7 August 2007
ERP Research
I've had to accept the reality that the nodal model is still in its infancy and will not be able to help us with managing our organisational systems or those of our associated organisations such as Zenovia and NomadIT for quite some time yet. So in the mean time we need to include existing management software into our current software management system (the OD/Wikia) which currently allows us to set up and maintain instances of MediaWiki and ensure that those instances are backed up and that the entire configuration is easily portable between servers. OD/Wikia is being made more generic so that it can include a range of LAMP applications which can be dynamically linked with domain names in the same way as the MediaWiki's currently can. The configuration of these domains and their software will be managed from within the wiki using FileSync II.
But what software should we use to handle our organisational requirements? Our main requirements are that it be fully open-source freeware and web-accessible. I've been checking out some ERP systems, see the ERP article, but so far have found nothing appropriate. The GNUe system looks impressive but is too early in development to use yet. TinyERP is too difficult to install, has too many external dependencies and is not LAMP. WebERP is LAMP but it's interface and usability is complete crap. I'm currently checking out vTiger and OsFinancials and attempting to integrate them into the OD/Wikia system.