It has now been a little over 4 years since we announced the availability of a professionally supported commercially licensed edition of the DotNetNuke platform. The introduction of a commercial version was done in an attempt to find a sustainable business model; a model which could provide us with the resources we need as project steward to accelerate development and adoption of the platform, as well as preserve and strengthen the symbiotic relationship between all of the stakeholders in our open source community.

As you are probably already aware, there has been a recent increase in sophisticated cyber security attacks worldwide. Within the last two weeks, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Twitter have all documented breaches of their online systems.

Unfortunately, we also recently discovered that DotNetNuke Corporation's network infrastructure was breached by an unknown third party. The third party was able to obtain low level access to our servers, which means that there was the potential for private information to have leaked.

On this day 10 years ago I was sitting in my home office in Abbotsford, BC, preparing for Christmas with my family, when a crazy idea came to me...

During the prior year, I had been working on a software application in my spare time which was partially motivated out of career necessity as a software engineer to get up to speed with the the new Microsoft ASP.NET technology, and partially motivated by a passion for sports and a desire to allow amateur sports teams to maintain their own functional club websites. I had utilized a reference application offered by Microsoft, call the IBuySpy Portal, as the basis of my application and I had also participated extensively in a discussion forum on the www.asp.net website, sharing ideas and code with other developers. Maybe it was the Christmas spirit, or maybe it was the rum and eggnog, but I decided that I should package up all the source code for my application and make it available for free as an open source gift to the community.

For the third year in a row,  DotNetNuke Corporation had achieved the distinction of being recognized by Business in Vancouver (BIV) as one of the Top 100 Fastest-Growing Companies in B.C. for 2012! This year we improved our ranking by 3 positions to come in at #14 overall, with a 4 year revenue growth rate of 892%! This distinction places us in the Top 5 fastest growing Technology firms in the province. We congratulate all of the other businesses who made the list for 2012.

This is the first year that CMS Critic has conducted their own Critic’s Choice Awards for Content Management Systems. We are proud to announce that based on popular vote, DotNetNuke has received a Peoples Choice Award for 2012, taking first place in one of the Best CMS categories. DotNetNuke edged out Liferay for the win and we really appreciate the support and enthusiasm demonstrated by the DotNetNuke community, as it really highlighted the strength and passion of our ecosystem. The Critics Choice Awards will be announced on December 1st and we are hopeful that excitement and anticipation for the upcoming DotNetNuke 7.0 release will factor into the judge’s decision.

The results of Visual Studio Magazine’s 20th annual Readers Choice Awards were recently published and we are proud to announce that DotNetNuke has achieved Silver recognition in the Web Design and Development Tools category in 2012. This achievement was based on feedback by Visual Studio Magazine readers who were invited to vote for their top picks from a list of more than 500 eligible development tools in 28 categories, all designed to increase developer productivity or bridge gaps in the Microsoft stack. For the second year in a row DotNetNuke took second spot in the category, just behind Telerik’s Kendo UI client-side web control suite. Adobe’s Creative Suite Master Collection fell from first place in 2011 to third place in 2012. It is great to be recognized as one of the most valuable tools for Microsoft developers; especially amongst such esteemed company. We appreciate your support.

Most people are familiar with the sayings “Great Minds Think Alike” and “Imitation Is The Sincerest Form Of Flattery”.

Well, this past week at the SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, Microsoft communicated to the market that the future of SharePoint, its widely deployed ( and often criticized ) internal collaboration and document management system, would focus on three key industry trends: Cloud, Mobile, and Social.

This is a very familiar story for us at DotNetNuke Corporation, as it was 2 years ago when we first predicted these trends would be the three most disruptive and relevant technology innovations for the web software industry. In the years since, DotNetNuke has made significant progress in embracing these industry trends and integrating them into our products and services in a very deep and rich manner. This focus enabled us to deliver compelling solutions to customers which, in turn, allowed them to leverage these same trends within their specific business environments to achieve greater efficiency, productivity, and innovation. Our product vision also allowed us to demonstrate thought leadership in the market, resulting in opportunities to share our message with the world – a great example being the keynote I delivered at the CMS Expo conference in Chicago earlier this year.

It appears that Microsoft has now also taken notice of these industry trends and we are excited at the opportunities this may provide; especially in terms of our ability to leverage our investments in our SharePoint Connector to create even richer integrations with SharePoint to satisfy customers business goals.

The software industry moves at a lightning pace, and it is only through constant focus and continuous investment that a software product can remain both stable and relevant over the long term. As we approach the 10 Year Anniversary of the DotNetNuke platform, it seems only fitting that we are on the verge of announcing yet another significant product milestone. DotNetNuke 7.0 is just around the corner and represents a bold step forward for our Content Management Platform, including substantial business productivity enhancements, investments in web platform relevance, and a significant overhaul and modernization of the user interface and user experience.

Info-Tech Research Group’s Vendor Landscape report recognizes outstanding vendors in the technology marketplace. Assessing vendors by the strength of their offering and their strategy for the enterprise, Info-Tech Research Group Vendor Landscapes pay tribute to the contribution of exceptional vendors in a particular category.

Info-Tech Research Group defines Web Content Management (WCM) as the delivery of content and IT - enabling marketing to take control of the creation and management of web content; and Web Experience Management (WEM) as engaging website visitors and creating a personal experience tailored to each visitor’s individual needs and preferences. These markets are converging, and products that were once solely focused on deploying websites are now evolving to provide robust solutions for social marketing. In addition, Info-Tech Research Group has also identified that mid-market organizations require solutions that are capable of delivering content across multiple devices as well as support cloud deployment.

I am proud to announce that DotNetNuke has been identified as an “Innovator” in the Vendor Landscape: Web Content Management research report for 2012! Innovators have demonstrated innovative product strengths that act as their competitive advantage in appealing to niche segments of the market. In the case of DotNetNuke, our Commercial Open Source model and our recent focus on Social Collaboration are the key differentiators which earn us the “Innovator” status.

“DotNetNuke offers a strong social platform at a mid-market price-point. It supports collaboration and the building of both internal and external social communities.” said Christopher Wynder, Research Analyst at Info-Tech Research Group.

In addition to being identified as an Innovator, Info-Tech Research Group also ranks products based on a proprietary Value Index formula. The Value Score ranks each vendor’s product offering and business strength relative to their price point. Vendors that score high offer more bang-for-the-buck (e.g. features, usability, stability, etc.) than the average vendor, while the inverse is true for those that score lower.

I am pleased to announce that DotNetNuke scored a 98 out of 100 as a Value Score which ranked us in second place out of all of the Web Content Management products included in this years report!

As a final note, I should point out that DotNetNuke was recognized previously by Info-Tech Research Group as a Leader in their Decision Diamond for the category of Web Content Solutions for Small Enterprises in 2007.