I just read a short article online by the German "Computerwoche" where Peter Graf (Executive Vice Sales President Solution Marketing (!)) from SAP tries to draw a rather pessimistic Picture on Open Source Business Software. He says Open Source Software may be a way to reduce costs, but that is not enough. I agree. And he is right that if you think about consolidating the software stack in your (medium to large) Company , then Quality, Maturity and such aspects are very important.

However at the end he states that Open Source Business Software has not yet reached the needed level of quality and maturity to be able to survive in the next consolidation round. Well, what about immature proprietary Software, though? And:

Mr. Graf, I strongly disagree on that point. I think that there are at least two mature Open Source ERP Systems which might already give you headaches: Compiere and ERP5 (the latter based on my favorite AppServer Zope). Is it possible, that this is the same kind of FUD that Marketing People from the CMS Sector tell you because they are loosing Market Share against Open Source CMS?

Compiere has been there for years now - I think they started in 1999 and has surely reached a level of maturity.

Regarding ERP5, I recently had the pleasure to personally meet Jean-Paul Smets-Solanes from Nexedi who is the company behind ERP5 at a local DZUG Meeting here in Munich. ERP5 looks really interesting and powerful and some large consultant Companies like Unilog-Avinci are Implementing this solution, check the Partners Page at the ERP5 Website. Would these people jump on the ERP5-Bandwagon if the software was not mature enough? I doubt it.