Posted by andy Fri, 17 Feb 2006 12:17:00 GMT

We have finally announced the new strategy and releases for Project.net, at OSBC on February 14. Over the next few months we will release open source, hosted on-demand, and enterprise packages based on this product. We picked up some nice articles in the press.

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This relaunch of Project.net has been a long time in the making, since I first discussed it with Roger Bly, the president of Project.net, last May.

At the time, Roger was wondering how Project.net could go to the next level. The company had a nice product and a few good enterprise customers. However, it was too small to thrive in the increasingly brutal enterprise selling cycle, as described in my article Is the Enterprise Software Licensing Business Dying?

I discussed with Roger some opportunities that Project.net could take advantage of:

  • Many of their best customers were doing some kind of customization. However, Project.net did not have any kind of shared source or open source licensing or process in place to serve those customers. They didn’t have any strategy in place to take advantage of open source marketing, community resources, and customer innovation.
  • They were making most of their money on the bigger deals, over $100K, and really didn’t have any way to benefit from serving smaller groups.
  • They built a nice Web-based, multi-tenant application, but they did not offer any kind of ASP or on-demand service.

Over the next six months we worked together to design a new strategy and get the company sold to ICS, which was willing to put in resources to back the new strategy. That deal closed in December.

Then we set to work rebuilding the development team and process as an open-source compatible global team and process. It was an amazing experience, during which we looked at 130 candidates, selected 11 for competitive trials, and were amazed when 9 of the candidates turned out to be great. Now, we have guys from 7 countries working together every day.

The results from the sales and marketing process have also been great. Leads, renewals, and sales are running ahead of expectations. There has been a surge of interest in Project Portfolio Management solutions, and all of the players are benefiting. Project.net has a bright future in this space.