EPiServer 2009 in restrospect

The New Year has started. Before too much time passes, I’ve taken some time to summarize what happened at EPiServer during 2009. It was a fun (and busy) year. The financial crisis did not slow down the market demand for creating websites that engages their visitor and turns them into users. Websites continue to  becomes more  strategic, enabling organisations to deliver on the business goals and impact bottom-line results. Why? Our customers tell us that the website  is the key place for doing business and interacting with customers. So a basic information site is not enough. During the past year we continued the expansion of our product portfolio to make it broader to meet those needs. From our growing eco-system of both customers and partners, we get invaluable input on what you want you want our platforms, modules and services to do enable you to do. So thank you for all your input during the year! But back to 2009 ;it was not easy  to pick and choose which items to include in this post, but here is my collection with quick insight into highlights, large and small, for EPiServer 2009.
Highlights Q1 2009

» More than 7,000 downloaded developer licenses by March 31, 2009, a sign early on that our community is growing faster and faster.
» EPiServer acquires product line from Dropit, with the major product being X3, later renamed EPiServer Composer.
» EPiServer launches EPiServer Relate+ and combines CMS and social media into one platform.
» 29 new partners in Q1 2009.
» When I woke up early on March 10^th and saw the snow, I could hardly believe my eyes. But in spite of the weather, we held EPiServer Day, a biennial user and partner event, with 1,200 participants and 49 exhibitors in Stockholm. If you were not able to be there, the material is available on our site. EPiServer Awards were presented during the event. The winners were selected from 118 nominations. You can also get a “feel” for the event by reading How do you say WCM in Swedish by Tim Walters, Senior Analyst at Forrester Research, who was our keynote speaker at the event.
» New customers in Q1 include DSB in Denmark and RBi in the UK.

Highlights Q2 2009

» EPiServer opens US office to service growing demand for cutting edge,cost-effective CMS. We are expanding our global footprint with a North American headquarters based in Chicago.
» We are a commercial software company, but also see the benefit of making select solutions available as open source. In May 2009, one of the initial solutions was released when EventX was made public - EPiServer issues open source meeting and event module for its CMS.
» 27 new partners in Q2 2009.
» New customers in Q2 include: Toshiba Consumer Products, Suunto, P & O Cruises, Nationwide Autocenters, Cazenove Capital Management and The World Climate Community, the world’s first climate community.
» EPiServer was included in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management.
» By end of Q2, we provided advanced hosting for more than 900 websites.

HIGHLIGHTS Q3 2009

» We passed 7000 members on EPiServer World.
» Launch of EPiServer Extras, a market exchange with more than 100 add-on modules for our core platforms EPiServer CMS and EPiServer Community. Over 130 add-on modules and growing.
» More than 9697 downloaded developer licenses by September 30, 2009.
» EPiServer Marketing Arena is launched. The powerful new release of integrated marketing modules and services lets users quickly create, manage, monitor and optimize web campaigns, and as a result generate relevant traffic and sales leads.
» Held customer and partner day in London in October for the second year in a row. Doubled the number of attendees to more than 300. A selection of presentations is available. We thought it was a great event, but more important is the feedback that we got from some of our attendees who blogged about it - Reflections on EPiServerday by Jon Marks from LBi and Heard more than expected at EPiServerday UK by James Hoskins.
» 26 new partners in Q3 2009 making a grand total of 346 EPiServer partners. Great momentum in the UK during the quarter.
» EPiServer included in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for social software in the workplace.
» Move our European headquarters to Regeringsgatan in Stockholm.
» Among the new customers and websites are: Mohive, Trafikanten, Mazda and 911 Day of Service.

Highlights Q4

» Sign our 100^th partner of the year, approaching 400 partners worldwide. Many of the new partners are in the US.
» Australian office opens and 5000th license sold to SPARC in New Zealand
» We passed 8000 members on EPiServer World
» E-commerce, community and content is combined through a strategic partnership with Mediachase, which integrates an e-commerce platform into our CMS and community platforms.
» Expand our hosting services through the addition of a fourth data center.
» EPiServer day in Olso, Norway with 400 attendees and a user meeting in Stockholm with 200 attendees. EPiServer CMS 6 a core topic on the agenda. These two days demonstrate that interaction with customers and partners is extremely valuable (and fun).
» Econtent magazine lists EPiServer as one of the 100 companies that matter the most in the digital industry.
» Run Gadget competition for EPiServer CMS 6, with great involvement from the developer community. Read the interview with the overall winner and get inspiration from all the winners. Next time maybe you’ll be a winner?
»1247 attended EPiServer education during the year, split on 271 days when we conducted training.
» Customers and new websites include: National Friendly, Salus Ansvar (in Swedish) and Swedish Football Association.
» We frequently get request for inspiration from other customers, and to that end, we redesigned our customer reference section and have opened a new customer reference showroom where you can get inspiration from 2953 customers and 9130 websites!

That was the year for EPiServer. I am sure that you have memories to share as well and please feel free to add them. Now I look forward to 2010.