javivazquez at eBox

As of today, November 18th, eBox forum has reached the number of 2,000 users registered.

2.000 members is not a small amount for an open source small business server such as eBox Platform. It’s more impressive if you know how the numbers have evolved lately though.

The eBox forum was originally set up in May 2007, more than 2 years and half ago. However, 58% of the users registered during 2009 only, and 30% in the last 4 months and a half, since we released eBox 1.2.

Whether as Gateway, UTM, Infrastructure manager, Office Server or Unified Communication Server, it’s good to know than eBox Platform has become one of the most used server-side  products out there.

We hope to reach 3000 members in the following 6 months, or even less if we have into account the number of improvements and new features already being tested for eBox 1.4:  Active Directory sync, remote backup, webmail, support for Master-Slave LDAP, PPPoE support, usability enhancements, …

The bigger is our community, the better will become eBox Platform, and also faster.

My sincere thanks to all our eBox community members!

October has been a good month for records, our community is growing fast.

Last month, 163 users have enrolled in our forum, the main site for sharing ideas about the future of eBox Platform and getting free (as in beer) support.

eBox forum will reach 2.000 registered users before December. As of today, we are more than 1.900, from which 725 came in the last 6 months.

Directly from the stats section of the forum, 2009 October’s records:

• 163 new users registered. An impressive 21,6% growth compared to the last top: 134 in September.
• 184 new topics and 931 posts. 167 topics and 773 posts were the former highest, reached in May.

Another record is related to the number of downloads for the eBox 1.2 iso, more that 8.300 during October from the new Sourceforge repository.  Another 20% increase compared to September less than 7.000.

Worth to say that those downloads don’t take into account our under development unstable release eBox 1.3, only for installation through packages, neither eBox deployments from Ubuntu repositories.

Therefore, both new users registered in eBox forum and the number of downloads of our eBox 1.2 iso have grown ~20% in the last month, compared to the former one. It seems to point out we are in the right path.

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”.

eBox Platform 1.2 has been officially published and it’s ready for download from our repositories.

The latest version of eBox Platform includes a lot of new stuff, but I would highlight a couple of new modules that complete the functionality of eBox UTM and eBox Unified Communication Server:

The Intrusion Detection System (IDS, based on Snort) and the PBX that allows telephone over IP  (VoIP, based on Asterisk).

Furthermore, as the announcement points out:

“[...] eBox Platform 1.2 is the first partner-ready version, as it allows the registration of different eBox installations in eBox Control Center to facilitate remote access, managed services and advanced support for a group of eBox networks [...]”

It means that eBox is ready to sign with the partners which are currently in negotiations, offering them third level support for deployment and maintenance, certified training and the technology needed to become a managed services providers (MSPs).

Last, but not least, this release comes also with a surprise for your Ubuntu based desktops:  eBox Desktop, wich provides authentication against eBox LDAP and auto-configuration for the services provided by eBox (mail, samba, Jabber, VoIP, …).

From eBox 1.2 on, eBox Platform will be released on a 6 months basis. Our next stable will be eBox 1.4, which is expected for early January 2010.

What will eBox 1.4 include? Don’t go so fast, enjoy eBox 1.2 and stay tuned , the new features for 1.4 will be announced in the next few weeks.

When speaking about open source software, lack of support and documentation is an always present comment.

Until eBox Technologies (the company) appeared, that was true also for eBox Platform (the community product, an easy open source small business server).

In the last 2 weeks, we have taken a couple of important steps to solve the documentation issue.

On the one hand, nice documentation on our upcoming eBox 1.2 has gone public: http://doc.ebox-platform.com

Currently, it is only in Spanish, but in the next few weeks an English version will be also available.

On the other hand, the very first eBox screencast has been uploaded to different video websites such as Blip.tv, vimeo and youtube.

Before the Summer ends, more 2-3 minutes screencast on eBox Platform and eBox Control Center will be available.