7 Years Plus!
Last month, BigBlueHat had it’s 7th anniversary! It’s hard to believe that we’ve been building web sites and applications for so long. Two years ago, we threw a little shindig for our 5th anniversary. This year, we’re celebrating a bit differently: we’re expanding!
First, the Past
Seven years a go, Benjamin Young (President of BigBlueHat), started out to build a web design and development company that would make life easier for his clients and friends. The early years were focused on building simple sites for small companies on Open Source Content Management Systems (CMS’s) such as Mambo and Joomla!. As our client’s needs changed, so did we. The Open Source CMS’s of the day didn’t provide the flexibility that we all wanted and needed–and they all lacked the usability Benjamin cares so much about. So, we built BlueInk–our very own “over the top” CMS that lets editors view their sites while editing. You may have seen it, used it, or heard of it. If not, we’d love for you to check it out http://blueinkcms.com/ To date, we have now built over 100 sites on BlueInk! We’re pretty proud of the little guy… 
Second, the Present
Open Source has played a huge roll in everything we’ve done for the past 7 years, but our contributions to Open Source were mostly small lines of code, the occasional documentation paragraph, and general promotion and support in various forums and mailing lists. A few months ago (does that count as present?), we made a decision we’d put off too long. We decided to jump into the Open Source world full tilt by building a rewrite of BlueInk as an Open Source project on a relatively new database called CouchDB. If you’re into this sort of thing (as we obviously are!), you can checkout the code at http://github.com/BigBlueHat/BlueInk
This was a huge decision for us! Building something as broad as a CMS is rewarding and challenging. Doing it with a world-wide community of like minded developers extends the reward (and the challenge) to an even greater level. Open Source is a strange and exciting world and we’re excited to now be more completely a part of it.
Third, the Future
These past seven years have shown us that “going it alone” ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. Open Sourcing BlueInk has introduced us to the power of community and the powerful other people can play in our business, products, and ideas.
Today, we’re announcing that BigBlueHat will be transforming into a new, stronger company! We are forming a partnership with a long term, local affiliate, Exact Solutions. This new partnership will be known as Exactly, Inc. and will combine the BigBlueHat ideas, products, and services with Exact Solutions’ fabulous and experienced support and management team.
In the short term, hosting and technical support will be improving (due to the additional hands on deck). We’ll also be releasing some long awaited BlueInk documentation. Beyond that we’ll be making new product announcements, upgrade opportunities, and hosting package improvements.
We’ll be making more detailed announcements over the coming weeks as we form the partnership and role out the new products and improved support.
Last, the Thanks
Each of you have played an important role in BigBlueHat’s growth over the years. Thank you for being a part of this business, choosing our products, and helping us grow through your feedback, ideas, and purchases. We look forward to many more years of service to you, our clients and friends.
On a related note, Benjamin Young, BigBlueHat’s founder, has recently accepted a full time position with CouchOne–the company started by the creator of CouchDB. The Open Sourcing of BlueInk created more opportunities than we’d first imagined! Benjamin will still be an active part of Exaclty, Inc. working primiarily in a consulting and planning role–think Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. 
He’ll still be very much around, but will primarily be in the background cooking up crazy new inventions and charting BlueInk’s continued growth.
If you’ve made it this far, you have our thanks. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to write us. We’ll be sending out several more e-mails over the coming weeks to introduce you to the new team, services, and products.
Thank you again for all you’ve done with and for us over the years.
Your’s very truly,
BigBlueHat