German Company Creates ERP Device Based On Raspberry Pi

Max Smolaks,

The orange box can support up to three users, will ship before the end of the year

The Stuttgart-based All for Accounting GmbH has designed ERP software for the £26 miniature Raspberry Pi  Linux computer. Now, the company wants to bring it to the market as an all-in-one package, aimed at small businesses, and expects the first devices to go on sale before the end of the year.

The ERP raspberry

All for Accounting has scheduled a press event on 5 December, where it will share more details about the product. It is clear that the modified Raspberry Pi will run Mercaware, an ERP software package developed by the company. However, there are no details on whether some functions will have to be omitted due to hardware constraints. Mercaware is also available as a cloud service.

Last month, the Raspberry Pi Foundation started shipping an updated board with 512 MB of RAM, which is just enough for the software to serve three simultaneous users.  This covers the needs of most small businesses, self-employed and entrepreneurs.

The Raspberry Pi boards, some of which are manufactured in Wales, cost around €27. If you add import costs and German VAT, the price grows to about €35. Besides ERP software, devices from the Stuttgart company will feature pretty orange and black housing, and come with a final price tag of €179 (£143). Support is optional, and will set you back an additional €89 per month.

Raspberry Pi, created by the non-profit UK foundation, can be used for many of the things that your desktop PC does, including office work, Internet browsing and high-definition video playback, all possible through a circuit board the size of a credit card. However its real purpose is educational play.

Since its launch in February, the miniature computer has taken the world by storm. Today, it is used in schools to teach kids about code, several universities offer free Raspberry Pi courses, and one team of engineers has even attempted to build a ‘supercomputer’ out of the tiny boards, housed in a rack made of Lego.

Some analysts predict that the interest in ARM architecture caused by Raspberry Pi could accelerate its introduction into data centres.

This story was written by Florian Kalenda from ZDNet.de. It was translated, localised and features additional reporting by Max Smolaks.

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