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DNN Blog
Feb
23
Posted by:
Shaun Walker
2/23/2011
Without a doubt, one of the hottest industry trends in recent years is the rise of the Social Web. Whether this means participation in some of the massively successful social networks like Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, or it involves taking advantage of social collaboration software within your enterprise, the demand for online social interaction continues to grow at an incredible pace. One aspect which has been critical to the success of the DotNetNuke platform over the years is the ability to stay abreast of modern technology trends. Sometimes this is accomplished through strategic enhancements to the core platform, but often it is accomplished through our vibrant extensions ecosystem where thousands of developers offer innovative solutions to everyday business problems. In the social area, one particular vendor saw the opportunity it represented at a very early stage and created some very feature rich and highly successful commercial products which extended the social capabilities of the DotNetNuke platform. The vendor initially started with one of the pillars of social collaboration, an interactive discussion forum, and later augmented the solution to include many additional social capabilities including friends, groups, user activity, and a rich user profile. Those of you who are familiar with the DotNetNuke ecosystem should be able to identify this vendor as Active Modules. Active Modules Inc. is based out of Charleston, South Carolina and was originally founded by Will Morgenweck, a seasoned entrepreneur with a proven knack for creating highly usable commercial software solutions for enterprise clients. Active Modules has been providing advanced social collaboration products for DotNetNuke since 2004 and has always been a proud sponsor and loyal supporter of the DotNetNuke community. A number of months ago, Will Morgenweck reached out to us to determine if DotNetNuke Corporation may be interested in acquiring some of his company's intellectual property. After some initial discussion, it became clear that his primary motivation was all about working together to accelerate the growth of the DotNetNuke ecosystem, and he felt the best way to accomplish this was by adding more social functionality to the base platform so that it would be more relevant and competitive in the broad CMS market. This rationale made a lot of sense to us, as we were actively looking for ways to significantly increase our product value as well as capitalize on hot market trends. With this background in mind, I am very excited to make the public announcement today that DotNetNuke Corporation has officially acquired Active Modules. In addition to the valuable intellectual property we receive as part of this deal, I am also very excited that Will Morgenweck will be joining our team immediately as Director of Social Products. DotNetNuke Corporation is no stranger to acquisitions, as we have successfully completed a number of strategic deals over the past few years. During that time we also learned some valuable lessons on how to best approach the integration effort; the most important being the need for very clear, detailed communication with all affected stakeholders. First and foremost, we will not be removing the popular Active Forums or Active Social products from the market. They will continue to be available on our marketplace at Snowcovered.com until such time that they are properly and fully integrated with our other product editions. Customers, both existing and new, will receive the same high quality of support they have come to expect from the Active Modules team and will be provided an upgrade path to assure the longevity of their investment. Now please allow me to clarify something... the fact that DotNetNuke Corporation is making Active Forums and Active Social available as commercial modules on Snowcovered does not mean that we are planning on getting into the commercial module business. We stand by our previous commitment that we are focused on delivering complete business solutions to customers and do not intend to offer any of our premium extensions as stand alone products. In this specific case we are simply trying to ensure that users can still access the advanced functionality of the Active Modules tools while we work through the IP acquisition. In regards to the ultimate fate of the individual Active Modules products, the award-winning Active Forums module will become an open source product and will ultimately replace the DNN Forum module ( an upgrade path will be provided for users of the DNN Forum ). This represents a huge win for the community, as Active Forums boasts a variety of professional features which are currently not available in the DNN Forum project. Active Social will be strategically evaluated and the majority of its individual components will be integrated with the core platform to provide a rich foundation for building advanced social experiences. Lastly Active Purchase, a streamlined e-commerce solution which has been under development by Active Modules for a number of years, will be made available exclusively as part of the Professional and Enterprise Editions in DotNetNuke 6.0. Please join me in congratulating Will Morgenweck and welcoming him to our team!
13 comment(s) so far...
Re: DotNetNuke Corporation Acquires Active Modules Inc.
Wow!
By BarryS on
2/23/2011
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Re: DotNetNuke Corporation Acquires Active Modules Inc.
I am thrilled that my colleague and good friend Will is joining the team and look forward to working with him in his new position. I think the deal makes sense and wish both DNN and Will all the best with this acquisition.
By Peter Donker on
2/23/2011
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Re: DotNetNuke Corporation Acquires Active Modules Inc.
Wow...
This is amazing news.
