Bringing ERP to Small Business with Tryton
by Joe Brockmeier - Nov. 05, 2009Comments (0)- Related Blog Posts
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If there's any upside to the lousy economy, it's that it has pushed a lot of people to realize their dreams of starting small businesses or going into business for themselves. Thanks to open source projects like Tryton, small businesses have the tools to run with the big dogs. Tryton is a general application platform that is split into three parts: A client, server, and modules that provide functionality like accounting, invoicing, sale and purchase management, inventory management, and so on. The default set of modules provides much of the functionality any small (or large) business needs to track its money, inventory, and employee's time.
Tryton is an application platform, so you can extend it to suit your business needs. You're not limited to the modules that are currently available. If the base modules provided with Tryton don't do it for you, then the platform is open and extensible so you can add (or hire a contractor to add) modules that extend the functionality. A tutorial is available for developers looking to develop their own modules.
The platform is written in Python and uses PostgreSQL as its database engine, and also adds SQLite support with 1.4. The 1.4 release also includes Neso, a standalone version that combines the server, client, and modules -- an approach that works well for single users. If you're looking to manage your business from a single system, Tryton can fit the bill nicely.
If you're looking for a demo, try out Neso, or grab the client and point it at the demo server provided by the project. The project provides a demo server for each of the major releases in use (1.0, 1.2, and the current 1.4).
The project started as a fork of openERP and has been in development for about a year. Tryton is licensed under the GPLv3, and packages are available for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. Looking for support? Several companies provide professional services around Tryton.
The roadmap for the next major release of Tryton includes support for MySQL, Oracle, and many other improvements.
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier is a longtime FOSS advocate, and currently works for Novell as the community manager for openSUSE. Prior to joining Novell, Brockmeier worked as a technology journalist covering the open source beat for a number of publications, including Linux Magazine, Linux Weekly News, Linux.com, UnixReview.com, IBM developerWorks, and many others.
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