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.[1] 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:
- Quotation
- Purchase
- Production planning
- Procurement
- Capacity planning
- Merchandise management (ERP)
- Item master
- Time tracking
- Production
- Delivery
- Post calculation
- Accounting
- Payment management
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.[2][3]
Industries
As a result of constant development the ERP-suite has managed to cover all major industries:
- Electrical
- Electronics
- Metal processing
- Mechanical engineering
- Plastics technology
- Food
- Advertising agencies
- Services
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.[4]
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.[5]
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:
