DotNetNuke » TechBubble

DotNetNuke Business Model and Product Roadmap (Part 1 of 2)

Apr 202009

Development of DotNetNuke 5.1 Community and Professional Editions is progressing at full speed. It took us quite a bit of time to analyze dependencies, evaluate resource availability, determine viability and clearly define scope. As a result, until now, we did not publish a roadmap for DNN 5.1. The lack of published and authoritative roadmap details and a general misunderstanding about our business model has caused some confusion in the community.

In this, the first of a two-part series, I will make an attempt to clear this confusion and bring clarity on two topics:

1) Our business model: I’ll explain our business model and how it underscores our commitment to Community Edition and the overall DotNetNuke ecosystem. This is the subject of my first post.

2) Product roadmap: I’ll review the research, planning and decision-making process on how the roadmap for both Community and Professional Editions is determined. Then I’ll outline the release 5.1 roadmap for both Community and Professional Editions. This is the subject of my second post.

Our business model

DotNetNuke Corp. has an “Open Core” business model. In plain English this means that our free, community product and our paid, commercial product have a common, free, Open Source Core. This begs the question, what exactly is the DotNetNuke Core?

The DotNetNuke Core refers to the base combination of DotNetNuke framework libraries and extensions required to have an operational DotNetNuke website. Any additional extensions included in the distribution, even if they are not enabled by default, are also considered Core extensions.

The Core thus consists of the DotNetNuke framework libraries; all providers; all administrative modules; all control panels; the Text/HTML module; the default skin/containers; all skin objects; and all widgets included in the DotNetNuke distribution.

Both Community and Professional Editions share this identical DotNetNuke Core, which is why our business model is called “Open Core.” Given this context, it is worth emphasizing the implications of this business model:

The Core is and will remain free and Open Source. This is essential for the continued success of DotNetNuke.
Any enhancements made to the Core framework libraries are ALWAYS available to both Community and Professional Editions.
Any enhancements made to any Core extensions are ALWAYS available to both Community and Professional Editions

On the topic of Core enhancements, there have been some questions about whether any will be made in the future. The answer is an emphatic “Yes!” This is clearly evident by reviewing the DNN 5.1 roadmap. Also consider that since 2006, over 95% of the Core development has been done by employees or consultants paid for by DotNetNuke Corp. Given the investment we have already made and the fact that the Core forms the foundation for both our products, continuing to invest in improving and enhancing it is the best decision for the company and the community.

Now, let’s examine each of the editions to understand how they are similar and different purely from a software standpoint.

The DotNetNuke Community Edition package includes the DotNetNuke Core and DotNetNuke Community Extensions developed and maintained by one of the many volunteer-based DotNetNuke Project teams. The result is a complete solution that is suitable for many different scenarios.

The DotNetNuke Professional Edition package includes the DotNetNuke Core, DotNetNuke Community Extensions and DotNetNuke Professional Extensions. The result is a complete solution that is suitable for mission-critical business scenarios where the desired level of performance or functionality is not achievable using only the Core or Community Extensions. In such situations, the user can purchase the desired extensions from a third-party, develop them in-house or opt for the convenience of getting a single package – DotNetNuke Professional Edition.

Let’s address the questions this raises:

Q: Why is it necessary for DotNetNuke Corp. to bundle its extensions into a separate package instead of making them available separately for purchase like other extensions made by third-party vendors?

A: Our target customer is a business that is looking for a fully-integrated, supported solution and not a build-your-own package. By offering a packaged solution, we address this need. A good analogy is the automotive industry. Consumers do not have the time, skills or resources to assemble a safe and reliable car even though parts are available. They prefer to buy a fully assembled, tested vehicle that has a warranty and which they can start driving immediately.

Q: Does this mean that DotNetNuke Corp. will no longer enhance any of the Core Extensions?

A: That is certainly not the case. Since we have an Open Core business model, we absolutely must continue to enhance the Core Extensions as they are vital to the continued success of both DotNetNuke Community Edition and DotNetNuke Professional Edition. For example, our roadmap for this year includes significant enhancements to the user experience of Core Extensions the scope of which is greater than any prior effort to improve DotNetNuke’s usability.

