Why did ProcessOne acquire Boxcar ?

As founder of ProcessOne, I’ve promoted since 10 years a vision made of real-time messages exchanged at an Internet scale. Together with ProcessOne team, we stayed true to that vision using the best technologies to make that ambition happen. Erlang is a dream environment to build fast and scalable real-time system. XMPP (eXtensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) is a protocol of choice to make people communicate over a federation of servers and a de facto standard today.

What we did is that we combined those two technologies to build the de facto standard component available to build Instant Messaging, Group Messaging, Social Messaging on a large scale. The software we have built is deployed on the largest chat deployments across the world. We have seen ejabberd in tens of thousands of deployments. We have seen ejabberd being adopted by large, renowed brands. We have invented protocols and extensions to push the messaging system further. We have traveled around the world to get those companies get the best of the tools we produced.

In a few years we’ve built the reference XMPP server, a tool that cannot get you fired for your choice because it is scalable and versatile. We are a small team, but we achieved something which still amaze me when I think again about it. We’ve been working in messaging for more than 10 years, delivering large scale highly scalable real-time platforms. I’m always proud to say that numerous renowned brands have trusted us to build their messaging services.

But, if you looked at what change in those ten years, what will strike you is that we went from a world where mobile phone where for most part just phones to a world of ubiquitous smartphones. The world of development quickly had to adapt to build apps, either native or HTML based, that were rich, interactive, able to tolerate for slow networks and changing conditions.

This evolution had been critical for us in several ways:

• wireless: We had to build our server platforms for different needs. Messaging was primarily done between servers and desktop connected by cables. Now the world is wireless. Our platform had to embrace mobility by offering network mechanism that add fault tolerance to make overall behaviour reliable and predictable.
• even more massive: With mobile devices in the picture, scale in term of number of devices that can connect to our platform immediately got more massive.
• ubiquitous: People expected not only chat, but information coming to them in real-time in a contextually relevant fashion, to any devices, from any system.
• for every developers: The system we used to build for carriers, device manufacturers,  large brands, media, social networks, are now needed by every one. We need to make our real time service a commodity for developers that every one can use easily to build amazing mobile services in a matter of days. Mobile development is increasingly demanding. We want to allow developers to focus on their core expertise, building great mobile applications with amazing user experience and provide the real-time server missing piece.

We’ve done a lot for mobile and on mobile in the past, for example:

• We have built mobile extensions to make ejabberd work under all conditions and incredible load. We made messaging traceable and highly reliable.
• We have built push notification service both for native mobile apps and web apps (mobile or not).
• We have built mobile clients demonstrating those features.
• We have carried out consulting assignments for large customers to help them make their real-time mobile app perform flawlessly under all networks conditions.

We have done a lot for mobile and on mobile in the past, …but yet two things were missing:

• The ability to get the first service and team that comes to mind if you think Mobile + Realtime. For many developers, ProcessOne was still the Erlang server-side company. We are still extremely good at it but we are so much more.
• The ability to connect our team to developers, to be known as the tool easy to use for every one, not only for large team of developers that want the best for their high-end platform.

Boxcar acquisition is a great opportunity for ProcessOne to get to the next steps of the same ambitious vision:

• Boxcar is a mobile service and a mobile brand. Taking over Boxcar service is our way to tell the world that we are really serious about mobile. Expect our company to walk on two legs: ProcessOne represents our excellence on real-time robust fault tolerant services. Boxcar is about mobile. Both brand will strengthen each other. Now if you think mobile and real-time mobile messaging and notification platform, we want to be your first name.
• Boxcar is a great addition to our real-time service and our push platform. We will merge the best of both systems to make it available to mobile developers of all size.

Now, mobile developers, you know that we are listening to you. Let’s connect and build great things together.