[Erp5-users] Various

[jp at nexedi.com]

Hi,

MLO <yeshappytrader at gmail.com> wrote: 
> As I explained it to you before on the phone, and via email, having
> you/ANYONE else outside of us HOST our data is not an option.

If you use TioLive Grid, data is hosted on your laptop or on your server, not by Nexedi.

I updated the developer learning track to make it clear
  http://www.erp5.com/developer-Learning.Track.Forum/view

> When I explained to you that, available to me was a server where Erp5 is installed
> along with Erp5 Barcode, and that I simply wanted to be able to scan those
> impoverished African farmers commodity X or Y into Erp5 Inventory, then create
> a Sales Order, etc., you told me you wanted a 6 figure a year contract minimum
> and that we'd have to have, on-site, 2  Nexedi Engineers for 12 months.

I or you probably misunderstood.

If someone has a plan to provide a reliable custom SaaS service to whoever in the world, it is impossible to implement this plan with less than two engineers capable of fixing any bugs any time, even if one engineer is ill or on leave. Such engineers have to be paid and their cost will be actually quite similar all over the world.

You can ask Nexedi engineers to provide such service. Or you can hire engineers by yourself. You can ask Nexedi to train your engineers (this is called "ERP5 Starter" service and it enables in reasonable time any company to handle their ERP5 system without Nexedi) or you can ask someone else. But whatever the way you go, if you have to serve thousands of farmers, you'll need a minimum of 2 engineers to maintain the system in 24/7 mode. This is based on the experienced gained by operating TioLive SaaS or ERP5 in a bank.

> These are African Farmers whom wear flip flops and use Donkeys.
> I dont feel sorry for you.

Nowadays, Africa is becoming a modern and fast growing economy. There are still many poor people, like in other countries, but it is not fair to describe Africa by refering to Donkeys. For example, Sénégal government uses 10+ Gbps optical fiber and CDMA-EVDO network to interconnect civil servants.

Nexedi has a bit experience in Africa. ERP5 could be implemented in SaaS mode using 3G networks in a countryside factory (see article here http://bit.ly/ffnLvG). I also trained myself with other Nexedi staff, more than 10 developers in Africa, mostly on our spare time as volonteer. Many engineers we trained are now working autonomously.

Yet, there are some costs for doing IT in Africa which can be higher than in richer countries such as Europe or US. ADSL, electricity, transport, airplane, consultants are usually more expensive. I suspect that a project consisting of "providing ERP to farmers in Africa" to many farmers could actually require a lot of budget to succeed, even though such farmers are poor. I have seen a few projects fail in Africa because those costs have been underestimated.

To prevent disillusionment, Nexedi prefers to warn potential users about the potential high costs of their projects, so that they do not follow a path which is too risky or will likely fail. We prefer not to say "it will be easy and cheap" when it is not. Some people take this advice as irrespective when it is actually a honest advice. Nexedi's approach of ERP implementation is not to take people's money (we rather need more staff in Nexedi), but to ensure high quality and prevent people from going in a way which has a high probablity to fail. As you know, 50% traditional ERP projects fail, they often cost 3 times more than expected and take twice as long as planned. In comparison, Nexedi success rate is now more than 95% and we work on "fixed price" most of the time. 

But maybe I or you misunderstood something about this project.

> I've gotten emails from entites/whomever interested in giving Nexedi $ but they
> dont trust you.  You tell them you dont guarantee the end result when they

It could be illegal to reveal trade secrets without permission. I thus suppose that you were allowed to disclose this information. I will reply here based on the information you wrote in your email.

It is wrong to state that Nexedi provides no guarantee.

Whenever Nexedi commits to a project for one of its clients, Nexedi guarantees successful result by contract, by enforcing all guidelines for ERP5 development and project management. All Nexedi staff must follow such guidelines after having done a quite long education period. By following this approach, we can maintain a high success ratio, which we try to ever increase.

However, Nexedi just can not guarantee that people who we trained will later act accordingly to how we trained them. This is the same as students in a university. Professors who teach students how to build a safe bridge can not guarantee that the bridges later designed by their students are going to stand, just because students are free to make mistakes and to forget what they learnt.

> Fly to your Offices - From Chicago roundtrip $1400 (Why cant you provide webinars?)

Nexedi does use web conferencing, using open source software "openmeetings" (http://webmeeting.myerp5.com/openmeetings/). Nexedi actually contributed to the recording features. And Nexedi is going to use webmeeting too next week to try to broadcast a Javascript conference we organize with 12 other companies (http://lanyrd.com/2011/javascript-in-the-entreprise/).

But webmeeting is not a panacea. Sometimes it is better to meet people in order to reduce the risk of misunderstanding. This is why Nexedi provides both webmeeting support and face to face support.

It is quite easy to meet us. In 2010, we had dozens of visitors from research institutions and companies who stayed with us either for training or for joint development on R&D projects. I think most people found their stay useful. We are happy to welcome more people.

> Whats more scary is locally here in Chicago, is seems there is a declining
> of interest in Zope, which really means anyone using Erp5 and gets stuck
> they are really at your mercy.  Who wants to live like that?

In some countries, Zope fashion is strong. In others, Zope fashion it is declining. Zope Corporation (US) has a key role in the US newspaper industry and this creates a very strong ecosystem which is not going to vanish anytime soon. In Brazil or Germany, Zope is also quite strong, backed by communities and companies. So, even if Zope gets less fashionable for some people and in some regions, there is still no other framework which can handle as nicely object publication, persistency, transaction management, sophisticated access roles and modern Through The Web (TTW) development.

Nexedi strategy for ERP5 regarding Zope is to make sure that ERP5 can survive changes of fashion. In open source world, it is common that a tool becomes fashionable and then disappears after 5 years from the radar, for reasons which are not very scientific. But ERPs and ERP5 are used by companies during 10 to 20 years, which is possibly 4 changes of fashion. Therefore ERP5 is designed so that the only key component in Zope which we can not be replaced is ZODB (the object database of Zope). All other components could be migrated to whatever framework which provides the same features of Zope. For the next 5 years, Zope is the best way to go for ERP5. Regarding ZODB, we have invested more than 1 MEUR to create an alternate implementation of ZODB backed by 3 universities and 2 companies (http://www.neoppod.org/). Most of the money is spent outside Nexedi, to spread more knowledge on ZODB in the community outside our company. We also try to keep good relations with Zope corporation, because we know we owe a lot to Zope and it is better to keep good relations with the original authors of a software.

So, my recommendation, if you do not trust Nexedi or if you want to prevent any risks related to Nexedi, is to learn ERP5 and invest time and money to create knowledge arround ERP5. At the same time, it is probably better to keep good relations with Nexedi since most ERP5 R&D is made inside Nexedi. At the end of the day, we all need to discuss in harmony to progress.

> Through both your actions and inactions, I've gotten some great ideas, and as
> a result of Nexedi being the way you are, irrespective of me, there is a "niche"

I am interested to understand why you feel we have been irrespective to you. I do not think anyone had such intention.

> NON-NEXDEI Erp5 demand that has been building up for awhile.  You guys created it 

If you can achieve with ERP5 something which Nexedi is not able to achieve, it is a good news. Thanks to open source, it will sooner or later get into ERP5 core and benefit everyone.

Regards,

JPS.