ClarkConnect Transition - Big Picture

Hello everyone. For those of you who followed the ClarkConnect transition over the last half of 2009, this will be a summary of the announcements made earlier in 2009 (#1 and #2).

Seeds of Change

In mid-2009, ClearCenter acquired key assets - including ClarkConnect - from Point Clark Networks. With new resources and capabilities in place, we were able to deliver on several new and exciting initiatives in a short 6 month time frame:

Relaunched ClarkConnect as ClearOS
Renewed our commitment to open source with the creation of the not-for-profit ClearFoundation
Added business team members
Expanded the talented open source team
Added new sales and marketing resources
Developed new software features
Created new antimalware/antivirus and antispam services
Improved help and documentation

With our new resources and capabilities, along with our commitment to the community, customers and partners, we are ready for new and exciting times ahead!

New Name, Open Philosophy

Open source is important to us. As most of you know, ClarkConnect was always an open source product and ClearOS has certainly continued that tradition. Following the lead of The Mozilla Foundation, Apache Software Foundation and the Linux Foundation, we made the decision to house the open source ClearOS software in a not-for-profit organization. This will not only protect the source code, but also provide structure to pursue the ClearFoundation mission.

This is much more than just a "re-branding" of course. With the name change will come a philosophical change -- our intention is to make ClearOS an open project. For a variety of reasons, ClarkConnect was never promoted as an open source platform with external contributions. We have now thrown that philosophy out the door! Over the first half of 2010, all of the ClarkConnect source code will move to the ClearFoundation. From now on, add-ons, feature changes, bug fix patches and contributions of any kind will be welcomed and encouraged.

Products and Services

We also have to run a business of course. In August 2009, we unveiled ClearCenter at the CompTIA Breakaway event. ClearCenter is company focused on building the best solution for small and distributed environments. The company offers:

Expanded support packages for ClearOS
New antimalware/antivirus and antispam services
Hardware appliances and certification (2010)
Consulting services to help get your server/gateway infrastructure up and running

Current Users -- So Now What?

So where does that leave current ClarkConnect users? You can find more information about the transition here.

Finally...

We sincerely hope you'll join us as we take our next steps in this exciting journey.

Sincerely,
The ClarkConnect Team