Q: What types of extensions will DotNetNuke Corp. include with Professional Edition?

A: In general, we will include extensions that are clearly of interest to larger, more mission-critical business. The feature areas will include advanced security, performance, commerce and scalability.

Q: Can third-parties build extensions for Community Edition that provide similar functionality to DotNetNuke Professional Extensions?

A: Of course. Since the DotNetNuke Professional Extensions leverage the extensibility built-into the DotNetNuke Core that is common to both editions, third-parties have an equal opportunity to build similar (or better) extensions. This is no different than what many third-parties are doing today given the vast number of extensions — free and commercial — already available to DNN users.

Q: Will source code for DotNetNuke Professional Extensions be included with Professional Edition?

A: No. Source code will not be distributed; however, it will be held in escrow for Professional Edition customers.

Q: Will DotNetNuke Professional Extensions ever be available in Community Edition?

A: Yes. In some cases we may choose to migrate specific extensions from Professional Edition to
Community Edition.

Q: Will third parties be able to build functionality on top of DotNetNuke Professional Extensions?

A: Yes. However, at this time there is no extensibility provided in DotNetNuke Professional Extensions. This does not stop ISVs from building product versions which are targeted at Professional Edition customers.

To summarize:

DotNetNuke Corp. has an Open Core business model
The DotNetNuke Core will continue to be enhanced, benefitting both Community Edition and Professional Edition users
DotNetNuke Community Edition is applicable to most usage scenarios
DotNetNuke Professional Edition is applicable to larger, more mission critical business environments

Hopefully this post answered many of the community’s questions about the DotNetNuke Corp. business model, specifically as it pertains to the similarities and differences between DotNetNuke Community and Professional Editions.

In my next post – DotNetNuke Business Model and Product Roadmap (Part 2 of 2) – I will provide some background and insights into how we develop the DotNetNuke product roadmap and also share the roadmap for DotNetNuke 5.1 Community and Professional Editions.

Blog Platform Switch and Makeover

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Feb 022009

When I first started blogging in 2004, I had to decide which platform to use. There were some hosted blog sites available, but my rule of thumb #1 is that if it’s important to me, then I need to have full control over it and not be at the mercy of some other provider. I need to have unfettered access to make changes, enhancements and backups. At the time, the best .NET-based Open Source blogging platform I could find was DasBlog. I have used it since and it has served me very well. However, the more entrenched I got with the DotNetNuke project, the guiltier I felt due to rule of thumb #2 — eat your own dog food. I desperately wanted to switch my blog to DotNetNuke but faced three obstacles:

1) Migration: As far as I know, there was no simple way to import everything from DasBlog to the DNN Blog and maintain fidelity.

2) DNN Blog: While the DNN Blog software is good, it lacked a few key attributes that I personally felt very strongly about — excessive use of tables, inability to completely control the appearance using CSS and inability to control syndication URL’s. There were a few other minor issues, but these were the primary ones.

3) Time: Just did not have enough of it to make the switch.

Last year, I had been collaborating with Antonio Chagoury, the DNN Blog Project lead, and had started to make enhancements to the DNN Blog module. However, my work got really busy and I was unable to get these changes done. Meanwhile, the Blog project team continued to make progress and I found my code to be out of sync with the project code. So here I was with some working enhancements to the Blog module, but not able to easily integrate my changes back into the project.

