Based in Monroe, CT, Compiere today is a two-person Open Source company with an international lineup of partners and a community of 39 developers. Considering its non-fat infrastructure, it is also a business with very high ambitions. “We don’t want to be just another ERP/CRM system for some niche industry,” says its founder and CTO Jorge Janke, “but rather a primary horizontal ERP and CRM solutions for small to medium enterprises.”

Achieving business recognition is the reason that Janke made the company Open Source in the first place. Launching Compiere in 2001, Janke went Open Source to survive in the ERP/CRM pond: He chose the name “Compiere” from the Italian, which means to “deliver” or “fulfill.” Nothing personal, just that Janke, who is skilled in multilingual translation issues, felt that coming up with a three-letter acronym would be boring, and had learned long ago in his localization roles that “Italian names are well suited for brand names. They don’t have second meanings, like Spanish words.”

What also looked promising for Janke was his 20+ years experience in packaged ERP systems, being an Oracle Certified DBA, and having Java certifications. Janke learned the packaged ERP market through and through, having worked with Flexi International, Oracle, Unisys, ADV/Orga, and a company he founded called SoftCream GMBH. The latter defined a supply chain, distribution, and financials solution for wholesale and retail markets—before getting sold to ADV/Orga, where Janke joined as software architect.

Janke’s target customers for Compiere are businesses with revenue from $2 million up to $200 million. It looks as if an impressive international mix of companies have accepted what Compiere has to offer. Customers range from food distributors in Brazil, to tire retailers in Germany, to an auto parts manufacturer in Covington, Georgia, and beyond.

How does Compiere make money if the software is for free? “Through support contracts, training, and paid development,” says Janke. Also, he stresses the advantages of having a network of partners that help customers implement Compiere. YSoft in Hong Kong,  for example, is an ERP consulting firm that specializes in Compiere and Oracle e-Business suite. Jaztek of the UK, consulting-services specialists in financial and business systems deal in ERP, CRM, and Business Intelligence solutions, and leverage their role as resellers of Compiere.

One of Janke’s longer-range business goals is to grow a sophisticated partner network. Janke hopes to grow his total number of partners, who resell the Compiere support contract, from the present 20 to 500 in two to three years. Another goal, even more immediate, is to resolve some of Janke’s own questions about databases.

When you visit the Compiere site, there is a clearly visible notice that the company is an approved Oracle Partner for worldwide distribution. Compiere, from the very start, relied on Oracle database and the Oracle database license is included in support contracts. But if Janke was so convinced of the need to promote an Open Source, cheap, affordable package that could be used out of the box, why grow customer’s reliance on costly licensing for database support?

Janke notes that Oracle answered his database technology needs at the time when he found nothing comparable, and the answer is also that Oracle gave Compiere a good deal— the Oracle license, included in Compiere’s support contract, starts with $1,500 a year, less than the costs of any comparable solution, says Janke. “We can offer the Oracle license at a fraction of the cost it would normally be.” This was also a good opportunity for Compiere’s ability to attract paying customers, as “one of the main reasons people are buying support is that they don’t have an Oracle license and we can offer it at a fraction of the price it normally would be,” he states.

At the same time, Janke is not immune to the community’s interest in Open Source solutions. “While Oracle’s licensing cost in the Compiere package is a pretty good deal, we don’t want to lose out because somebody doesn’t like Oracle.” What Janke really wants is database independence. Among the more likely candidates for porting, he says, are PostgreSQL and Firebird.

In a further discussion of the database issue on his website, Janke says, “The best choice is to convert Compiere to using Container Managed Persistency (CMP) and handle all transaction management within Java. This is NOT simple and we have teamed up with the JBoss Group to achieve this.” Nonetheless, Janke is faced with a burning question: Is there a real need to get involved in this porting effort? What makes the issue so complex is that the combined cost of the Compiere application bundled with a 10-user Oracle license is actually cheaper than purchasing Oracle outright. Oh the vicissitudes of proprietary software licensing schemes:   

Users favor the idea of porting Compiere to something other than Oracle. “If I could afford to give you $145,000, I would,” wrote one contributor. He gave $145 instead. “I wait with the utmost anticipation for openSQL compatibility.” Another contributor gave $200 and promised “$300 more when it runs and development can be one on FreeBSD.” Several spoke of being very happy when they see Compiere integration in their PostgreSQL environments: “We would love to use Compiere if it supported PostgreSQL.”; “After watching Compiere for more than a year now, I’ve always been waiting for PostgreSQL portation to launch your program finally in my company and the companies of my customers.” As of Open’s recent interview with Janke, he seems already convinced: “Actually, achieving complete database independence is relatively high on our agenda.”

Who are Compiere’s competitors? SAP? “We are not quite up to SAP,” says Janke, “maybe that will take one or three years. Navision and Great Plains, yes, not a problem.”

One of the differentiating features that Janke is proud of is its foreign language support—including German, French, and Russian, which are all under the site’s language-translation “complete” status. Other languages, including Chinese, Vietnamese, Portuguese, Polish, Norwegian, Bulgarian, and Catalan are now in progress. “When I was directing localization at Oracle, I learned all the mistakes you can make. We thought of localization for Compiere from the beginning.”

Multi-language features coupled with attention to the multi’s –multi currency reporting, multi-tax support, multi-accounting using international and local accounting principles, e.g.,--makes it easy to see why Compiere’s customers are coming in from various continents. One of Compiere’s newer customers is PharmaNord, a pharmaceutical company in Denmark, which is using Compiere to run its sales offices in several countries in Europe.

As a community, Compiere has earned the distinction of being one of SourceForge’s 10 most active sites.  So far, Compiere’s paying customers who have bought support number 30; Janke claims the company is so far “profitable.” Compiere’s chances, then, of becoming, in Janke’s words, a primary “horizontal ERP and CRM solution” for small to medium enterprises?

“The problem in the ERP business is that everything takes a little bit longer,” he says, with a rather affable laugh. “That is why people still install SAP.”