O Canada!
Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all thy sons command.
With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free!
From far and wide, O Canada,
We stand on guard for thee.
God keep our land glorious and free!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.

I’m sorry – but I felt the urge to salute our brothers to the north. I’m not certain what’s going on in Canada right now -perhaps the exchange rate – but Contour is striking a major chord up there. As Mike mentioned in previous blog entries, we have customers all around the globe now and its fitting that we are getting such traction up in Canada. We love those guys! I mean seriously – think of the nicest person you’ve ever met in your life and I bet that guy was a Canadian. I mean who doesn’t like the Canadians anyways? All right, I’m done with my rant.

I know a cool company up in British Columbia that thinks Contour is a pretty darn good fit for their development efforts. Bycast is the leading provider of grid powered storage management software that simplifies the management of massive fixed-content storage systems. Bycast software protects data and simplifies the toughest challenges associated with the management of storage systems. Bycast software enables organizations to optimize their storage infrastructure and ensures the integrity and availability of their valuable data assets. This also enables the formation of regional archives that can scale to petabytes of data across hundreds of sites.

We are happy to have Bycast join our rapidly growing community and look forward to a long, successful relationship. Eh!

If you ever make it to the the Big Island of Hawaii you’ll notice two rather large volcanoes that cover the landscape. One in particular is pretty hard to miss since its usually belching molten lava into the air. The other lesser known volcano, Mauna Kea, is quieter indeed – but that doesn’t mean its any less exciting. On the contrary.

The summit of Mauna Kea is home to the world’s largest optical and infrared telescopes. Each stands EIGHT STORIES TALL and weighs 300 tons, yet operates with nanometer precision. At the heart of each Telescope is a revolutionary primary mirror. Ten meters in diameter, the mirror is composed of 36 hexagonal segments that work in concert as a single piece of reflective glass.

Made possible through grants totaling more than $140 million from the W. M. Keck Foundation, the Observatory is operated by the California Association for Research in Astronomy (CARA), whose Board of Directors includes representatives from the California Institute of Technology and the University of California. In 1996, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) joined as a partner in the Observatory. The Keck I telescope began science observations in May 1993; Keck II began in October 1996.

Its exciting for us a Jama to be connected to yet another great team with an incredible application – working in an incredible place. If you get a moment, you should visit www.keckobservatory.org and check out some breath taking images from the summit. Its really quite something.

As I look out my window on this dreary January day in Portland, I can only hope that my boss puts me on a plane to go visit our newest customer in paradise. Welcome W.M. Keck!

It’s cool when a customer finds your product by an organic web search, decides to purchase, and they turn out to be in your same neighborhood. This is what happened when Blackwell Book Services made the executive decision to improve the way they manage project data and collaboration. It just so turns out that the Jama Software headquarters is just up the road from the gang at Blackwell.

Since 1879 Blackwell has been supplying libraries with the finest books and most comprehensive bibliographic support. Now Blackwell serves libraries all over the world, with headquarters in the U.K., U.S. and Australia. Their mission says it all: Be the partner of choice in building great library collections. Provide innovative solutions to the challenges created by the rapidly changing ways information is published, distributed, and accessed.

Another fun group of people for us to share ideas with, get to know better, and provide a solution that’s inline with their big picture.

Welcome aboard Blackwell!