Hippo News & Articles

With Europe being under heavy snow this winter, the NL-based makers of Hippo CMS (news, site) seemed to have many cold days to concentrate on the next release as opposed to spending their time ice skating on Amsterdam's canals. Here's what's new in the recently released Hippo CMS 7.3.

Normally in this space we look back over the current month and forward into the next month at what the various open source CMS projects are up to. But rather than blindly putting out an update for January, we thought we'd look farther ahead into what everyone wants to accomplish throughout next year. Call it our open source 2010 predictions with less guesswork and high hopes.

Seems Hippo (news, site) has found a way to migrate customers onto their open source CMS platform quickly. They have partnered with Kapow Technologies, enabling them to use the migration module of the Kapow Web Data Server.

Welcome to the December 2009 installment of our what's coming from the open source CMS projects in the next 30 days.

If you're looking through here and feel that your project was left out, we invite you to send us an email at pr@cmswire.com with a pointer to who we should contact at your project for updates.
 

Building on the previous 7.1 version of its open source CMS, Hippo (news, site) released the new 7.2. It brings bug fixes as well as new functionality focused on giving more control to the end users in regards to managing layouts and document types, and getting new sites up and running faster.

Hippo CMS 7.2, they say, is "the fastest, most stable version yet." Let’s take a look at the release in detail.

Got a Hippo heart? Hippo (news, site) will open its doors to all supporters of open source and open source content management software on October 30, 2009. The event called #ForgeFriday is scheduled to take place in Hippo offices in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and Petaluma, CA.

With the goal to possibly grow its Forge Project, Hippo invites all to participate and build a Hippo CMS plugin, a portlet, a repository add-on, a Hippo Site Toolkit component, or something else that you think would be cool enough to win “The Wow! Factor” award.

When and where:

• Amsterdam 14:00 -- 21:00 CET, Oosteinde 11 1017 WT Amsterdam (20)-5224466
• Petaluma 9 AM -- 4PM PDT, 185 H Street, Suite B, Petaluma CA 94952 (707) 773-4646

Can’t come over? Join online and follow the event through tweets and webcams. We should expect to see links with more info on the above on Hippo’s website shortly.

The online participants should also be able to upload ideas, code, screenshots or videos to the site. But in the end, no slides or code is allowed. The only thing you'll be judged on is the running demo.

Back in August, Hippo held its first Forge Friday filled with “pure hacking, a big BBQ, beers and, of course, geeky prizes.” Add to that 20 kilos of meat and 60 liters of beer, and it sure looks like a fun geeky event.

Welcome to the October 2009 installment of our what's coming from the open source CMS projects in the next 30 days.

If you're looking through here and feel that your project was left out, we invite you to send us an email at pr@cmswire.com with a pointer to who we should contact at your project for updates.

Software vendors need integration partners. And if one were to choose, these partners should be sophisticated, have a lively and broad Rolodex, be well respected in the sector and be capable of adding momentum to the project at hand.

Hippo (news, site), the makers of a Java-based, open source web content management system, seem to share this perspective. And they've signed an important agreement with Capgemini in the Netherlands.

Capgemini Nederland B.V. is a subsidiary of Capgemini, one of the better known firms for consulting, technology and outsourcing services. In 2008, Capgemini reportedly did EUR 8.7 billion in global revenue. The firm has presence in more than 30 countries and employs about 90,000 people worldwide. The Hippo-Capgemini partnership will focus on web content management (Hippo CMS 7) and portal solutions, as well as add more general implementation power to the Hippo ecosystem.

According to Hippo, some of Capgemini's consultants already receive advanced training in Hippo's new technologies. It has also been said that they are participating in the open source Hippo community to “stay on top of new features and functionality.”

The Hippo CMS is now in a much-revamped version 7 series, and most recently we saw the 7.1 release come out the gates, shipped as a bundle with Apache Jetspeed Portal 2.2 and the Hippo Site Toolkit. Based in the Netherlands and with offices recently opened in the USA, the Hippo CMS project appears to be making solid progress. We'll be keeping a close eye on it.

The next wave of European content management vendors hitting the U.S. market is yet again upon us. This time, the ripples are coming from the open source Enterprise CMS vendor Jahia (news, site).

The vendor launched its U.S. mission two years ago, continuing it with today’s formalization of efforts by opening its North American HQ office in Washington, DC. Emmanuel Garcin, Jahia's VP, will serve as the GM for North America.

A little before that, a new R&D and Support office was opened in Montreal, Canada.

