 months. This remark is only for migrations scripts. For all the rest (new developments, bugfixes, ...) we push what we did directly on launcphad. Discussion ---------- Of course, I am open to any discussion and/or proposition. But, don't forget that if we need a product that growth fastly (in quality and in features), you need to satisfy: * The partners: that create the market, promote the product and generate the services offers, * The customers: that must have some guarantees and are willing to pay for this, * The community: that must have everything for free but do not required services, * The editor: that guarantee the maintenance, the quality and sustain the growth of the product. I think my proposition will satisfy everyone, so that v5 will become a skyrocket ! -- Fabien Pinckaers CEO Tiny - OpenERP Editor Chaussée de Namur 40 B-1367 Grand-Rosière Belgium Phone: +32.81.81.37.00 Fax: +32.81.73.35.01 Web: http://openerp.com Great Achievements Start With Tiny Investments -- Marty, 2005 -------------------- m2f -------------------- -- http://www.openobject.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=29699#29699 -------------------- m2f --------------------
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