You can now deploy opentaps Open Source ERP + CRM on Amazon EC2 using new Amazon Machine Images for opentaps. These images allow you to deploy an Amazon EC2 server with opentaps with demo data pre-installed on either a MySQL or PostgreSQL database. To use them, just search for “opentaps” under “Community AMIs” when launching a new Amazon EC2 instance.

opentaps Open Source ERP + CRM Version 1.4 was officially released today and can be downloaded from SourceForge.

Tony Maro, CIO of EvriChart, a hospital records management and archiving business, successfully migrated his company's Windows-based line of business document management extranet application and his employees' 40-odd Windows-based desktops to a 100 percent Linux-based server and desktop infrastructure.

A quarterly update of the development of the opentaps Open Source ERP + CRM system

The Release Candidate for opentaps Open Source ERP + CRM Version 1.4 is now available for download from sourceforge.net

IBM has expanded its server lineup with a new mainframe system designed just for Linux that may be aimed, in particular, at higher-end x86 systems. The new system uses IBM's specialty Linux processor and runs either Novell SUSE or Red Hat systems. It does not use the mainframe operating system z/OS but includes mainframe management software as well as IBM's z/Virtual Machine system.

How do two former Microsoft employees end up heading an open source company? In the case of Aaron Fulkerson and Steve Bjorg of MindTouch, the decision was based on the wish for independence and to work more closely with customers, according to Fulkerson. The two partners suffered some initial criticism because of their past employment, but have largely survived it by learning how to interact with the free software community.

I own 50% of a manufacturing company in Bridgwater. When we bought the company out of receivership in ‘03 we had no systems at all. Our former parent company was running a character based ERP system called MAX on Unix and a Windows file serving network.

Yesterday, I wrote about the launch of the open source company Cloudera. Olson explains the background to the company, and to Hadoop, the software it is based on: what it does, and why business might want to use it; he talks about his company's services and business model, and why he thinks cloud computing is neither a threat nor an opportunity for open source.