Home page and download location

Home Page: http://www.compiere.com/
Download: http://www.compiere.org/download/index.html

Description of solution

Compiere is a respected enterprise-class application with a successful mix of CRM and ERP functionality. It is targeted at small to medium businesses looking for "brick and click" first-tier functionality. Compiere is provided under the Mozilla Public License (MPL 1.1).

Related Solutions

• Application server: Java-enabled server, e.g. JBoss, Apache/Tomcat, planned: Websphere
• Relational Database Management: Oracle RDBMS2 through JDBC
• Client: Java/Swing, Sun JRE 1.5.0 and higher. A thin client is available but not fully recommended by Compiere.

Development tools

• Any Java development tools

Adherence to integration standards

• Client to database: Thin JDBC
• Client to application server: RMI

Project team background, adoption and endorsements

Compiere is probably the longest-standing open source CRM project (productional since 2000) that still has a highly active community. The community consists of a loyal core group of around fifty developers and a large group of occasional contributors. Compiere has always ranked high among the top-ten most active projects on Sourceforge since its introduction in 2002. This broad user base makes Compiere a relatively safe bet.

ComPiere Inc. is a Portland, OR based privately held company that focuses on providing professional support and services and providing back-office services to partners and users of Compiere.

Project motivation and qualitative analysis

Compiere is first and foremost an open source product that strives to provide ERP functionality with fully integrated CRM software solutions. ComPiere is the commercial partner of the project and the largest contributor. Their revenue is made by selling professional services, trainings, and documentation material.

Compiere offers a very mature set of functionality that is continuously being improved and extended. But the choice for a predominantly one-tier Java/Swing client is slightly off the beaten path. An HTML client is available but not fully recommended by Compiere.

SugarCRM, openCRX and Compiere are just three out of a much larger group of open source CRM projects. A more in-depth assessment of these and other open source projects is presented in the Optaros white paper "An Insider to Key Open Source CRM Products" .