eZ Publish Delivers Software Upgrades And Significant Growth

eZ Systems has had an exciting few weeks, including terrific earnings, a solid new release of its flagship content management system and nomination for a prominent open source content management award.Over the past few years, eZ Systems have made a name for themselves with eZ Publish, their open source content management software. They hit the 2.5 million download mark earlier this year, and show no signs of slowing down. As announced last week, eZ Publish is a finalist for Packt Publishing's 2008 Open Source CMS Awards. It's an honor to be nominated, goes the old saying, but it's even better to win, and voting on Packt Publishing's website is open until mid October.

In addition to the free open-source version of their content management software, eZ Systems offers a number of licensing options, some of which include a technical support subscription. That's apparently where the bulk of their revenue comes from, and they announced this past week that they enjoyed 583% growth in new subscription sales with a renewal rate of over 90% for the first half of 2008. These are incredible numbers and have given eZ Systems two profitable quarters in a row, their first ever.

Finally, I wanted to mention the release of eZ Publish 4.0.1, 3.10.1, and 3.9.5, various versions of their flagship content management system. Although they include just a handful of enhancements, these releases focus mainly on addressing some security issues and bug fixes, reportedly over 300 for eZ Publish 4.0.1 alone.

eZ Publish is a solid, well-regarded platform with a substantial user community, and is certainly worth a look for organizations considering an open source content management system. And 2.5 million downloads is pretty convincing, too.