Feature
Is open source the next big thing? At least that's what it seems, based on a burst of unrelated news in the past month. As CMSWire writer Miles Kehoe explained a few weeks ago, "Open source software has gone from quirky and free to mainstream for the enterprise."
Just think about it.
- Open Whisper Systems announced the latest iteration of its secure open source messaging app.
- Pivotal Software announced the Open Data Platform (ODP), an initiative that brings together GE, Hortonworks, IBM, Infosys, Pivotal, SAS, AltiScale, Capgemini, CenturyLink, EMC, Splunk, Verizon Enterprise Solutions, Teradata and VMware (and is open to other companies that want to join).
- And SiteSupra, headquartered in Riga, Latvia, released its software as an open source CMS and development framework.
What else is going on in the open source world, specifically related to open source CMS? Let's find out.
Composite C1
Composite officially released the SQL Azure Scale-Out add-on that allows users to scale out Composite C1 websites deployed on Microsoft Azure.
The scaled-out setup works for multiple instance SQL-based Composite C1 deployments where it handles media and data cache synchronization. Thus, content and media file changes are immediately updated on all website instances. You can find supporting information about the add-on and its installation here.
The Composite team is currently working on the Snap Shop add-on that allows users to set up a simple one-page online shop on your website. The Snap Shop presents the product catalog, the basket and the order form on the same page.
You can add products with images and descriptions to specific product categories in the C1 Console. The online shop owner controls the shipping of products from one country to another and whether additional fees should be charged based on the destination country and the product's weight. You can handle payments with PayPal and other providers.
In the C1 Console, you can view, print and manage orders. You can specify what currency to use, whether the prices should include taxes as well as URLs for the "Order Accepted" and "Order cancelled" messages. The team is now finalizing and testing the add-on.
Composite will soon release the 4.3 version of the CMS. There are several new features, including the password policy and the ability to schedule publication of individual data items.
The .NET Foundation has appointed Composite C1 lead Marcus Wendt to its Advisory Council as one of five non-Microsoft employees. Launched by Microsoft last year, the .NET Foundation is fostering open development and collaboration around the growing collection of open source technologies for .NET.
Drupal
Voting is now open for the 2015 At-Large Board positions for the Drupal Association! If you haven't yet, you can review the candidate profiles and the three Meet the Candidate sessions the team held.
Voting is open to all individuals who have a Drupal.org account by the time nominations open and who have logged in at least once in the past year. These individuals' accounts will be added to the voters list on association.drupal.org and they will have access to the voting.
Voting runs from today through March 20 at midnight UTC. During this period, you can still review and comment on candidate profiles, the team said.
In other Drupal related news, the team has released the seventh beta of Drupal 8. "Betas are good testing targets for developers and site builders who are comfortable reporting (and where possible, fixing) their own bugs, and who are prepared to rebuild their test sites from scratch when necessary. Beta releases are not recommended for non-technical users, nor for production websites," the team explained.
And finally, Acquia, a provider of products, services and technical support for Drupal, just released govCMS — a Web CMS for Australian government sites — to all tiers of the Australian government. Built on the Acquia Platform, govCMS "reflects the Government’s commitment to open source innovation and the use of shared, cloud-based services," Acquia noted.
eZ Systems
This month, eZ Systems has taken its first step towards its next generation of products. It launched the Alpha version of eZ Platform, which will serve as the open source software and the foundation for eZ Studio. "Of course, it’s a first alpha, but it’s really worth looking into if you are following eZ closely (and are a bit technical)," the team reported.
You can visit the eZ blog to learn more about the Alpha version and what you can expect from eZ Platform and eZ Studio.
In other news, the eZ Publish Show, brought to you by Netgen, is now available on iTunes. The show, hosted by Ivo Lukac, features eZ experts and occasionally special guests, such as Karen McGrane.
McGrane, a user experience and content strategy expert, makes "the web more awesome," on her good days. "On a bad day, I just make it suck less," she states on her blog. Topics range from McGrane’s thoughts on “chunky content” to the future of content management.
Hippo
February’s been full of celebrations at Hippo headquarters in Boston and Amsterdam, the team told us. The team said it has new partnerships, integrations and clients, with more to come.
As CMSWire announced, Hippo and EMC joined forces. The Hippo team is enthusiastic about the partnership with EMC, the platform's entry into the Select Tier in EMC's Technology Connect Track and its integration with EMC Documentum.
The team claims Hippo’s Web CMS and Documentum delivers:
- Improved content performance
- Editorial velocity across channels
- More workflow consistency
- Ease of use
- Flexibility to run Hippo on-premises, in the cloud or in a hybrid solution
You can join EMC and Hippo March 26 for a webinar hosted by Mark Arbour, General Manager of EMC Documentum. He will review the top three reasons you need a new CMS, and give a peek into how Hippo has helped other organizations with its agile, third-platform CMS.
Hippo and German partners Satzmedia and tech alliance Stibo Systems will be at Internet World in Munich on March 24 and 25. They will join world-class brands and practitioners to explore the future of e-commerce.