Over the Christmas/New Year break, I made a decision that I would switch my blog to DNN within the month of January. Once I made this decision, things got easier as I work best under deadline pressure. Spending a few hours each week during the past month, I did the following:

Setup a DNN5 site for my blog
Locally reconciled my changes of the Blog module with the code that was in the repository
Wrote a small script to import from DasBlog to the DNN Blog
Implemented many enhancements to the DNN Blog
Created a custom skin for my blog which uses some of the new widgets I created for DNN
Fully ported my blog to the DNN platform

The first three were simple and did not take much time at all. I spent quite a bit of time on the remaining three. Here are the details:

Blog Enhancements: I made the following enhancements:

Templating – Used the DNN token replacement engine to create template support for Header, Item List, Item Detail and Item Print. All templates support the standard DNN tokens and some custom ones. For the Header template, the permissible tokens are (using { } in place of [ ] to prevent replacement in this post):

{BLOG:TITLE}
{BLOG:OWNER}
{BLOG:DATE-CREATED}
{BLOG:DESCRIPTION}
{BLOG:RSS-URL}
{BLOG:RSS-IMAGE-URL}

For all other templates, the tokens permissible tokens are (using { } in place of [ ] to prevent replacement in this post):

{BLOGITEM:TITLE}
{BLOGITEM:AUTHOR}
{BLOGITEM:BYLINE}
{BLOGITEM:BYLINE-DATE}
{BLOGITEM:DATE-PUBLISHED}
{BLOGITEM:MONTH-PUBLISHED}
{BLOGITEM:DAY-PUBLISHED}
{BLOGITEM:URL}
{BLOGITEM:PRINT-URL}
{BLOGITEM:BLOG-TITLE}
{BLOGITEM:BLOG-URL}
{BLOGITEM:BLOG-CATEGORY-TITLE}
{BLOGITEM:BLOG-CATEGORY-URL}
{BLOGITEM:BLOG-RSS-URL}
{BLOGITEM:BREADCRUMB-HYPERLINK}
{BLOGITEM:TRACKBACK-URL}
{BLOGITEM:RSS-IMAGE-URL}
{BLOGITEM:SEARCH-RANK}
{BLOGITEM:EDIT-URL}
{BLOGITEM:EDIT-HYPERLINK}
{BLOGITEM:COMMENTS-HYPERLINK}
{BLOGITEM:COMMENTS-URL}
{BLOGITEM:COMMENTS-COUNT}
{BLOGITEM:MORE-HYPERLINK}
{BLOGITEM:TAGS}
{BLOGITEM:SUMMARY}
{BLOGITEM:CONTENT}

These tokens make it possible to format the blog list and detail views to be customized precisely with nothing extraneous. I thought about adding a template for RSS, but decided against it to keep things simple. I did however modify the RSS template to always show full content as RSS feeds that show only summaries are a pet peeve of mine (I will not subscribe to any blog that does not post full content in the feed).

CSS-enablement — Everyplace that I found an HTML table, I removed it and replaced it with the equivalent DIV+CSS code and enabled simple URL actions instead of Javascript-driven postbacks. This reduced the HTML footprint considerably.

Archive – I added entry counts to each month in the Archive list. I also added the ability to turn off the calendar mostly because from a user experience standpoint, it is not much use. Between the Archive list and search, the bases are covered.

Tagging — We are currently working on core-provided tagging support, but I wanted to have some quick tagging support and display a tag cloud. My solution — I created a setting whereby you can specify an HTML element that indicates a word or phrase that should be a tag. The default element I picked is “cite”. Using the standard HTML editor, I can simply highlight words and apply “cite” to them. The tags are not stored anywhere separately. When a post is rendered, the tags are extracted with a regular expression and Technorati microformat tag links are automatically created. The same code is used to create a composite tag cloud using jQuery. Since tags don’t change too often, with caching this is a simple solution that can be upgraded to the core tagging engine when it is available with minimal effort since there is no data to worry about.

Tab Targeting — I wanted to display my blog listing on one or more pages, but always wanted to direct the user to a single blog page for details. The solution I implemented for this is a setting called LinkTargetTab. In the blog’s settings, you can choose the page where all links should go. I can thus have a listing on the Home page of my blog site, but have the detail and editing occur on the Blog page.

Syndication — I implemented a setting that allows you to specify the Base Syndication Url such as http://feeds2.feedburner.com. All syndication links are then automatically created by appending the name of the blog/child blog to the base URL as appropriate.

