It seems like every day I find out about a new company or new organization that is using OpenNMS, and whether they purchase services for it or not I am just happy that people find it useful.

A lot of the advocacy for the project comes from the community itself, and that is one reason why we strive to keep the project side of OpenNMS separate from the commercial side. To me a user is a user, someone finding benefit from our work, whether or not they actually pay any money. The power of free and open source software is only realized when the software is truly free and open.

It is probably that attitude that also keeps us from sending out a press release every time we get a new commercial client. I am humbled by the pedigree of our client list, and I just feel a little uncomfortable advertising it. This doesn’t mean we won’t – I thought it was pretty cool when IdleAire chose OpenNMS mainly because I really like their product – but on the whole we prefer to be discreet.

This morning I was reading the news and I came across an article on CNN about Papa Johns Pizza. They just reached a milestone of US$1 billion in online sales. They were the first major chain to set up online ordering and it has really paid off.

And they use OpenNMS to insure it works.

Papa Johns has been an OpenNMS client for over three years. I really like those guys, and I’ve even been out to Louisville once. I can’t talk too much about their network (NDA) but they’ve really thought out this whole online ordering process and they can even deal with remote areas without broadband. Plus, I like their product, and I assume they like OpenNMS since they have been using it for so long.

Now if we can just get oven temperature into OpenNMS we’ll be set (grin).

While I was very much aware of how important online ordering was to their business, the “one billion” number was still a bit shocking to me. But even more shocking was the thought that we are indirectly responsible for protecting that service. It kind of brings home the fact that network management is just not some nice add-on but is integral to the bottom line.

OpenNMS often doesn’t get the respect I think it deserves, but the fact is that the project has been around for over 8 years and has reached a certain level of maturity and robustness. Enterprises trust it, and they trust our company to support it. Since commercial support is available, it can be (and has been) deployed in mission critical situations.

So congratulations to PJI for hitting this milestone. I hope that OpenNMS will insure they reach two billion quickly. Now if they would only open a Papa Johns in Pittsboro I could help with that.

[UPDATE: Similar story on Yahoo.]