14 years of open source pioneering

Here are 14 highlights: 

• Starting up an e-shop in 2000, selling Open Source and Linux all over Europe, was a daunting task to say the least :) But it worked! Thousands of boxes with Red Hat, SUSE, Mandrake and Debian Linux were shipping along with hundreds of T-shirts and stuffed penguins. 
• Also in 2000, we established partnerships with Red Hat and SUSE which are still partners today. Thanks for all those years! 
• 2001: starting up consulting activities, moving to our first actual office in Berchem and getting the first employee on board
• 2003: helping Telenet build an Antivirus/Antispam solution
• Buying Firstlink Networks in 2004: the starting point for Housingcenter, our managed hosting, cloud and datacenter infrastructure division.
• 2005: FedICT asked us to build Saferchat, based on open source technologies. Saferchat became a chat platform for children between 12 and 18 - where access was granted based on age and the use of their kidsID - the electronic passport. 
• 2007: Training Novell partners all over Europe for the SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 launch. 
• In 2008, Housingcenter expands to three datacenters, the basis for our Virtual Datacenter concept which became our cloud platform as of 2011
• 2008 -2009: we organized the Open Source Showcase event in Living Tomorrow, bringing upcoming open source technologies to our customers in a packed, single day event
• 2009: Again more expansion as we move to our current offices in Berchem, which established an extra dynamic throughout the whole organisation. And we have just added an extra floor of space in December 2013... ready to grow even more.
• 2011: In under four weeks, Housingcenter builds a private Cloud solution on tailor-made hardware for De Lijn. From no hardware to the delivery of hardware, installation, configuration of the VMware environment and hooking it up to the De Lijn network. 
• In 2012, Housingcenter wins the managed hosting contract, together with HP Belgium, for all online platforms of the Christelijke Mutualiteit. CM's new website goes live on that platform in December 2012.
• 2013: The first edition of the Open Source Cloud Day takes place, showcasing the cutting edge CloudStack and OpenStack cloud platforms.
• Building a Puppet configuration management and CMDB environment at Brussels Airport in 2013 but also for a young startup, showcasing that Open Source is literally everywhere!

Looking back at that list, I believe we have helped considerably in putting Linux and Open Source on the map in Belgium. We have always been about putting new and creative solutions in the hands of our customers, and have been doing the same in our Housingcenter division as well. 

None of this would have been possible without the help of :

• Our employees past and current: working with the same passion we have for this great company. We can't thank you enough.
• Our customers: showing confidence in our team, some of them even willing to jump off the deep end and pioneer together on cutting edge technologies. And it is great to see that  many of them have been with us for ten years or more.
• Our partners: Red Hat, SUSE, Zimbra, SkySQL/MariaDB, MongoDB, Canonical/Ubuntu, EnterpriseDB, IBM, ownCloud, Linbit/DRBD and on the Housingcenter side of it: Citrix, VMware, HP, F-Secure and CyberArk.
• Our friends and families: putting up with late nights, lost weekends but also sharing in the joy of projects won and delivered!

2014 looks like a year of full growth: both in the number of people in the organisation as in the services offered. We're looking forward to the upcoming year and to a huge birthday party for our 15th anniversary!