I hope as well that Will can share is programing expertize and "best practices" with the greater community. I know that a number of other great vendors have worked with Active to integrate functionality. More of this would be great for the ecosystem.
By Phil Speth on
2/23/2011
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Re: DotNetNuke Corporation Acquires Active Modules Inc.
Gratz Will.. and Shaun!
By Brad Schafer on
2/23/2011
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Re: DotNetNuke Corporation Acquires Active Modules Inc.
"Active Forums module will become an open source product and will ultimately replace the DNN Forum"
WOOT!
By Lance on
2/23/2011
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Re: DotNetNuke Corporation Acquires Active Modules Inc.
What an excellent move!
The already increasing improvement in DNN 5.x of the user account section with improved user profile image, messaging, and now more can be further enhanced (from the core) with social connectivity with external systems such as FaceBook and LinkedIn.
The enhancement of the community offering with improved forum and social base, and then the ability to further enhance the pro/enterprise offering makes this a WIN WIN for everyone involved!
By Ryan Moore on
2/23/2011
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Re: DotNetNuke Corporation Acquires Active Modules Inc.
Congratulations to Will and The DotNetNuke Corporation!
By Michael Washington on
2/23/2011
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Re: DotNetNuke Corporation Acquires Active Modules Inc.
Congrats Shaun and Will! Great move, integrate rather than duplicate is a solid strategy.
I had been waiting for the acclaimed new version of Active Purchase and I'm excied about it being added to the Commercial version of DNN. DNN needed a good core store.
By Mitch Labrador on
2/23/2011
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Re: DotNetNuke Corporation Acquires Active Modules Inc.
My congratulations to DNN, Shaun and Will for this step. This is very good news for the total DotNetNuke community as well.
By Ernst Peter Tamminga on
2/24/2011
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Re: DotNetNuke Corporation Acquires Active Modules Inc.
I've been a long-time user of the Active Modules and have felt that trying to provide a cohesive UX between DNN and it's third party modules, like Active Forum and Social has been ackward and cumbersome.
I've been using DNN since the beginning and can do absolutely anything I can imagine with it. It's such a powerful toolset. But, the amount of time and effort required to provide enterprise functionality across multiple vendor modules while trying to provide a seamless user experience carries with it a very high cost with this platform. Even after all the modules are configured and playing together nicely, the amount of time required to manage content across all of them is significant.
I had to close my technology business of 11 years recently that has been focused entirely on building and hosting enterprise sites on DNN because all my profits and then some were consumed with keeping the dozens of modules working and stable. Because the user experiences are so unique between various vendor modules, the training and technical support required by my clients was overwhelming.
Although I'm no longer building and hosting sites for a living, I maintain a dedicated server where I host some personal sites that I spent 7 or more years building on DNN. So, the cost to migrate them onto another platform is considerable.
But, I've spent the past several months doing due delegence assessing alternatives to DNN. I am currently on the fence. There are some alternatives that don't have as much to offer in terms of available extensibility, but the core is much more seemlessly integrated. This is a very attractive feature after spending the last several years focused solely on DNN and feeling the pain of this issue.
Having said that, there is so much potential with DNN if only its key weaknesses could be addressed. I have to say that this acquisition gives me hope that things may improve with the DNN platform. This is a move in the right direction.
If DNN can provide a more fluid and seamless UX across its core and extended functional components, DNN will be much more attractive and competitive. Keep up the good work everyone on the DNN team! Also, I continue to wait with expectations to see what comes out of the User Experience hire from last year.
Watching and hopeful, John
By John Tisdale on
2/24/2011
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Re: DotNetNuke Corporation Acquires Active Modules Inc.
I hope my working extended instance of Active Forum module will work with the future versions off DNN and not clash with the new default Active forum module...
By apartments.split on
2/24/2011
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Re: DotNetNuke Corporation Acquires Active Modules Inc.
Hello Shawn,
Congratulations for DNN!
I have a concern that I must raise about the "commercial" side DNN is getting and promoting.
One of the major +ve points of DNN being an open source and free availability of modules here and there. I hope the strategy is not changing regarding this.
Thank you & regards
By Bilal Haidar on
3/9/2011
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Re: DotNetNuke Corporation Acquires Active Modules Inc.
@Bilal- I hear your concerns but if you look closely at this acquisition you will actually see that the open source community is the largest beneficiary in this deal. What I mean is that modules which were previously only available as commercial products, are now going to be available as free open source products. I hope this helps emphasize that our strategy has not changed.
By Shaun Walker on
3/9/2011
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