The research activity of the Belgian software company Outerthought gets a serious boost from IWT - the Flemish agency for Innovation by Science and Technology, in collaboration with the Innovation Center East-Flanders and University of Ghent MMLAB/IBBT.
Since 6 years, Outerthought has been the producer of the successful open source CMS 'Daisy', which is in use with large and small organisations both locally and abroad for applications such as knowledge, website and document management. The success story of Daisy now gets a sequel with a research project on scalable and searchable storage using NOSQL technology, making Outerthought a innovation leader in this area.
NOSQL is an evolution in the area of data storage, based on the misfit of relational database technology for internet-scale systems. NOSQL sits at the foundation of the storage- and indexinfrastructure of Google, Facebook and Amazon. The new product 'Lily' will be the first content repository going solidly NOSQL. Through a smart integration with sophisticated index- and searchtechnology, Lily will offer a boundless content repository, which combines the interactivity and searchability of web applications with the capacity for growth even beyond enterprise storage and archival systems.
"Lily allows us to rise above the tar pit of Web CMS systems", says Steven Noels, managing partner at Outerthought, "and lets us focus on our strengths of top-technologists and builders of robust infrastructure software. The standards are high for Lily, but our experience is our advantage, and was also the basis of our positive grant evaluation."
Outerthought has considerable experience with open source software development, and this successful grant is also the result of teamwork. The original findings of the research will be validated by the University of Ghent MMLab/IBBT experts against the state of the art in (meta)data modelling. The Innovation Center of East-Flanders assisted with the administrative work of the proposal.
"This is an important step in the institutionalisation of our research efforts," explains Steven, "we want to create a permanent research cel in our organisation which allows us to better showcase our competencies to the outside world. The support of this government grant allows us as an SME to move more swiftly and decisively in this direction."
The first research results and Lily pilots are expected around Summer, and Outerthought is currently on the lookout for partners for commercialisation and exploitation. The open source model allows for maximum flexibility in this respect.
The Flemish Government wants to stimulate innovation in Flanders. Therefore, it grants IWT annually the budgets necessary to finance research and development by and for Flemish companies.
Contact: Steven Noels / +32 9 338 82 20 / Outerthought / Technologiepark 3 / 9052 Zwijnaarde / stevenn@outerthought.org