Comments — I wanted to use Disqus for comments on my blog. Since the module’s comments can easily be turned off, adding Disqus was a simple matter of adding the embed code to the Item Detail template. (The same applies for Sharing…I just added the code for ShareThis to the template.)

I implemented a few other minor enhancements, but the above list constitutes a bulk of them. At the time of this writing, the blog I am using has these enhancements. There are probably a few rough edges, but overall, things seem to work. Now that I am here, I’ll get this code over to Antonio and the Blog team so they can decide if any of it is desirable for the Blog Project. (I will not post these enhancements for general download as I think the Blog Project team is best equipped to review the code and determine if the changes should be merged. Also, I do not want to be in a position of supporting the code.)

Custom Skin: I modified the appearance of the standard DNN skin slightly to meet my branding choices. I did make a bunch of changes under the hood that make it very different structurally from the default DNN skin. These changes are –

CSS Layout — I used the built-in DNN super-stylesheets to create a table-less CSS layout.

Mobile-optimized — I used the new DNN5 RelocationWidget to optimize the skin for search-engines and mobile devices. The entire header and menu block actually appears at the end of the page, but is visually made to appear at the top using the RelocationWidget. Mobile devices should also see a simpler menu system.

TechBubble Blog: Now that my blog is fully ported to DNN, I am very excited to be able to create and share sample code with working examples right here on the site. For instance, I am using the DNN EmbedWidget on the Photo page to display my Flickr photo stream (not much to look at yet).

Overall, the time and effort it took to get here was well worth it. I am VERY happy to be using DotNetNuke for my blog.

Milestones on a Rewarding Journey

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Nov 252008

Today is a big day for me for two reasons:

1) One year ago today, I moved with my family to Silicon Valley from Washington, DC, a city we love and miss very much.

2) Also today, DotNetNuke Corp., the company I co-founded, announced that we have closed on our Series A round of venture funding.

Adjusting to Silicon Valley has had its challenges. Having to drive everywhere after getting around mostly on DC’s Metro was the hardest adjustment. Our friends, DC’s breathtakingly beautiful monuments, abundance of fantastic (and free) museums and overall character of the city are all missed. That my daughters were both born at George Washington University hospital in DC means that my family has an unbreakable bond with the city and we expect to live there again in the future (perhaps when I run for Congress, a dream of mine).

The past year in Mountain View has been a year of discovering California, rekindling old friendships, making new ones, enjoying great weather and the many playgrounds in this area. We are slowly adapting and beginning to enjoy what Silicon Valley has to offer. I’ll be candid, reaching the funding milestone is certainly going to make a difference in terms of quality of life.

All startup entrepreneurs make sacrifices to see their dreams come true. In this business, it’s called “skin in the game.” I can say unequivocally that my co-founders (Shaun Walker, Joe Brinkman and Scott Willhite) and I have a lot of skin (and probably additional layers) in this game. Building a company based on a free, Open Source product is challenging, to say the very least. But we had a vision and continued to persist despite the challenges we encountered. Raising growth capital was one of them.

In the summer of 2007, Shaun and I made several trips to Silicon Valley to meet with VC‘s. Everything that followed was textbook venture fundraising. We had many positive meetings but no takers. Our team quickly realized that we were missing three things:

Feet on the ground. It is expensive to travel to Silicon Valley every couple of weeks for meetings (Note: Most VC’s that fund Open Source companies are located in Silicon Valley). It is also a huge disadvantage that you cannot meet with an interested investor at short notice. And finally, missing out on the powerful network effect of Silicon Valley is a serious impediment to raising capital here.
Solid Business Model. While we had achieved tremendous success as the #1 Open Source web project on the Microsoft stack, the business model we articulated to VC’s was not polished enough to merit their serious interest.
Experienced Advisors and Management. VC’s invest first and foremost in people. Having a solid management team in place is critical for the success of any company, and more so for venture-funded companies. While our team is very strong technically, we did not have the depth and breadth of business experience needed to take the company to the next level. (While DotNetNuke Corp. is the fourth company I have founded/co-founded and the third of my companies to receive investment capital, I still have much to learn.)

