One of the things that I sincerely enjoy about meeting with customers is that they can often surprise you with a completely different point of view or cause you to reexamine some of the things that you’ve taken for granted.
Such was the case last week during a customer meeting when I was asked to talk about our “open kitchen” philosophy and how that applies to our product development, our roadmap, and our company.
What Do You Mean by Open Kitchen?
I’ll get to the customer’s perspective in a moment, but first, let’s talk about what an open kitchen is and how it applies to Nuxeo.
One of the true pleasures of working for a company that was originally founded in France is that I get to spend lots of time in Paris. And, this means access to some of the best food in the world. It helps that Eric Barroca, our CEO, is a gourmet and wine connoisseur and – though we may differ on the subject of Californian wines – he has introduced me to many wonderful restaurants in Paris. One of my personal favorites is Polissons, a little place that’s only a few blocks from our office in the 18th Arrondissement.
Like many French restaurants, Polissons has an open kitchen. As you can see from the picture, it’s right there, in the back of the restaurant, open for all to see. Why is this important? Because it means that you can see the quality and care that goes into each dish at the restaurant. You view all of the ingredients before your meal is cooked. You can watch the chef working at his craft and witness the step-by-step preparation of each plate. In short, an open kitchen means that you, the customer, get a first-hand view into how things are made which, many would argue, leads to a much better product in the end.
Welcome to the Nuxeo Kitchen - Hope You Like Open-Source Cooking!
So, if it works for French cooking, it should also work for software development, right?
At Nuxeo, our philosophy is simple: no secrets, no bullshit, just damn good code. This is the essence of the open kitchen. If you want to see the quality and care that goes into developing our software, simply take a look for yourself.
This begins with the fact that Nuxeo is open source software. All the ingredients of our platform are right there, on display, for all to see. You can find our software on GitHub and, if you are so inclined, you can even become a contributor to our code.
Transparent Product Roadmap. Public Benchmarks.
The latest version of our software is also available on our website. Simply go to Download Nuxeo Platform and there it is.
However, our open-kitchen philosophy doesn’t end there. If you want to see what’s on the menu, our product roadmap is published publicly. Yes, you read that right!
We’re so confident in our ability to innovate quickly and to deliver on our commitments, we publish the Nuxeo roadmap online for all to see. So, if you’re interested in what’s happening next at Nuxeo, simply click here or you can go to doc.nuxeo.com and view all of our documentation along with our complete product roadmap. I’ve included an example from our public roadmap on the right, which illustrates the work we’re currently doing for our next release to support custom machine-learning models for popular AI engines like Google Vision and Amazon Rekognition.
Still not transparent enough for you?
We also publish performance benchmarks for all of our product releases and for our weekly continuous integration updates. We’re so confident of the fact that Nuxeo is the most efficient, performant Content Services Platform on the market today, we publish all of the data to prove it. One caveat, if you want access to our benchmarks, you have to register. But, all of the data is here at benchmarks.nuxeo.com.
Open Source and Proud
By the way, I often get questions about Nuxeo and open source.
So, again for the record, yes, we are open source.
Yes, you can download the Nuxeo platform for free (see above). No, it is not a stripped-down version of our product, nor has it been limited in any fashion or form. And, you can also freely access all of our documentation online. So, if you want to download Nuxeo and begin developing on our platform, you are free to do so. And, after a simple registration, you can even get a 30-day trial of Nuxeo Studio, our SaaS tool that will make it easy to configure and develop new content applications on Nuxeo.
You might ask, what do Nuxeo customers get with an annual subscription? Well, to begin with, they get ongoing access to Nuxeo Online Services, which includes Nuxeo Studio and the Nuxeo Marketplace with over 60 plugins and packages that enable additional features and functionality for the Nuxeo platform. They also get full product support, enabling them to run Nuxeo in even the largest, most demanding enterprise environments.
In short, you get a lot for free with Nuxeo and we’re proud to be a true, open-source technology. But, of course, you get even more with a paid subscription.
A Culture of Transparency
And this brings me full circle to my customer meeting last week. After sharing our open-kitchen philosophy with this customer, I was somewhat surprised to hear the customer say:
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this before – a company that has the confidence to publish its roadmap and benchmarks publicly.
And that’s when I stopped, thought about it and realized – after 18 months at Nuxeo – I was taking for granted something that, with previous employers and in previous roles, would have been unheard of. Publicly publish our roadmap? Not a chance. Expose our performance benchmarks? No way. Let customers directly access our code and download our software for free? Never.
Nuxeo truly is different, and it all begins with our award-winning culture.
Quite simply, this culture of openness and transparency extends to everything we do. If you’re a customer or partner and want to know our future direction or business outlook, ask us. We’ll tell you. And, if you’re an employee or prospective employee, expect direct, open, and honest feedback regarding your performance or work product. Executive or individual contributor - it doesn’t matter.
Our singular goal is to produce the industry’s best Content Services Platform, and we believe that a transparent culture – an open kitchen – produces better products.
Again, our kitchen is open. Our ingredients are there for all to see. So are our recipes and all of our work product. No exaggerations. No unsubstantiated claims. No bullshit. Just good code.
This is the Nuxeo way. This is our kitchen. Please, come on in.