Round 2 LinuxWorld: 1 Award, 1 Surprise, 1 Miami Training Sales Pitch!

So in the end, what will Round 2 LinuxWorld be remembered for? In addition to meeting some great representatives from companies in the Open Solutions Alliance, and talking to potential partners and end clients; quite simply I’ll remember LinuxWorld itself for three simple reasons:

1. Winning the LinuxWorld Product Excellence Award: Openbravo won the award for Best Integrated Solution! Winners in other categories included Hyperic and Enterprise DB.
2. Our product works with the Iphone? Well apparently yes! We were with an Iphone user and completed basic processes, looked at reports, etc. While it hasn’t been fully tested by our QA department, our 15 minute tryout showed that Openbravo worked with the standard web browser!
3. Signing up participants for our Miami Trainings: Basic Functional, Customization and Basic Development, and Advanced Development Training. For more information, please visit: Openbravo Scheduled Training.

However while giving demos, talking about the product, and meeting people was great; outside of the conference itself the most reflective viewpoint came in gauging where we were, are, and will be going.

Looking back to one year ago, I recall a 20 person company which was Openbravo for only 8 months and still defining an identity and structure; a product which had room for improvement in both usability and functionality; and a training department which was simply a good idea, but far from a reality.

What we have now is a 50+ person company (I took vacation last week and 2 new people were here today), almost 2 years old. We have a product with a new interface, new integrated functionalities, and with a JasperSoft tool making it much easier to advance product reporting. And finally, we our training boasts an online demo, elearning module, and live training sessions which have been in South America, United States, Europe, and Asia.

As for where we are going? The natural answer is simple: wait and see.