ERP systems and open source: an initial review and some implications for SMEs

The purpose of this paper is to further build up the knowledge about reasons for small and mid‐sized enterprises (SMEs) to adopt open source enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.

The paper presents and analyses findings in articles about proprietary ERPs and open source ERPs. In addition, a limited investigation of the distribution channel SourceForge for open source is made.

The cost perspective seems to receive a high attention regarding adoption of open source ERPs. This can be questioned and the main conclusion is that costs seem to have a secondary role in adoption or non adoption of open source ERPs.

The paper is mainly a conceptual paper written from a literature review. The ambition is to search support for the findings by doing more research in the area.

The findings presented are of interest both for developers of proprietary ERPs as well as SMEs since it is shown that there are definitely reasons other than costs involved when deciding on proprietary ERPs or open source ERPs.

It can be argued that there is a lack of research conducted and published about why SMEs choose open source ERPs instead of proprietary ERPs. This paper identifies the gap and suggests future research directions about this subject.