Archivista wins Swiss Open Source Award 2011

Zurich, 13 September 2011. We are extremely pleased to accept the Swiss Open Source Award 2011 today. Having won the Special Award, we are excited to be among the lucky winners together with OLAT (business category) Kolab Groupware (community category), Sascha Grossenbacher (junior category).

Since 2004/2005, Archivista GmbH has been focusing exclusively on the development of Open Source products. Thanks to the ArchivistaBox concept, we can offer a product that could not have been created without Open Source. Open Source is a good thing for many of our customers, but it is only thanks to Open Source and the box concept that we were able to achieve a level of automation in software development which gives us and our customers more freedom and increases efficiency while keeping costs low.

How else could we provide a 30-year guarantee for the data structures of the DMS? How else could we pack into the ArchivistaBox a web-based virtualisation solution using KVM without any configuration work? How else could we attain high availability directly from the USB flash drive if not for Open Source? Before using the ArchivistaBox, we typically needed a whole day for a classic installation on a customer server. With the introduction of the 32-bit version, we reduced the installation time to roughly 30 minutes – with the 64-bit version, the entire installation now takes only 1 to 2 minutes.

Today, when we need a test environment, we simply install the ArchivistaBox in the ArchivistaBox and after 1 to 2 minutes, the entire system (operating system and specialized applications) is available as a box-in-the-box solution. At the same time, the requirements of the ArchivistaBox are extremely modest. The ArchivistaBox comes as a box system that can fit on any desk. Our smallest box weighs 500 grams and can be used for a DMS, as a virtualisation server, as well as an ERP system. Starting this year, alongside the cluster system Archivista SwissRocket, we are also offering new rack systems. These can be used to implement redundant virtualisation clusters with up to 120 CPUs and 120 TB in 10 height units without the need for any additional components such as expensive 10G switches.

All these great features would not have been possible without Open Source. Thanks to Open Source, we are extremely competitive compared to other products (both Closed and Open Source). The Swiss Open Source Award 2011 was awarded to us for our long-standing commitment to Open Source. I would go a step further – there would not be an ArchivistaBox without Open Source. Thanks to Open Source, we can implement solutions for our customers which would not have been possible without it. As a result, Open Source has become essential for us – Open Source is (even after more than seven years) addictive! The best part is that, as an SME company, our customers and we are much less dependent than would have been the case if we had used Closed Source for our products. While we are hooked, Open Source also frees us.

The winners from left to right: Florian Gnägi (frentix), Georg Greve (Kolab), Urs Pfister (Archivista), Sascha Grossenbacher (Drupal).

Jury member, Matthias Guenther (IPI), said this about Archivista: “In Switzerland, Archivista was a pioneer in the area of combining Open Source and business solutions. By bundling it with hardware, Archivista has come up with a product the success and long useful life of which show how Open Source software can be used in critical areas of business.”