In the meantime, Jahia has also been shaking hands with integrators like Quoin, Sapient and Avantia, trying to cater to all its Java-devoted customers in and outside of the Americas.

These are some of the highlights of what Jahia’s been up to lately, in case you need a reminder:

• Extending U.S. reach via its partner Quoin
• Launching GPL Community Edition
• Working on multi-source content management with Content Bus
• Adding more enterprise features to the content integration software

With local as well as other European open source vendors (like Hippo and Nuxeo), it may get pretty crowded in the enterprise CMS U.S. market. Closed-source ECM vendors like IBM, EMC and Open Text are surely paying attention.

The subject of open source software licensing is rarely considered titillating. More often it inspires early afternoon naps.

Well, there's been a change in the script and we've got a small civil war on our hands. Tempers and tensions have risen between US-based Bluenog and Netherlands-based Hippo -- both companies deal in the content management space, both are tinkering with open source.

Now it's not the fight we're interested in -- though it's been a fun interlude of Days of Our [Software] Lives. Rather, it's the principles behind the issue that are worth paying attention to.

In short, Bluenog has been accused of violating Hippo's and Apache's software licenses by using Hippo's code and not properly giving attribution. We had a chat with both parties. Here's what they had to say.

We’ve covered their previous version -- Hippo CMS 7.0 -- in some detail. It was a major release with serious changes to the content management system’s core.

This 7.1 release does not bring significant news, but does introduce some changes that Hippo CMS users should take into account.

Hippo (site, news) says the focus of this version is on stability, usability and performance.

When it comes to dancing with hippos and romancing thousands of college girls, the company that gets the job done is Bluenog (news, site). Yes, the team behind the ECM solution Bluenog ICE, which is built on Hippo open source technology and was recently announced as the management solution of choice for Wellesley College’s website, has certainly been attracting a lot of attention lately.

On the heels of their Startup 50 ranking from InformationWeek comes another award, this time from Red Herring. The media company’s editorial team announced that their list of the top 100 Technology Companies in North America contains winners drawn from a pool of 1,000.

Each year, evaluations are reportedly made on both quantitative and qualitative criteria such as financial performance, innovation, management, global strategy, and ecosystem integration.

“Of the thousands of companies that have submitted their entries we were tasked with choosing the technologies that are making the biggest impact this year,” said Alex Vieux, publisher and CEO of Red Herring. “Bluenog is one of those exceptional companies that can make open source tick in the enterprise with its advanced collaborative solution.”

The list of companies that rocked Red Herring’s boat this year included some other familiar faces as well, like Clearwell, Meebo and Acquia. To see them all, check out Red Herring’s website here.

Remember Bluenog, the new-ish Enterprise Content Management solution provider who loves to play with open source solutions? The company claimed to be the first of its kind, but we tend to keep a healthy skepticism.

Recently these new comers' ego has gained a bit of puff. InformationWeek has named Bluenog ICE -- Bluenog's flagship solution -- to its first ever Startup 50 ranking. The award recognizes value, enterprise-readiness and innovation. Let's take another look at what Bluenog is doing.

With its open source CMS -- Hippo CMS 7.0 -- recently out of the door, Hippo (news, site) has found a partner in the U.S. to help implement the revamped product. CorraTech is an open source software services and consulting shop. The two will work together to deliver web content management solutions to mid-market and enterprise customers.

Growth is almost always falls in the same equation with demand. Hippo says they are experiencing an increase in the customer base in North America. Meaning it’s time to shake hands with some system integrators. Or, as Tjeerd Brenninkmeijer, CEO of Hippo, puts it: “This move will help us deliver to our growing customer base in North America, where we are witnessing strong demand.”

CorraTech, as a provider of professional services (PS) and support for companies looking to transition to open source software, also evaluates open source vendors for enterprise adoption readiness. As part of its CorraTech’s Open Source Center of Excellence (OSCOE) evaluation process, they measure system scalability, architecture flexibility, interoperability, usability, licensing and support capabilities, as well as the commitment to the open source community.

Some of CorraTech existing partnerships include the open source usual suspects like Alfresco, Drupal, Joomla! and others.

As we’ve seen many times before, one “growing pain” to be aware of is spreading your PS resources too thin. As in the case with other European Web CMS vendors that have entered the U.S. market at some point in the past, Hippo customers should keep in mind the implications of a “partner model.” While the future may be bright, stay in the present moment and think of a possibly limited pool of implementation resources in the initial stages of market entry.

Hippo CMS 7 is available for a free-of-charge download from www.onehippo.org. Also, check out our take on the new version.