"Helium V" is an open-source ERP suite. It has been developed by "Helium V IT-Solutions GmbH" in Austria starting in 2005. The industry of initial focus has been electronic manufacturing. The targeted customers are small and medium-sized companies (SMEs). In this SME context, the evaluation of KPIs is of great importance, so this is very high on the developer's agenda.
The software is available as open-source since October 2010. It is an integral part of the Lisog open-source stack initiative.
Features.
"Helium V" covers the whole process cycle of a company, providing modules for:
In practice, the ERP shows a high degree of flexibility and customization opportunities, allowing solutions to be tailored to fit the needs of each company.
Industries.
As a result of constant development the ERP-suite has managed to cover all major industries:
Architecture.
The system is based on a J2EE architecture. Therefore, it is written in Java, using JBoss as applications server and Postgres as default database. MS-SQL or Oracle are supported on special request. The GUI is written with the Java SWING toolkit. As a result, "Helium V" runs on any platform which supports Java (Linux, Mac OS X, Windows).
A key feature of the suite is its customizability: For example, the administrator can define the screens, tabs or elements visible for users. The time tracking functionality can already be accessed via an API; more APIs are planned and in development.
"Helium V" provides multilingual support through Unicode. Languages available as of today are German (Germany/Austria/Switzerland) and English.
Business model.
The business model of "Helium V" is based on the dual licensing model. The open-source edition comes with no warranty or professional support; such services are provided by "Helium V IT Systems GmbH" (Austria) for the enterprise edition. The developer does, however, provide an open platform to nurture open source engagement.
Hence, community contributions are accepted and appreciated. The contributor has to sign a contribution agreement or provide the source code under a liberal open source license like the MIT license.
Integration.
The "Helium V" development team is interested in a seamless integration with other (open source) components. The first
official integration partner is "agorum" with the DMS system agorum core.
Co-operations.
The developers of "Helium V" are working closely together with academic institutions in order to improve the quality of the software.
The following universities are supporting the further development of "Helium V" at the moment:
References.
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