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DNN Blog
Mar
24
Posted by:
Navin V Nagiah
3/24/2010
First of all, an apology is in order. My last blog was in December 2009, quite a while ago. I guess I am not really a natural blogger like some others for whom blogging seems a natural extension of themselves. I promise to try harder …
Quite a few things have happened in the company since my last blog. We finished 2009 very strong with nearly 500 customers and over 800 Elite and Professional Edition product subscriptions. We signed in excess of 65 Gold, Certified and Registered Partners, many of whom have begun to resell the commercial editions of DotNetNuke. We had 3 major product releases and 7 maintenance releases (a total of 10 product releases) -- a few more than we had in 2008. We acquired Snowcovered and now have an AppStore that does nearly 4,000 ‘add-on transactions’ a month. We also closed a strategic OEM partnership with Telerik.
By every count, 2009 was both a super- eventful and super-successful year for DotNetNuke Corp.
If Q1 2010 was considered an indicator, this year promises to be no different. Two months into the year, our platform subscription revenue is already more than 50% of our total 2009 subscription revenues. Our customer acquisition continues with no sign of abatement. In addition, we raised $8M+ in expansion capital in our Series B financing. This money will be good for us for a while as we focus on both strengthening the product and on our sales and marketing efforts. We believe this capital will be instrumental in helping increase product strength, increasing product adoption and use worldwide, and growing our customer base. In this connection, I would like to welcome Chris Cooper as the newest member of our BOD (Board of Directors). Shaun and I made a decision to take capital from UV Partners as much because of our rapport with Chris as because of the money itself. We believe ‘good people chemistry’ is a critical difference between great teams and okay teams and between being able to build great companies and okay companies. WELCOME ABOARD, Chris! We look forward to working with you.
In addition to the above, we made two other major strategic moves in Q1 2010. In this blog, I will cover one of them.
A few days ago, DotNetNuke Corp signed a definitive agreement to acquire IP related to Document Management and Search (Open-DocumentLibrary and Open-SearchEngine) from Xepient Inc., in Spain. In the past year, we have received numerous requests for this functionality from our customer and prospect base. We made the traditional ‘build versus buy’ analysis and made the decision to ‘buy’ after a discussion with Andreas Di Palma of Xepient. I am pleased to inform you that Andreas and his team will continue to work with DotNetNuke Corp formally, in both maintaining and further enhancing the modules.
An acquisition of IP like this is very understandably likely to cause some discomfiture amongst module vendors. “If DotNetNuke Corp., is going to ‘build or buy’ all the functionality required for DotNetNuke users, won’t they eat into our business? Is DotNetNuke Corp. going to start competing with us?” Etc. etc. etc.
The discomfiture is understandable and valid. I was asked this exact same question at DevConnections (“Will DotNetNuke Corp compete with module vendors over time?”). My answer today remains exactly the same as it was then.
Add-ons in our marketplace (modules and skins) priced at an average $100 per add-on cater OR meet the needs of the massive DotNetNuke user base which is likely over 700,000 installs worldwide. This is reflected in the tens of thousands of transactions that occurred on Snowcovered in 2009. The commercial editions of DotNetNuke, where the average deal size is about USD $4,000 (per year per subscription) is tailored to meet the needs of the larger companies which want a ‘fully packaged solution’ and a ‘single throat to choke’ in case of any issues with the product -- this is reflected in the hundreds of customers we signed last year. From what I have seen in 2009, the market for commercial editions of DotNetNuke is a very small subset of the total installs.
This is also reflected in the decisions we have made internally. Even as we have our sales team selling the commercial editions of DotNetNuke (‘direct sales’ is the route when you are talking hundreds of customers), we have our marketing team (Terry Erisman and Rhonda Geidt along with Brice Snow) focused on increasing sales in the marketplace (to reach thousands of customers OR the consumer market, ‘marketing’ is the defacto route). To this effect, we hired Rhonda Geidt for this specific purpose just a few weeks ago. We have invested in and will continue to invest in both sales and marketing for both the Platform and the Add-Ons Marketplace. Both are critical to the success of our business.
Given the above, I am positive and confident that the platform (both free and commercial) and the add-ons will co-exist and will both do well. They cater to different market segments and serve different purposes.
As for the second strategic move we made in Q1 2010, I will write more about that in a subsequent blog next week.
11 comment(s) so far...
