javivazquez at eBox

Much time has gone since my last post, being the release of eBox Platform 1.4 and our (since yesterday) on-line store two of the latest and most interesting news.

eBox Platform 1.4 release has been a great step forward, more than 20.000 downloads in less than a couple of weeks are a clear evidence of the interest arisen. The huge increase of visits to our websites, partnership and support requests are the outcome.

On the other hand, our on-line store is bundled with the release of 2 new products we have been testing for the last 2 months: eBox  backup storage and eBox VoIP cheap calls.

As a consequence, eBox portfolio has growth and gained visibility, we are selling directly to our installed base and to and through our partner network.

First, we are offering directly to eBox’s users:

1. Technical support, one-time eBox support and safe migration from 1.2 to 1.4 support.
2. Subscription services, such as eBox backup storage, eBox VoIP prepaid credit and eBox Control Center.
3. Our first book “eBox for network administrators”! (only in Spanish currently though)

Tech support offered directly to eBox’s installed base is two fold: on the hand, helping SOHO users to solve punctual issues and doubts; on the other hand, assist companies on real-time to migrate from the good 1.2 to the great 1.4.

eBox backup storage is for those SOHO and SMEs which desire to keep their data safe off-site at a low price, and eBox VoIP is for those interested in making  abroad and international calls at very cheap rates, from their desktop using a softphone.

eBox Control Center gives the possibility to those companies with a number of deployments (e.g. several branches) the ability to monitor and administer their eBox Platform servers from a simple web interface.

Secondly, we are offering to and through our partners network:

1. To our partners: certified training, 3rd level technical support and eBox Control Center subscriptions.
2. Through our partners to their clients: eBox backup storage and eBox VoIP credit.

The certified training warranties both the partner and his customers a quality service by a qualified technician. 3rd level technical support brings them eBox developers on when required (issues, complex configurations). eBox Control Center provides our partners with a web easy-to-use and simple tool to monitor and administer their eBox Platform deployments.

eBox backup storage and VoIP credit grants our partners a recurrent revenue, while growing their portfolio within a win-win relation.

Our portfolio will include new SaaS products bundled to eBox Platform, but in the meanwhile we have tailored an offering for every eBox user, whether big or small. Compelling enough?

Being eBox Platform the main product of our company, the title of this post could be just a nice play on words…

However, reading on the open source and business model debate, from Stephen Walli’s to Mat Assay’s blogs, I believe I got to something interesting around eBox Platform as a platform, despite of (please forgive) the repetition.

From the latter, Mat Assay’s “Product management goes open source”:

[...] We were so busy marketing our vision that we almost missed listening to our users’ vision(s) [...]

[...] open-source companies, if they listen to their users, are well-positioned to build platforms that can become the lifeblood of enterprise IT [...]

If you ask me which is the eBox’s vision, I would speak about our perspective instead: eBox Technologies and eBox Platform desire to be for Linux in the server, what Canonical and Ubuntu have been for Linux in the desktop.

And the key point is: how are we building it?… Listening to our users and clients (our partners), so supporting them to develop their business using eBox as a Platform.

Not by chance, eBox Technologies is a 100% partner-focused company. Not by chance, our partner program puts the stress on flexibility, strongly encouraging our partners to develop their own value on top of eBox, even building eBox based products to be re-branded. Mixed, combined or pure, but always flexible.

Whether a mini data-center, a security/VPN appliance, or a micro home sever; eBox is being customized and combined to fit in every hole… Because marketing such a horizontal product would be much difficult without partners which struggle for their picked niches with self adapted tools.

It’s not a new business model neither a brand new strategy, but just a(nother) way to explain Ebox’s perspective.

Paraphrasing both Stephen and Matt blogs, I feel like “in the open road, once more unto the breach”.

I remember my days working for a free software services company, where people asked once and again: “how do you make money from open source?”. The answer was simple: “We sell time (hours), like lawyers do”.

Obviously, it’s not that easy, but it worked.

From a open source product company, such eBox Technologies is, the answer is also short, but it needs a longer explanation: “We combine open source with SaaS”.

eBox Technologies is a 100% channel focused company, say, we sell through our global partner network: VARs (Value Added Resellers) and MSPs (Managed Services Providers).

