01 Intro
Enterprise software loves déjà-vu. In the 90s we had on-prem monoliths, then SaaS point solutions, then APIs to stitch the parts back together. What teams want is one coherent surface integrated like Figma, extensible like the App Store. That surface already exists. Odoo powers operations for 13 million users today.
02 From monoliths to Lego bricks
Classic ERPs such as SAP proved the suite wins but at the cost of multi-year rollouts, massive maintenance fees, and outdated UX. Odoo ships more than 80 first-party apps that snap together like Lego while letting a team start with a single block. Thousands of community modules extend the pile, turning the ERP into a platform rather than a product.
03 Open core as distribution
Odoo's Community Edition ships under LGPL-3.0. Any developer can download, customize, and run it in production (no sales call). That zero-friction entry makes Odoo the default starting point for side projects. When those projects grow up, they upgrade to the paid Enterprise tier, a move that now generates about $650 M in annual revenue. Open source here is distribution, not ideology. The license turns every developer into Odoo's reseller.
04 The app store inside your ERP
Because every module shares the same codebase and database, an invoice raised in Accounting appears instantly in Inventory, CRM, and Analytics. The result is a horizontal platform layer for operational data exactly what productivity pundits keep asking Slack or Notion to build. Network effects compound twice: more apps attract more users, and more users entice partners to build even stranger apps (yes, a Goat-Farm Management module exists). In the wild, more than 108,000 live stores now run on Odoo's ecommerce stack, up 59 % year over year.
05 Founder-led shipping machine
Founder Fabien Pinckaers still commits code, and the cadence shows. Odoo ships a major version each year; version 18 landed in June 2025 with PWAs, mobile search panels, and barcode-ready shop-floor apps. Early testers already glimpse v19 where AI-powered reconciliation and autonomous purchase planning hint at an ERP that predicts rather than records. Rapid release cadence becomes strategy: Enterprise stays ahead of forks while Community keeps the long tail engaged.
06 What could break
Odoo's greatest strength one codebase can also limit depth as the product pushes into verticals like healthcare compliance, automotive PLM, and aerospace traceability. The next chapter depends on partners who verticalise without forking, and on whether Odoo's new AI layer can auto-generate most edge-case features. The open-source core also invites Amazon-style hosting forks, but upstream gravity is strong: 6,000 employees, 19 offices, and 8,000 partners.
07 Closing thoughts
Odoo shows what happens when modern product thinking meets a category stuck in 2001. It is not as flashy as a vertical SaaS unicorn, yet it quietly powers firms from two-person coffee roasters to 300,000-seat conglomerates. In a world obsessed with horizontal layers, this might be the most important one nobody talks about.