Is there really no FOSS equivalent to SAP?

4 points by rms_returns 10y ago ↗ HN

One of my relatives is a SAP ERP marketing professional who is quite involved in SAP servicing and installations at client offices here in India. Whilst I'm a freelance developer who works mostly in FOSS tech, so naturally our interests clash!

Frankly, I'm quite surprised that how these big clients of the muggle world are willing to pay crores of rupees (that's still multiples of a hundred thousand USDs) to purchase a proprietary software. Whilst we have proven and secure stuff like linux, postgres, mysql, php, etc. just freely available in the FOSS world, who in their right minds would like to pay a fortune to buy a proprietary piece of crap which basically accomplishes the same thing?

Guy says that when a company here grows above a certain level and starts earning higher turnovers, they don't seem to mind software expenses too much, I guess it is the same as the usual Apple vs Android syndrome.

I tried to convert him a lot telling him about FOSS alternatives like SugarCRM, OpenBravo, ERPNext, etc. and suggested that he recommend these to his clients, instead. But he seems to be sold on the SAP "brand idea". Frankly, I cannot push further on this matter since I myself don't know much about a fully-integrated ERP system, as most of my freelance projects are just small Web/Android apps. But I do know that given the technology (LAMP, postgres, etc.), it shouldn't be a difficult thing to achieve. After all, SAP is just an over-bloated RDBMS that does some data-manipulation, however complex it might be, right?

3 comments

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blacksqr 10y ago ↗

SAP is just an over-bloated RDBMS that does some data-manipulation that you bet your business will work as it should, written by a bunch of German engineers with a track record of getting it right.

I'm reminded of what Philip Greenspun wrote back in 1997:

"Corporations have gotten burned so many times by buggy C/Fortran/COBOL programs that they aren't willing to take risks. They pay Oracle a huge ransom and suffer what is sometimes a factor of 1000 in reduced performance just so that they are sure to never lose a transaction."

kesavkolla 10y ago ↗

The bottom line with not tech industries is that they don't want to deal with IT implementations and it's risks. They're ok to spend huge money and go with popular software. That way if something goes wrong in implementation they can blame SAP. On other hand if own implementation goes wrong the VP/manager gets accountable. It's the risk blame game.