Growing a Global Community

October 17th, 2007 Stacey Schneider

I just got back from 3 days off. In startup-land, that is virtually akin to 3 weeks. However, upon my return I was humbled by how much got done without me. In fact, really - how much even got done without a Hyperic employee.

It is no secret Hyperic’s community is growing. We now have deployments in over 80 countries.  We average 50-100 people online at any moment in our forums. Users answer each other’s questions. Contributions to our community - in the form of plugins, HOWTOs, and news posts that we have nothing to do with helping generate have become a regular event. This is how you know your project definitively has the foundation of something great.

Let me just articulate what I came back to this week:

1. A user named Jeff Schwartz created a complete getting started guide with pictures, code snippets and clearly written advice on how to create custom plugins with java. It’s better than anything we have ever written on the subject and is a really popular subject for our users. Check it out at http://blogs.citytechinc.com/roller/jschwartz/entry/1.

2. A customer named Mindbridge has done their second interview in as many months on their use of open source software and virtualization. They demonstrate their flexible, affordable, and scalable architecture can roll out customer solutions in a half an hour. Guess what powers this kind of mixed-stack, always-on, always-changing virtualized infrastructure? You got it. Hyperic HQ. Do I know when the interview took place? Nope. And I run PR here. Read the full article on Sys-Con. I did. :)

3. A newcomer/convert to OSS ESM (enterprise systems management) John M. Willis went to a SOTUG user group in Toronto last week and listened to a presentation on using Hyperic from one of the attendees. He got excited and talked to this reformed Tivoli user, Brett Gillett, and arranged a podcast with him to tout the differences between Hyperic and Tivoli. This was at a Tivoli user group meeting! They’re talking Hyperic! John blogged about it, I read it on my Google news alert, and we are confirming a time for hopefully next week.

All this, while I was off watching Penn State trounce Wisconsin. Maybe I should go back for every home game, what do you think, Javier?

In all seriousness, this didn’t happen overnight. It has been snowballing for some time. In fact, in order to keep up with all this growth this summer I officially went global. I now have product marketing folks in India who watch communities and blog conversations while I am asleep. I also just hired our first european community manager. Mirko Pluhar started this month. Mirko got the job by being interested in the first place. He started months ago translating documentation, writing plugins, and spending his vacation just answering questions on the forums. The man is the epitome of how successful communities come together, and I never want to lose him.

Revenues are increasing faster than we expected, but my real barometer of success here is our community. For the company, its a primary area of investment, and it pays its dividends nicely. With that, I will leave you with a picture of Mirko. Welcome aboard, Mirko. I know our community is happy to have you!

 

Entry Filed under: Contributors, HQ, IT Industry