SilverStripe first open source web app to become Microsoft Certified

In July 2008 I spent a day at the Open Source Lab at Microsoft in the USA. This got me thinking of who in New Zealand would be a good candidate to engage with the Microsoft Open Source Labs to be added to the next group of Web Application Partners? I thought about SilverStripe?

I wrote about how the early days of this relationship unfolded in a post in March 2009:

Since then we have been on a journey together

heaps of people are trying out the Microsoft Web Platform Installer to install SilverStripe on Windows: about 45% of our downloads so far in April are using this, so we're seeing real demand for this.”

Microsoft WinCache (makes PHP faster on Windows) has hit GA status. Benchmarks for this using SilverStripe

SilverStripe CMS’ support for Windows was central to securing a significant website development contract with one of New Zealand’s largest local government bodies, the Greater Wellington Regional Council.

'“The recent upgrade of the council’s official websites (gw.govt.nz and metlink.org.nz) to SilverStripe CMS was a major initiative. Our choice to implement the SilverStripe solution was based on it being a user friendly and flexible product. In addition, it was important we could consolidate our IT infrastructure on Windows Server and SQL Server. This approach delivered simplified management of our websites and meant a centralisation of our web server stack to Microsoft technology was possible. SilverStripe CMS having 'Certified for Windows Server' status is important to Greater Wellington because it offers confidence that the overall solution is reliable and commercially viable.” said Brett Sangster, communications manager, Greater Wellington Regional Council.

SilverStripe Metlink Case Study

Earlier this year SQL Server support was added to the SilverStripe web platform installer.

Last week SilverStripe reached another milestone once again winning the NZ Open Source Project Award for 2010

nzosalogo

Today SilverStripe CMS became the first ever open source web app to become Microsoft Certified.

My favourite third party observation on this to date has been written by Scott Dahlgren over at thevarguy.com:

“For companies like SilverStripe, being aligned with a company like Microsoft creates huge momentum and opens up new markets and new customers that were not available before.  For the end user, there is freedom to chose the best solution that fits your need. On the surface is seems like a win-win-win. I just hope it stays that way.

If you haven’t already check out SilverStripe on the Web Platform Installer and join the 70,000+ developers who have downloaded the app to date.

Once again congratulations Siggy and the SilverStripe team!