OpenMFG, the open-source enterprise resource planning company best known for its manufacturing capabilities for small and midsize companies, is expanding its horizons.
The company will announce July 31 a new name and a new suite of software that combines ERP, accounting and CRM (customer relationship management) functionality using an open-source model.
The goal with OpenMFG—now known as xTuple—is to expand beyond its manufacturing roots to the broader ERP market and, with its new PostBooks suite, compete with off-the-shelf software vendors like Intuits QuickBooks or Sage Softwares PeachTree, software that small companies often turn to for inexpensive departmental applications.
The new company name is supposed to connote the exponential growth potential for companies that use “practical, well-built open license” software, according to xTuple, of Norfolk, Va. Its also a bit of a geek insider joke to the name, according to the companys newly launched Web site.
“In computer science and mathematics, a tuple is a name for any two or more points of data that you wish to analyze,” reads a section under xTuples Frequently Asked Questions page. “In fact, in database circles, rows of the database are often referred to as tuples. So its ex-tuple, from the database. Get it?”
The PostBooks suite will hit the open-source community as version 2.2 and can be downloaded under the companys public license on SourceForge.net. The software has been built using common open-source tools—the Qt toolkit for C++, PostgreSQL database and Linux—and like other open-source projects, the source code is available to partners for modification and new development.
The PostBooks suite comes with a number of standard modules, including accounting, sales, CRM, purchasing, product definition, inventory, light manufacturing and OpenRPT, the companys open-source report writer software.
Where PostBooks differs from OpenMFG is in its lack of manufacturing functionality like multiwarehouse inventory, manufacturing resource planning and infinite capacity planning. By creating a single code base for both PostBooks and OpenMFG, xTuple has made it possible for users to upgrade from PostBooks to OpenMFG.