xTuple : About Us

xTuple ERP 3.0 won the LinuxWorld product excellence award for best Business Application! Read more here!

xTuple has also been recognized as a "Market Leader" by CRM Magazine, for "helping companies streamline business processes, maximize profitability, and provide more value to customers" with the integrated CRM functionality in xTuple ERP.

About Us (cont'd)

As the pieces of the system we had called "OpenMFG" came together, we put them into production at a live customer site. We�d deliberately chosen a business that was larger than most of our other customers, with multiple locations; their operation also had elements of both process flow and discrete manufacturing. We wrote the OpenMFG system to be as generic as possible, adhering tightly to APICS-standard definitions and processes. And we put our heads down and kept writing code.

We had no doubt that the OpenMFG software would be well-received by small manufacturers. Moreover, we also believed that there was a terrific opportunity to form real partnerships with value-added resellers (VARs) servicing manufacturing customers � accounting and consulting firms, software developers, and systems integrators. They too were hungry for more powerful, flexible, and affordable solutions to offer their own customers � and manufacturing VARs, like their counterparts in other industries, were getting tired of being taken for granted by the software vendors.

In fact, the VARs themselves (and the more technical end-users in larger manufacturing sites) might actually be in a position to contribute to the development of the software. After all, who knew the requirements better than the people who were actually implementing the system? We had become big believers in the power of collaborative software development � and we came to see OpenMFG as not just a full-featured ERP/MRP product, but also as a possible framework for a larger effort.

For over five years, the company and the product focused nearly-exclusively on manufacturing. Our primary goal was to build a lasting, sustainable business around a product to which people could literally entrust their business. There's nothing more mission-critical than ERP software, and we - like many others - had absorbed the painful lessons of the dot-com boom and bust of the late 1990s. We developed a hyrbid business model and approach to licensing our product that allowed us to experiment with open source, while not exposing our young company (and customers) to too much risk.

The initial business model leveraged the power of open source in two ways - by building on top of open source pieces such as PostgreSQL, and by sharing the OpenMFG source code with a growing community of partners and customers. Any member of that community could sponsor new development, fix bugs, or contribute new code themselves - and many did. So we built a profitable business around a conservative business model that we felt would support the development of OpenMFG from a promising childhood into the next stage of growth and expansion.

That new day is here. With the launch of the fully open source PostBooks application, and the renaming of the company as xTuple, we are deepening our commitment to our customers, partners, and the larger open source community; expressly broadening the scope of our ambition; and along the way, we hope, ushering in a new day for business software.

Because we believe that the time for questioning open source is over. There is no longer any doubt - if there ever was - that collaborative development by global communities with shared interests is simply a better way to make software. For some people, that's a borderline religious argument. For us, it's a lot more pragmatic. We've seen the growing power of open source up close for over a decade now, as the phenomenon has worked its way "up the stack" of information technology - from operating systems, to programming tools, web servers, databases, reporting tools, and now - we can confidently say - business applications.

Let us show you how to put this power to work for you. Whether you're a small business ready to move up to your first ERP system or an enterprise customer looking to revamp your existing systems with modern, open tools, xTuple can help.

Does your software help your business grow? It should, and it can. Let us help you take your business to the power of X ...

Are you ready to xTuple?