Hippo and New York-based partners Kanban Solutions will be at the MarTech Conference in San Francisco on March 31 and April 1.
The Hippo Labs section is growing. The team just announced its first partner contribution from Brian Snijders at Finalist. In this lab, he discusses how to create a Docker container for Hippo CMS.
You can use Docker to create application containers, which are constructed from a base image and provisioned with an application and its configuration files. It differs from virtual machine-based solutions, in which a guest operating system runs fully independent of the host operating system using a hypervisor. Instead, the Docker Engine — not a hypervisor — manages Docker containers.
In this lab, Snijders explores how to:
- Put Hippo CMS in the Docker container
- Develop a Hippo CMS Docker image
- Create a Hippo CMS Docker image
- Use Docker to create a lightweight and portable Hippo GoGreen demonstration container
You can read the full lab here.
Liferay
Liferay is now a Strategic Member of the OSGi Alliance. In fact, Liferay's Senior Software Architect Ray Augé was elected to the Board of Directors. The announcement comes during Liferay's second year as a member of the worldwide consortium of technology innovators.
Liferay’s expanded role within the OSGi Alliance gives it greater influence developing OSGi specifications to meet the needs of Liferay customers, team members told us.
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Liferay partner Veriday achieved Platinum Partner status. As a partner since 2011 and one of Liferay's fastest growing technology partners, Veriday works with clients to design and implement customer- and employee-facing solutions using Liferay Portal.
Liferay will be attending intra.NET Reloaded in Boston on April 9 to 10. The team invites attendees to visit Liferay and Veriday at the event and attend the World Café session to hear discussion about the platform.
Jahia
The team at Jahia is excited about its inclusion in Gartner's newly issued a Market Guide for the UXP (User eXperience Platform). "Although focused primarily on customer-centric use cases, Jahia can also be used for employee- or citizen-centric use cases," Gartner noted.
The platform is growing, the team claims. And to deal with that growth, it is hiring almost 60 people worldwide this year. You can review the available jobs here.
Joomla
Joomla has big news: Joomla 3.4 is here. This comes on the heels of a beta release in January, which we told you about already.
The 3.4 release introduces new features into the CMS such as improved front end module editing, decoupling of weblinks, composer integration and security improvements.
Magnolia
There’s a cool event running today and tomorrow — and Magnolia is part of it. It is attending and exhibiting at Outreach 2015, a digital marketing summit in Dubai. Davide Guzzetti from Magnolia partner Tinext is discussing marketing automation on a panel.
Magnolia is partnering with KonaKart, a Java-based e-commerce platform. "Together, we've built a connector that allows customers of both products to use KonaKart within Magnolia," the team told us.
The Magnolia Conference 2015 call for papers is still open. You have until April 1 to submit your idea. So if you want to be on stage at #mconf15, now’s the time to submit ideas. This year, Magnolia will run conferences in May and June, one in Basel and one in Silicon Valley.
And, finally, the team enthusiastically reported, "This great site published two articles of our Chief Visionary Officer Boris Kraft." Take a look here and here. (Ah, shucks, Magnolia ... thanks!)
Nuxeo
Nuxeo reported another record setting year in 2014, with an 84 percent revenue growth in the US market and 52 percent increase in global sales.
Nuxeo collaborated on a new webinar about CMIS with Jeff Potts, the founder of Metaversant, a content management consultancy based in Dallas. Potts has written two ECM-related books, runs a blog called ECM Architect and participates on the Apache Chemistry project.
Interested in some Deep Thoughts? Nuxeo CEO Eric Barroca recently shared some about Deep Content. He maintains you can gain value by transforming documents into software to improve the way we work, create new lines of business and get a new level of insight, agility and actionability on business processes.
SilverStripe
February was an exciting month for SilverStripe, the team told us. Its London launch kicked off with a sponsorship of the 10th Annual PHP UK Conference.
With more than 700 PHP developers attending, the team said it was a great opportunity to introduce the SilverStripe CMS and Framework, along with their PaaS offering SilverStripe Platform.
"Attendees were quick to embrace SilverStripe's advantages especially the ability to build your own data model and have an intuitive CMS that wraps around it, so it feels completely customized for your site," team members told us.
Following the PHP UK Conference, the team ran digital agency events in the heart of London's tech hub Shoreditch.
Sam Minnée, CEO and co-founder of SilverStripe, boasted that SilverStripe "empowers great web teams" and shared plans for the UK and European markets. CTO Hamish Friedlander explained how the SilverStripe Platform silences distractions so web teams can do their best work.
SilverStripe is opening its London office — its first in the Northern Hemisphere — next month. It will provide technical and business support for digital agencies. SilverStripe is popular in New Zealand and Australia, where government, telcos, utilities and banks use it. For news and events specific to the UK community, visit the team's UK portal. The team is planning similar pages for other regions.
Looking for a copy of SilverStripe version 3.1.10? The team released it last month and you can download it here.
SilverStripe educational material is also available. It offers a range of website building tips, with new lessons added all the time. The new lessons last month include "Working with data relationships" and "Introduction to front-end forms."