Re: DotNetNuke Corp. Acquires Document Management IP from Xepient Inc.
Is there a timeline on when open-search engine will be made available? I went to go purchase it on snowcovered about 30min before this blog post :) - of course it's no longer availalbe.
By Robb Bryn on
3/24/2010
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Re: DotNetNuke Corp. Acquires Document Management IP from Xepient Inc.
So will the functionality offered using the IP from Xepient be available....
-- In the Community / Pro edition.
-- Only in the Pro edition.
-- Combination where the Community edition has a small subset of the functionality with hooks into the underlying libraries/providers so developers can write modules based on it (Similar to how the work-flow was implemented).
Now that the questions are out of the way it sounds like this was a good aquisition for DNN Corp, and hopefully both the Community and Pro editions will benefit. Congrats, and cannot wait to see what else 2010 has to bring. Looking forward to next weeks post.
By Shawn Mehaffie on
3/24/2010
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Re: DotNetNuke Corp. Acquires Document Management IP from Xepient Inc.
Great news; just the right way to add huge value to the Prof-Editions. I use both modules since years and was never disappointed.
What should be done in my eyes to complete this step:
First of all from the DNN URLControl it should be possible to select files / folders from den OpenDNN Doc-Lib.
Furthermore the download (file stream) should also work if the IIS 6 built in compression is enabled. Right now a download while IIS 6 comp is enabled ends with corrupt files. This is right now a big pain point because especially huge site often have this feature enabled.
Last but not least the OpenDNN Search should be able to find content (documents) within the OpenDNN Doc-Lib.
Go ahead!
By Benjamin Hermann on
3/24/2010
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Re: DotNetNuke Corp. Acquires Document Management IP from Xepient Inc.
We've used Xepient Open-Search extensively and have been very pleased with it. So pleased, in fact that I was dismayed to find Xepient had withdrawn it from the market when I went to buy liscenses for two more web sites last week--now I understand why.
Like Shawn, I'm anxious to know when and in what form that functionality will be available to me again. Please let us know as soon as you can.
Thanks!
By eMicBra on
3/24/2010
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Re: DotNetNuke Corp. Acquires Document Management IP from Xepient Inc.
@Robb Bryn. According to the email I received from Xepient today, it will only be available in the Pro edition.
By Mike Fletcher on
3/24/2010
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Re: DotNetNuke Corp. Acquires Document Management IP from Xepient Inc.
Sorry, I meant @Shawn Mehaffie
By Mike Fletcher on
3/24/2010
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Re: DotNetNuke Corp. Acquires Document Management IP from Xepient Inc.
The email i received about the announcement said that OpenDNN will only be available henceforth on Pro, Elite and Premiere versions of the product.
What about the Community version? Are you just going to take away that module from the rest of us?
So i'm guessing that from here on out, DNN Corp will:
- assess all the weak points in their software
- evaluate the vendors that provide better solutions,
- take them out of play/availability with your VC $ hoard
- gradually render the Community version, and its community, worthless
Tell us that is NOT what is going on here, DNN. Tell us that you are going to put the OpenDNN module in the Community version so that we can continue to make DNN a success.
By Robert on
3/25/2010
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Re: DotNetNuke Corp. Acquires Document Management IP from Xepient Inc.
What this basically means is that these modules are being taken off the market for non pro users. I cannot see any positive effect there for the community. It forces those having a need for such a module to go for the professional edition rather than purchasing a module.
By Philipp Becker on
3/25/2010
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Re: DotNetNuke Corp. Acquires Document Management IP from Xepient Inc.
I am confused and alarmed!
Confused because Xepient's module is available on Snowcovered again.
Alarmed because we rely on modules like Open-DocumentLibrary to compete in the "Consumer" market.
By David on
3/25/2010
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Re: DotNetNuke Corp. Acquires Document Management IP from Xepient Inc.
If these modules will not be included in the community edition, nor will be available for purchase as they have been, how does this impact those who have purchased the modules already? From what I understand, we will continue to receive support from Xepient, but what about future enhancements and upgrades to the product for the existing clientbase? Will the only solution be to migrate to another document management solution?
By Vincent Malanga on
3/26/2010
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Re: DotNetNuke Corp. Acquires Document Management IP from Xepient Inc.
Thank you all for your comments and input. I have posted a follow-on blog after reviewing these commments; the emails I have received; and looking at the discussions in our forums.
By Navin V Nagiah on
3/26/2010
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