acquia

With the Open Source Conference (OSCon) and IDG's LinuxWorld show in the rearview mirror of 2008, it is clear that open source is no longer just a trendy conversation.

What has happened is a clear evolution of a community that has grown up and produced intelligent, cutting-edge technologies with an eye on making computing faster, smarter and cheaper for corporate users. Companies like Openmoko are challenging the mobile device market with its notion that users should control what applications are installed. Others like XAware and SnapLogic are opening up data integration possibilities, and still more are tangling with virtualization, databases, and trading systems. Along with a company accurately called Untangle, the companies' point is to make computing less complex.

The decision is no longer a question of open source, but about what product is best at solving computing problems regardless of how it was built.

Here is a look at 10 companies to watch.

Loopfuse and Acquia have announced the availability of the Loopfuse Integration module for Drupal. The module links Drupal installations to the commercial Loopfuse OneView automated marketing product. The module, funded by Acquia and Loopfuse, was developed to connect the Acquia website to OneView, and has been donated to the Drupal community and is available to download at Drupal.org.

Loopfuse OneView is aimed at small to medium-size organizations, offering an ‘all-in-one’ online marketing and sales solution. Oneview is a ‘full-featured marketing automation suite’, incorporating marketing campaign implementation and tracking, generating and tracking leads from a Website, full analytics support, and CRM integration with ‘most major vendors’.

We think this is a pretty good example of the Drupal project benefitting from Acquia’s forays into the commercial realm.