Building the world’s most vibrant BI community is at the core of our every thought at Jaspersoft. I’ve written before about how seriously we take this responsibility and how our investments (time and money) are lined up to support it, from our new JasperForge to our measurement and metric system called the Community Vibrancy Index (CVI). What I’ve not highlighted before is the integral role that exists between our community efforts and our commercial success. Building and maintaining the optimal balance here is critical for Jaspersoft’s open core model to succeed.
Community members provide the experience, time and attention, and passion – that help to make our products better with every release. Commercial customers provide us with fuel (revenue from subscription sales) that enables us to deliver the very best open source business intelligence products possible. While this is a simplification of the intricate roles being played by our community and commercial customers, one of these groups without the other results in a far less capable Jaspersoft. If Jaspersoft were a human body, the community would be our heart and the commercial customers would be our mind. Not a bad metaphor . . . as I transition into how we put that into action.
On the heels of the launch of our new community web site, the JasperForge, we even more recently debuted a new commercial web site: www.jaspersoft.com. While the technology employed in this new commercial site is every bit as impressive as our Forge, what I’m most pleased with is the emerging linkage between the two properties. More and more, our community is becoming our commercial customers. In turn, more and more, our commercial customers are genuinely part of the Jaspersoft community. It only makes sense to create a total web site experience that ensures all visitors (to either site) can get the most out of every click. While we believe it is important to maintain two sites with two different sets of objectives, we also know that inviting both community and commerce is good for the whole body of Jaspersoft. One example: the Jasper Shop landing page is always among the top five most frequently visited pages at Jaspersoft.com. And, the most common referring site to this Jasper Shop page? JasperForge.org.
If you’ve not visited these new sites yet, I invite you to do so. Hopefully you’ll find reasons to visit and participate in both. In the meantime, you can also follow all-things Jaspersoft by joining our FaceBook group and our Twitter feed. Enjoy.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
JasperForge Drives New Levels of Collaboration
Today’s announcement that Jaspersoft has taken to full production its newest JasperForge community web site is much more important to open source than the amount of likely fanfare it will generate.
When we originally envisioned a new Forge platform that would enable the types of collaboration and networking required for the most advanced community development, this new Forge is what we had in mind. Our earlier JasperForge release, the first one built on the EssentiaESP platform, was launched last summer and we termed it a “production beta.” We did so for a variety of reasons, mostly to indicate that we had a large number of things with which we were not yet finished and that we were embarking on an important process that would result in what we see today.
Our new release is termed “full production” because it is equipped with all of the social networking, sharing and engagement features we envisioned last summer. Now we have a full-fledged community development platform that can enable new types of interaction, project-building and even elements of social networking that will simply help community members be more productive, more quickly.
Open source software communities don’t look like they did five short years ago. Since open source started being widely adopted, new types of community contributors have gotten involved in defining features and requirements. Software developers, business partners and resellers all play critical roles in Jaspersoft’s product development. And, because we host the world’s largest open source BI community, we believe it is our natural responsibility to take a leadership role in defining the next-generation of Forges, or community collaboration environments, to meet these evolving demographics.
If you’ve not yet experienced the new JasperForge, I encourage you to do so. You will find new features such as Google Gadgets, RSS support, and Wiki and blog improvements, among many other new features. As always, your comments, feedback, and ideas will directly feed our pipeline of improvements planned in the future. So, register and let us know what you think. Enjoy!
Brian Gentile
Chief Executive Officer
Jaspersoft
When we originally envisioned a new Forge platform that would enable the types of collaboration and networking required for the most advanced community development, this new Forge is what we had in mind. Our earlier JasperForge release, the first one built on the EssentiaESP platform, was launched last summer and we termed it a “production beta.” We did so for a variety of reasons, mostly to indicate that we had a large number of things with which we were not yet finished and that we were embarking on an important process that would result in what we see today.
Our new release is termed “full production” because it is equipped with all of the social networking, sharing and engagement features we envisioned last summer. Now we have a full-fledged community development platform that can enable new types of interaction, project-building and even elements of social networking that will simply help community members be more productive, more quickly.
Open source software communities don’t look like they did five short years ago. Since open source started being widely adopted, new types of community contributors have gotten involved in defining features and requirements. Software developers, business partners and resellers all play critical roles in Jaspersoft’s product development. And, because we host the world’s largest open source BI community, we believe it is our natural responsibility to take a leadership role in defining the next-generation of Forges, or community collaboration environments, to meet these evolving demographics.
If you’ve not yet experienced the new JasperForge, I encourage you to do so. You will find new features such as Google Gadgets, RSS support, and Wiki and blog improvements, among many other new features. As always, your comments, feedback, and ideas will directly feed our pipeline of improvements planned in the future. So, register and let us know what you think. Enjoy!
Brian Gentile
Chief Executive Officer
Jaspersoft
Monday, May 4, 2009
SpringSource + Hyperic = Advancement for Open Source
Today’s announcement that SpringSource is acquiring Hyperic is a solid step forward for open source software. Not only will the combination of these company’s products and technologies yield greater advantages for a larger and needing market of developers and IT professionals, but the combined company size will portend additional leadership at a key time in the evolution of open source.
I’ve long-believed that mass and velocity matter when building a business. Mass comes from serving more customers, building a bigger community and ecosystem, and succeeding financially. All of the successes that both SpringSource and Hyperic have demonstrated during the past few years, when combined, will simply create a more mass-ful and influential open source software company that will further validate our shared methodology. Ultimately, adding credibility and maturity to open source software so that more enterprises and organizations will recognize its many advantages will be good for all of us.
So, I congratulate Rod Johnson (CEO, SpringSource) and Javier Soltero (CEO, Hyperic) and invite you to do so as well. We look forward to Jaspersoft’s continued strategic partnership with the combined company. You can learn more about this announcement at the SpringSource web site.
I’ve long-believed that mass and velocity matter when building a business. Mass comes from serving more customers, building a bigger community and ecosystem, and succeeding financially. All of the successes that both SpringSource and Hyperic have demonstrated during the past few years, when combined, will simply create a more mass-ful and influential open source software company that will further validate our shared methodology. Ultimately, adding credibility and maturity to open source software so that more enterprises and organizations will recognize its many advantages will be good for all of us.
So, I congratulate Rod Johnson (CEO, SpringSource) and Javier Soltero (CEO, Hyperic) and invite you to do so as well. We look forward to Jaspersoft’s continued strategic partnership with the combined company. You can learn more about this announcement at the SpringSource web site.