Squiz Announces Global Revenues of US$15 million, Stakes Claim for 'Supported Open Source' CMS Arena

July 29, 2008 - PRLog -- Squiz, one of the world's leading open source CMS vendors, today announced global revenues of US$15 million from across its network of offices in Australasia and the UK - representing a growth rate of 50% year on year.  At the same time, the company identified what it feels to be a growing opportunity for 'Supported Open Source' Web Content Management Systems in typical mid-range project spends of between $75,000 and $250,000.

Squiz's enterprise open source CMS, MySource Matrix, runs some of the world’s largest web, e-commerce, intranet and publishing platforms - including those of Newscorps' Homesite.com.au, leading retailer Boots and the Australian Federal Government.  Squiz's open source business model enables these companies to control their technology spend with greater accountability and flexibility.  Unlike regular commercial software vendors, Squiz doesn't charge for MySource Matrix because it makes it available under an open source license.  Instead, customers only pay Squiz for associated CMS project costs such as custom development, design, implementation, training, support, hosting and system service level agreements (SLA's).

This announcements of financial results is the first time that Squiz has made a public revenue declaration, and comes at a time when the company has begun to make some serious inroads into important international markets such as the UK.  Squiz's senior executive team attributes this growth to a growing market demand for professional service-backed open source systems - or 'Supported Open Source - SoS' - as a compelling alternative to established commercial CMS's.

Says John Paul Syriatowicz, Managing Director:  "We're excited to see our tremendous growth continue this year.  By public reckoning this puts us on a par with many of the top ranked commercial CMS vendors. But more importantly, we see our future in a significant new mid-market enterprise segment that's beginning to see the value of Supported Open Source and is questioning the license fee model."

"Near term, this new segment looks like setting itself at a total project spend - including software acquisition, development, training and support - of between $75,000 and $250,000.  But what's really interesting is the shape of these customers.  Because we take the license fee out of a customer's budget, at one end of the spending spectrum they tend to be firms punching above their weight and getting a highly specced system for less money.  Whilst at the other end, we're seeing more and more large corporates that want to adjust their cost-benefit model so that they spend high but get more value for money in terms of acquiring more project control and the freedom to highly customise the CMS to their specific business requirements through a proportional spend on our development services."

"In other words, we feel that the appetite for vanilla 'out of the box' commercially licensed solutions is starting to fade at the top end, whilst at the lower end we see people taking a more progressive and responsible view of CMS software development.  And we're winning big as both of these markets begin to fold into each other in traditional mid-range price points."

Notable new customer orders in this period included a new large-scale projects for several Australian Government agencies including The Department of Broadband and the Digital Economy. Plus a wealth of new orders from firms such as Fairfax Publishing, Informa Publishing, realestate.com.au, RSPCA, Shelter and Energy Australia.

For further viewpoints about the Serviced Open Source CMS market and how it continues to develop, see Stephen Morgan's recent blog post at: https://www.squiz.co.uk/about/blog/blogs/market_scope_for...

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About Squiz

Squiz is one of the world's leading open source software development companies. We give you control in a content-driven world.

Our open source CMS, MySource Matrix, helps leading organisations such as The Australian Federal Government and Informa to manage their content more efficiently and cost-effectively. It also helps top brands such as Boots and Homesite to sell more content and products to more customers via the web.

Squiz is a privately owned company, founded in Sydney Australia in 1998. Squiz has an international network of offices in Sydney, London, Szczecin, Wellington, Melbourne, Canberra, Hobart and Brisbane that provide a local service to hundreds of clients across a broad spectrum of industries.