Yet another former Oracle executive has decided to go after his former boss. This time it's Don Klaiss, and he has taken the reins of Compiere. Jorg Janke assumes the role of CTO.
Klaiss is shaking things up already, changing Compiere's management team and its business model. As well as its sales targets:
He brought in former employees of Oracle and SAP for key posts. Sunny Gosain, a former vice president at Oracle, is now Compiere's vice president of development and support.
He also changed the way the company makes money. Klaiss instituted a more classic open-source business model that depends on yearly subscriptions for users that include service and support....
He's focused Compiere on selling to companies with annual sales of perhaps $1 billion or so. Within a year, he plans to take on Oracle and SAP for large corporate accounts. "We intend to move up," he said.
This is great news for Compiere, though I'm not convinced the infusion of old blood into a 21st Century software play was the right way to go. It's hard to teach old dogs new tricks. Still, my own company has navigated those waters, so here's hoping that Compiere can, too. It would be awesome to have real choice again in the ERP market.