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February 2, 2009 12:05 PM PST

Navision co-founder joins Openbravo board

by Matt Asay

One of the best ways to see how a company is doing is by looking at the caliber of people it attracts. With that in mind, it's impressive to see whom open-source enterprise resource-planning vendor Openbravo just recruited:

Jesper Balser, co-founder and former CEO of Navision, a leading ERP vendor acquired by Microsoft in 2002, is the newest member of its board of directors.

In addition, Openbravo has hired Cees Poortman, another veteran of Navision and Microsoft, as its vice president of global commercial operations.

The VAR Guy suggests that these hires "speak volumes about growing momentum for open-source applications," and he's right. But it's also a particular testament to the quality of Openbravo's team and its own momentum, something I see regularly as an adviser to Openbravo.

Open source has clearly gone mainstream. It is attracting some of the best and brightest from the proprietary-software world, as they see the writing on the wall for incumbents.


Disclosure: I am an adviser to Openbravo.

Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay.
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by ydemontcheuil February 3, 2009 9:55 PM PST
Matt, you might also have noticed Talend's recent announcement that Bernard Liautaud, the founder and former CEO of Business Objects - a very successful BI vendor acquired by SAP one year ago - recently joined the Talend board after leading a $12m investment for his VC firm, Balderton Capital. Further proof of open source going mainstream. See http://www.talend.com/blog/2009/01/25/talend-secures-12-million-in-funding/trackback/.
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by daftkey February 4, 2009 1:32 PM PST
This is very good news for OpenBravo. If Balser can focus the OpenBravo team more on Accounting process and less on database programming, this would go a long way to making OpenBravo a viable tier-2 accounting system.

I would specifically like to see better multidimensional accounting such that a tool like FRx (which Navision works VERY well with) can be used for financial reporting with OpenBravo.
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About The Open Road

Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to the Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is general manager of the Americas division and vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.

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