As the year draws to a close we look back on an overall solid performance in 2008. Document Exchange 4 has continued to do well and the version 5 upgrade has received favorable responses from customers. We wish to thank our customers for their continuing support and let them know that 2009 will bring more enhancements and features to this module. What has been particularly encouraging is the fact that it is finding its way into fortune 500 companies and beginning to provide a real alternative to big bucks alternatives out there (this according to the customers involved). We love to hear more of these testimonies from you and we intend to start to put some of these online in the coming year in a showcase page.
2008 was also a big year for my own involvement in the larger DNN initiative. I have always had good contacts with the core team since I came to this community in 2003, but since 2007 I also devote time to DNN through my position as team lead for the Newsfeeds module. After a slow start I managed to get a completely overhauled module out this year. This was much needed for this project which had been dormant for several years. More importantly I have found new initiatives that will help DNN. It is not easy to get ideas realized in the core as we're dealing with a vast community. But lately I have been having more luck with this. You'll hopefully be seeing some of this stuff being released in the coming year. I'm thinking of the support dashboard (slated for release in 4.9.1), licensing support, DNN documentation (a project on dotnetnuke.com) and content localization (we're eying DNN 5.1 for this). Which reminds me. We also started a new European community for DNN professionals. An initiative together with Philipp Becker, Sebastian Leupold, and Erik van Ballegoij. We hope to increase networking in the European market of those people that work with DNN on a daily basis and make their living off this. Currently we're putting the final touches to a proposal for a meeting in Switzerland in mid February.
So what else is in store for us in 2009? Above are some of the things I am involved in and I have some bearing on. How about the things I have little power over? Well, there's ...
The Financial Crisis
I'm not sure what to make of it. It's the buzz of the moment. Everyone's talking about it. And I frequently get asked if and how it's affecting Bring2mind's business. The simple answer is: it's too early to say. There has been a slight fall over December but then that is normal for the time of year. In terms of outlook it could go any which way. Although decreasing budgets might hurt sales on the face of it, we have to remember we're in a low-cost market mostly. So the decreasing budgets might actually have a beneficial effect by pushing customers down from higher markets to ours. We'll see what happens over 2009. One of my best friends has been affected by the crisis in his business (credit drying up) and I just hope this won't happen to any of you.
Silverlight
This just popped up when I was brainstorming some of the developments in our market. Microsoft has released Silverlight 2 recently and for those that want a simple answer to 'what is Silverlight': it's Microsoft's attempt to do what Flash did. This means that the website sends a file to your PC that runs there in a box in your browser and does stuff. The essential part is that the browser does more that just displaying HTML as before, but now runs a (small) program. The advantage is that this takes some of the burden away from the server and moves it to the client, making the overall experience on the client side more smooth as no longer everything has to pass over the Internet and get processed by the server. More significantly though, we see with v2 that the boundary between coding server side and client side gets blurred. This is an important paradigm shift IMO and we'll certainly see in 2009 programmers experimenting to see what this can do for them.
DNN Pro
Back to my friends of the DNN community. For years we've been building both a free as well as a commercial eco-system around DNN. The core team and DotNetNuke Corp have been well aware of this and the value of either side to the adoption of the framework. But even though commercial entities like Bring2mind were born out of this and thrived, the founders of the platform have struggled to find a sustainable financial model for the core development. But this has now changed. Yes, change is coming to DNN in 2009 as well. At the end of 2008 the corporation announced it had raised 'Series A' capital and since then a lot has been happening behind the scenes. A new CEO has stepped in, Navin Nagiah, and more join the board of directors. This is good news and has been blogged about extensively. Around the same time as the capital announcement, DotNetNuke pro was announced. This does not mean that you're going to see two versions of the core where the 'regular folk' get a less capable platform, but (and as I understand it from the communications so far) it means there'll be a version that will provide additional services that are particularly useful in corporate settings. As most of Bring2mind's Document Exchange modules run in corporate contexts, we're very excited about this and we will be looking for mutual benefits. In my own words: looking for the win-win-win. Bring2mind wins, the DotNetNuke corporation wins and above all the customer wins. This is our goal for 2009.
On which note I'd like to wish you all a very very good Christmas break. For those of you that celebrate Christmas I hope you have a great time with your families. And for everyone I hope you have a great 2009 in good health for you and your families.
PS. Until January 5 things are pretty quiet here, so take into account that response times may be slower than you're used to. Email is monitored for emergencies.