We decided to address these three issues as best and as quickly as we could.

Since I had the lead role in the fundraising process and did not have significant constraints on where my family lived, moving here was a no-brainer for me. While it was a major move, I was determined to do what needed to be done to ensure the success and longevity of our business. I did not see any way we could be successful at raising capital without having a local presence in Silicon Valley. Savi, my wife was supportive as ever in this decision. The other co-founders and I agreed on a course of action. I took on the role of CEO with a charge of focusing on raising capital and prepared for the move.

But there were more challenges. Savi was pregnant with our second child due in late October. Gia, our first daughter, was three years old at the time and we had to find a Montessori in Silicon Valley that met the standards for teaching and cultural diversity that we had become accustomed to in DC. Also, since we paid our own health insurance, we could not make the move until after the baby was born, otherwise we would have to assume the full cost of the delivery — totally impossible for us (and most people, I would imagine). We decided to wait until January 2008 to move.

We made a couple of trips to the Bay Area, checked out schools and settled on a Montessori in Mountain View. With that done, it was now time to find housing. We did not find anything suitable during our visits. It was extremely challenging trying to find housing in Silicon Valley that met our requirements remotely from DC. A couple of these requirements greatly restricted our options and I remember checking CraigsList every 20 mins., all day, hoping to find a place we could call home. We were getting very frustrated and then things took a turn for the worse.

On the evening of Sept. 5, I accompanied Savi for a routine pre-natal check-up, while my parents who were visiting from India at the time, watched Gia. The news we got from the doctor was scary. We were told that we had to go straight to the hospital as our baby was going to arrive five weeks ahead of schedule. With a great sense of fear, we got Savi admitted and began a very long night. In the morning, the chief resident told us that the baby was in distress and they had to deliver. Kaamya was born on Sept. 6. I got to hold her for one minute and then she was taken to the NICU (Neo-natal Intensive Care Unit). The next 12 days were a blur. Savi and I took turns keeping her company in the NICU hoping and praying that she would be OK. Our prayers were answered. Today, Kaamya is a healthy, happy and active one-year-old.

After Kaamya’s birth, we were able to move to Silicon Valley a little sooner than planned. Housing was still an issue. On a whim, Savi looked at short-term rentals, and found a place in Mountain View that matched all our criteria, but was only available for 3-6 months. My brother-in-law who lives in San Jose checked out the place, we found it acceptable and signed the lease. We decided that we would move immediately after my Las Vegas trip for Open Force ’07.

Thus, on Nov. 25, 2007, we arrived in Silicon Valley.

I immediately began connecting with and setting-up meetings with people/firms to enable progress on the fundraising front and also to identify and work with business advisors and potential additions to our management team. Larry Augustin, founder of VA Linux and one of the most respected names in the Open Source world, was already our business advisor. He referred me to several exceptional people and firms, one of them being Navin Nagiah. At the time, Navin was CEO of Cignex, a company that specialized in services around Open Source CMS solutions.

I met Navin at a Starbucks in San Jose on Dec. 18, 2007. Almost immediately, Navin saw DotNetNuke’s tremendous potential. I too saw how Navin’s experience in the Open Source Enterprise CMS space would be valuable for DotNetNuke Corp. We started meeting regularly 2-3 evenings a week. Within a couple of months, Navin formally became our business advisor.

Working closely together, and with the support and input of the other co-founders, we developed a solid business model and investor pitch. We were a little slow off the blocks, but with all three of the missing items addressed, we were confident that getting funded was an inevitability. We made rapid progress through the summer culminating in today’s announcement. (I have been working on collecting my thoughts around what we learned in the process and will blog about it in the future.)

I am incredibly gratified to have reached this major milestone. There are many, many people who made it possible, many of them are behind the scenes. To all of them, I am grateful. A special thanks to my family and the families of my co-founders, who stood by us and supported us through thick and thin (mostly thin) as we made it to this point. And thanks to everyone in the DotNetNuke community who have time and again demonstrated support for DotNetNuke Corp. and confidence in our product — DotNetNuke.