We offer to those IT companies the technology and services to fulfill their customers’ computer networks needs.

On the one hand, the support and training services for efficiently deploying and administering any network service that a SMB requires. eBox Platform, open source small business server (SBS), rules them all: Gateway, UTM, Infrastucture, Office and Unified Communications Server. It’s open source and it’s free.

On the other hand, a fault-tolerant solution to administer and monitor eBox Platform installations from a single interface. eBox Control Center is SaaS, web based and from the cloud.

In summary, eBox Technologies targets the SMB market through a global partner network formed by VARs and MSPs, offering them an open source unified network server -eBox Platform- and the SaaS technology to efficiently manage it -eBox Control Center- .

It’s a business model designed for growth and world domination.

During the just on Wednesday finished Innovate! Europe hold in Zaragoza, we have enjoyed a couple of days with excellent and experienced people from the IT world, and also raise in our own confidence on eBox as a promising and attractive company.

Not by chance, eBox was selected within the top ten finalists among the >100 initial applicants and the 34 finalists that came to Zaragoza from the whole Europe. Moreover, our company was the only Spanish in that 10 most promising European start-ups group.

However, despite of the many interesting lessons and good advise I personally gathered, I first would like to share one not really that important, but that caught my attention and suggest me to continue with the posts dedicated (more or less intentionally) our foundations as a company. That was working from “home”, or teleworking.

This small lesson, it is referred to coordination among staff who works from anywhere, mostly not together. In our case, we are 11 eleven guys working mainly from Zaragoza, but actually: 2 are based in Ireland and the rest of us work very often from home or any other cities.

In my case, I like going to the office every day, but also I work at least 7-10 days each month from Vigo (my original city, in Galicia), Madrid, Barcelona or any other place I go to visit my family and friends, or just as a tourist. And I am probably one of the guys who are more often working from our HQ…

On the one hand, this situation is something we like and look for: eBox staff is encouraged to work from wherever they want and when they like to. We don’t have fixed time schedules or any obligation to go to the office. On the other hand, it raises some issues: it needs an extra effort to be well coordinated.

Reaching to the point, Marten Mickos pointed out on his talk at Innovate that 70% of his former company MySQL still works from home. 70% of 400 guys of from >40 cities worldwide, with different time zones and the like. And the 2 main things he cited to keep this working, IMO, were:

• Pick people who like working mainly alone, from home. Kind of lone wolfs.
• Reporting, reporting and reporting, with objectives clearly set for every single people in the company.

Here at eBox we rely on tickets (tasks, whatever) and wiki to keep high the coordination among us, being Redmine the  tool selected for it. Some people don’t like that much planning and being accountable for achieving objectives, but what’s more fair and efficient that let guys planning themselves as far as the global objectives of the company are reached?

In a company that pretends to be global by nature as it was MySQL, MySQL itself is the best example to follow regarding work organization.

This evening some of the eBox’s staff  -Javier Uruen, Isaac and myself- have been interviewed by the guys of Debug Mode On, an on-line community for IT professionals. The edited conversation will be the second podcast of a serie dedicated to innovative Spanish companies, to be published in the next few days.

What has most shocked them, according to their own words, is how internationally focused is eBox, despite of being a small company based on Zaragoza. However, an open source company  should have a global aim to be successful, because open source is global by design. For us, it’s the natural and only way to be. Some examples:

First, talking about our community, by visiting eBox forums anyone could easily realize how globally spread is our community: guys from South and North America, everywhere in Europe, Asia and Africa sharing concerns and knowledge about eBox platform issues.

Secondly, referring business opportunities, during the last couple of days I have been speaking with people interested in professional support from US, Ecuador, Perú, Portugal (my speaking -Galician/Portuguese- is better that my listening ), Italy and (of course) Spain.

Finally, regarding to companies interested in becoming eBox’s partner, we are in negotiations with ~20 candidates from 4 continents, after having initially received more than 40 signs of interests…

But it’s not us, it’s free software, which is global by design. Our challenge is to fulfill that huge demand, and that’s we are working on, and the key during the following months.