Cignex Announces Completion of Goldegg Initiative to Strengthen Open Source CMS for the Enterprise; Results Include Tighter Integration of the Plone Stack; Framework Team Responsible for Managing Roadmap Development.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Cignex, the deployment leader in open source consulting and software services, today announced the completion of the first phase of the Goldegg Initiative, Goldegg One (www.goldeggstack.com).

The Goldegg One project team worked to establish a roadmap for Plone that accomplished two things:

--To encourage enterprises who have not yet adopted the Plone stack for Content Management System to try the technology.

--To protect the technology and resource investments made by existing users.

The key project successes include:

--Rollout of the roadmap to adopt the new Zope 3 component architecture in the new release of open source Plone CMS platform.

--The formation of a Framework Team to guide this roadmap.

--Strengthening of the Plone CMS stack to enable existing users in adoption of the new Zope 3 component architecture.

--Improved integration capabilities to make Plone CMS a viable alternative for businesses looking to deploy large-scale systems.

"Cignex's goal with Goldegg was to encourage a more focused development effort around making Plone a robust system for content management," said Munwar Shariff, Plone Foundation board member and Cignex CTO. "With the adoption of a roadmap, and the creation of the Framework Team, we believe that we have taken critical steps to making Plone a viable alternative for enterprises looking to deploy a content management system."

"Plone is well-recognized in open source content management, but lacks broad visibility outside the community," said Paul Everitt of the Zope European Association (ZEA). "The work we began in Goldegg lays the foundation for putting Plone at the top of the list for enterprises looking to deploy flexible, easy-to-use, and scalable content management."

Co-funded by a large Cignex customer in the public sector, Goldegg was initiated by Shariff and Everitt. The project included more than 26 developers from about 17 companies across 6 countries, and the involvement of critical community leaders -- one of the largest groups of open source experts and innovators in the content management industry -- to make the open source Plone CMS a viable alternative for enterprise content management.

More about Plone

Plone is an out-of-the-box ready content management system that is built on the powerful and open source Zope Application server. It requires minimal effort to set up, is deeply flexible, and provides you with a system for managing web content that is ideal for application portals, extranets, intranets, and custom web applications. Organizations as diverse as Oxfam America, Vote Watch, NASA Jet Propulsion Labs, even eBay's developer information website, choose Plone for being easy to understand and use. In order to be adopted broadly by enterprises however, the Plone application must be more tightly integrated with its underlying stack and supported by a migration path for future upgrades.

More about Zope 3

Zope 3 is an open source web application server primarily written in the Python programming language built on "component architecture." It features a transactional object database which can store not only content and custom data, but also dynamic HTML templates, scripts, a search engine, and relational database (RDBMS) connections and code. It features a strong through-the-web development model, allowing you to update your web site from anywhere in the world. Organizations such as Viacom, NATO, AARP, and SGI use Zope technology to power their websites.

About Cignex

With more than 50 successful open source deployments, Cignex (www.cignex.com) leads the industry in providing open source consulting services and software solutions for business. Cignex customers include companies in education, healthcare, government and high tech, such as Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, Epson Electronics America, University of North Carolina Healthcare, University of North Carolina School of Medicine and OKI Semiconductor. Cignex is privately held and based in Santa Clara, Calif. The company was founded in 2000 and has been profitable since inception.