This is the first step in a journey. We have a great team and I am looking forward to doing my part in building a very successful and profitable company while making DotNetNuke the platform of choice for .NET-based websites. I am very excited for the future.

Below is a link to Shaun’s keynote from the recent DotNetNuke OpenForce ’08 conference. It will shed some light on where we are and what our vision is for DotNetNuke Corporation.

DotNetNuke-OpenForce-KeyNote.pptx (1.45 MB)

Exploring New Things

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Aug 122008

Last month, a few days before my birthday, I decided that I needed to acquire some new skills and do some new things, while broadening my knowledge of things I already know (i.e. software development). More importantly, I wanted to not spend as much time in front of the computer. Instead of posting about it and then hoping to follow through, I decided to do the opposite. I started the process and am now happy to report that I have made good progress in five areas:

1) Building Stuff: I love working with tools and making things. My first project was to build a swing set for my daughters. I got lumber from Lowe’s and built one from scratch. My kids love it and it’s great not having to drive down to the playground every day.

My second project is to build earth boxes, five to be precise. Savi wants to grow vegetables and the earth boxes are the perfect solution. It’s labor intensive to build one, but not very difficult. I have completed one and am working on the rest.

2) Baking: I love bread but rarely find bread I like at the store. Solution — bake my own. Savi got me a bread-maker for my birthday and I love it. So far I have baked a loaf of plain, white bread and yesterday, I baked a walnut-raisin loaf. I am not much of a cook and making eggs is the extent of my culinary expertise. But after baking this bread, I am beginning to see why so many people love to cook. It is quite relaxing and to have an end product that family and friends can enjoy is quite rewarding.

3) Mixing: As I have mentioned on this blog before, I am an avid fan of A/V. Until about 2003, one of my favorite things to do was to V.J. parties and weddings for friends. I never did it for money as then it would become work and stop being fun. After moving to DC in 2003, I never did any gigs until last week. Friday (8/8/08), my friends Todd and Diana got married in Napa. My daughter Gia was the flower girl and I had the honor of providing the entertainment for the wedding. Since I did not want to abandon the wife and kids during the reception, I did something novel (for me) — I created a video mix on DVD for the entire evening’s entertainment. Everything from the bride/groom dances to the various dance sets were all on DVD and all I had to do was press Play. I used an 80′s theme and mixed lots of music videos from the decade along with an intro scene from “Back to the Future,” Todd’s favorite movie. I enjoyed making the mix so much, that I am now motivated to create more DVD mixes of my kids photos/videos for family back in India.

4) Software: This item is more about broadening my skills beyond ASP.Net and DotNetNuke. I have been an avid fan of Google AppEngine since the day it went live. Since I had no prior knowledge of Python or Django, I had to come up to speed fast. I attended a few meet-ups at Google and picked-up a copy of Python Power. Between the book and the meet-ups and just tinkering with code, I now have progressed far enough to create fairly advanced apps on AppEngine in Python. I plan on continuing to learn more advanced concepts and focus on developing a single application that will also be the basis of my AppEngine presentation at the DotNetNuke OpenForce / SDN Conference in Amsterdam this October. More about this application in a future post.

5) Teaching: I love to teach kids. It doesn’t matter what the subject matter is, it’s just fun to be able to share and help them learn. This summer, I have undertaken to teach my 12-year-old nephew how to program, continuing indefinitely. After researching the topic, I settled on Phrogram as the language to use for instruction. So far, I am quite impressed with everything about the IDE and the language. I setup a virtual machine, put it on a DVD and mailed it to him (he is not allowed to use the Internet other than for class assignments). He was able to install VPC, get the virtual machine up and running and write his first Phrogram. I will have some detailed blog posts about my experience on this in the near future also.

Yes, it’s true that three of the five things require time in front of the computer. But they still represent a shift and have helped me achieve my goals.