Open source contract win for Opmantek

Peter Dinham
Tuesday, 09 August 2011 21:33

IT Industry - Deals

Australian open source software vendor, Opmantek, has secured a global agreement with farming machinery multinational John Deere to provide a full customised support package with add-on modules to support deployment of its Network Management Information System (NMIS).

Under the agreement John Deere's global deployment of Opmantek's NMIS software  will be supported and customised from Opmantek's Gold Coast based Centre of Innovation with an annual agreement.

Opmantek acquired and launched a new release of NMIS, one of the first developed open source software programs, which the company says is now used by over 10,000 organisations worldwide.

The company was formed by the founders of NMIS, who developed the software over the past 12 years, and now license the open source software, allowing modifications by customers and developers.

According to Opmantek CEO, Danny Maher, the company has developed a unique business model to capitalise on the popularity of NMIS with support services, customisations and add-on software modules allowing it to keep its core software free while providing enhanced services and modules to users at a cost.

Maher said the contract with John Deere, is Opmantek's first high profile signup for a full customised support package with add-on modules.

'Signing up John Deere has been a major coup for us, and the fact that they are utilising our support and customisation services for their global operation is a great validation of our business model and targeted approach.

'It's a massive value proposition for customers, who are able to use the standard version of the product for as long as they like without having to hand over any money, but may contract us to support their deployment and leverage our commercial services.'

Maher said the American agriculture giant has implemented NMIS for management of their systems worldwide, and he claims the global response to the new offerings has been exceptional.

'We've recently released version eight of the software which has experienced massive uptake,' and he added, 'this new version is being downloaded at an astounding rate of once every 45 minutes and the virtual appliance technology we developed in parallel is being purchased by someone every three days.'

And, Maher also said the NMIS system is used by such a large number of blue-chip organsations worldwide, and presents a 'huge pool of opportunity' for Opmantek.

Predicting several more significant client announcements in the coming months, Maher said the company's increasing base of investors is 'thrilled with this announcement and the interest shown by the greater industry.'