Dear Paul, and all others providing feedback before me, Here are my thought on this subject and other mail treads that have spawned recently regarding the road ahead:
Is OFbiz an eCommerce solution or an ERP system? I believe OFBiz (the product) is an eco-system of Business Applications supported by a sound framework and maintained by a community of developers and System Integrators. For me, it doesn’t matter whether the individual implemented eco-system consists of nothing but the ecommerce solution on top of the components in the ‘applications’-folder and the framework or that such an implementation consists of a well extended HR solution + some specials (to name a few examples. It enables us to adhere to any scenario. That is the strength of the product. When I implement OFBiz at a customer’s where the focus is on secondment and project management + HR functionality and FICO, the first that get moved from ‘Special Purpose’ to ‘Applications’ are the Scrum and Project Mgr solutions. And for that implementation all redundant components are removed (e.g. pos, ecommerce, ebay and such, but also example). We want to deliver lean solutions. If the focus of a customer is B2B ecommerce we remove what is unwanted also. But in all cases, this is done in consultation with the customer. Customer satisfaction is king! Having said that, I do believe that the product has reached a state where there is needed more than just the love and convictions of developers. It needs clear and elaborate statements on functionality, sound examples that are well documented and explained. It needs explanation on possible implementation scenarios and more. *Re eCommerce* I believe that at the moment this can best be positioned between ecommerce add-on in WCM solutions, like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal etc, and on the other side of the spectrum solutions like Magento. In the lower part of the spectrum (WCM-plugins) besides the webshop-plugin the customer needs also plugins to deal with logistics and payment. And what they get, besides a shop front-end, is a poor solution regarding catalog/product mgt, price ruling, promo’s etc and in house logistics (warehousing, picking and packing), combined with a poor separation of responsibilities and functions (organisational). I also believe that the eCommerce eco-system, given that it will get a dedicated visionary team of business consultants and developers, can be enhanced to compete with solutions like Magento et all. And yes and again, it all has to to with customer expectations and satisfaction. Given that little love has been spent on the theme and was left to the individual System Integrators, the proposition is difficult to make. Contradicting architecture I agree that current architecture is hindering growth. Having apps in the ‘applications’, ‘specialpurpose’ and ‘hot-deploy’ is a matter of taste. I guess it was decided upon in the early days of the project and since then been regarded as cast in stone. But what is more important is the fact that a number of screens and forms in applications.are dependant on screens and form in other applications wherever they are found. Reuse of services I agree to, because for that is the intention of the solutions in the framework (and found in the framework folder). But each application should be as much self providing (self contained?) as possible, because each application is following a different business purpose and should therefore be able to be run as contained as possible. Having this it would help to find per application that dedicated team of business consultants and developers to provide the love and the roadmap for each. And that is also required from a marketing point of view. What applies to the eCommerce solution also applies to any other app (see above). Yes, current setup of the community where we have a dedicated few that commit to everything (our committers, who deserve thanks and respect for the effort they spend assisting us) and where there are to few who have their focus on any specific application, hinders the adoption of OFBiz. But recent discussions in this forum have gotten/are getting us on the same page with respect to the heading of the community and the product. And I believe that it is not only a destination, but also a journey. Having applications in either sub projects in current OFBiz community setup or outside and under no guidance/control of the community is again a matter of taste. But I believe that having any application as dedicated sub project will enhance the community aspects more (despite the increase in paperwork) than having them as separate projects on another platform. Any application needs to serve a business purpose/need, no one will deny this. Any enhancement in functionality, change of setup and/or bug fix should serve a community purpose as well. I believe in the past some misjudgements have been made in the community. When contributors provide feedback, enhancements, improvement and bug fixes their products have to go through a vetting process by their peers and the committers. But I have seen committers dumping code into the product without consulting the community (contributors and committers) on the need (business and community) and technical adherence to the framework for it. This is more of an adoption hindrance than lacking technical maturity (which I think it has). Both by peers and customers, because if we (the community) not act as one, there is no community that supports the product Make it accessible This is more a marketing issue than a technical one. OotB, OFBiz enables any of us to showcase eco-system functionality tailored to specific target audiences, whether they be marketing and eCommerce, warehousing/logistics oriented, FICO or Project Mgt/Workflow oriented. It is just a matter using the right demo account for the need required. When you show all while demoing with the admin account you’ll get information overload and a difficulty in acceptance of any specific solution. My 2cts With my utmost regards, Pierre Smits
