For the open-source vendors, having a community built up around their product code multiplies their development efforts many times. Openbravo's partners and customers, for example, are currently localizing the product for 50 different countries.

"The future looks great," says Openbravo's COO Josep Mitja. "I think we are one of the companies doing our job better, but no matter how successful Openbravo is, open-source ERP companies, in general, will see significant growth in the next few years."

The growth numbers, however, should be taken with a grain of salt, says analyst Aslett. "ERP is one of the last areas of enterprise IT infrastructure that is relatively untouched by open source, and the open source vendors can be expected to grow revenue over the next year and a half," Aslett states. "However, it must be remembered that these vendors are starting with revenues of next to nothing, while the revenues of the established vendors are measured in billions of dollars."

Yet, Openbravo's Mitja believes that what open-source ERP vendors are selling is something that proprietary vendors will not be able to match: Freedom from another company controlling your critical systems.

"With open source, you can take the code and do whatever you need to do," Mitja says. "There basically is this notion that you control your destiny."