What's up at booming SpringSource?
Last week SpringSource announced that it grew 250 percent year-over-year in quarterly bookings while doubling sales each of the last three years. SpringSource currently boasts 450 customers and is, in my mind, one of the bright lights within the commercial open-source ecosystem.
For this reason I'm a bit baffled by Neelan Choksi's departure from SpringSource. Choksi, the company's former COO, left the company in July as his LinkedIn shows. While Neelan remains a board member at SpringSource, I'm troubled that he has left. Attempts to reach Neelan by phone have not proved successful.
It's very possible that Choksi left for greener pastures, but with how green the SpringSource pasture appears to be, I'm not convinced. Can anyone provide more data?
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
I have decided to do some different things in my life for personal reasons - maybe if you had waited for a call back, I could have explained this to you. Ironically, when you called my cell phone , I was on the phone with Rod talking about the exciting SpringSource Seminar Day and internal development meeting in Linz, Austria that had taken place last week.
I can assure you that all is well at SpringSource---and I remain on the board and act as an advisor to the company.
Neelan
P.S. I feel compelled to point out that the time stamp on the voice mail you left me on my cell phone was less than 30 minutes before the time stamp of this posting, and according to my missed calls log, there was only 1 attempt by you to reach me on my cell phone.
- by techfront September 24, 2008 2:55 PM PDT
- Matt,
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(4 Comments)I've been meaning to come back to this. Your post highlights how the information game has changed so much in so many ways. Take PR for example. "Beat 'em to the story" is an age old practice in traditional PR but now this has new meaning. Blogs change this and many companies miss the opportunity. Blogs will continue to evolve as companies and their teams learn the new voice and the fact that interesting information connects customers in an authentic way. When someone leaves a company for personal reasons it can actually strengthen customers view of the company when they feel like they are part of the story. When harmless and sometimes interesting information isn't shared, it could have the opposite effect. Nice work on the blog, you crank 'em out at an impressive pace.
Keep on keep'n on.
Pete Erickson
Tech Frontiers