Fifteen years ago today, on September 1, 2004, David Hustace, Matt Brozowski and I formed The OpenNMS Group, Inc.

This was the fourth business entity to steward the OpenNMS Project, and would turn out to be the one with staying power.

The original OpenNMS Group office was in a single 10 foot by 15 foot room with just enough space for three desks. The landlord provided Internet access. By adopting the business plan of “spend less money than you earn” we managed to survive and grow. Now the company has its main office in Apex, NC, USA as well as one in Ottawa, Ontario, CA, with a satellite office in Germany.

The OpenNMS platform is being used to monitor some of the largest networks in existence, many with millions of devices. With the introduction of ALEC the team is bringing artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to network monitoring to provide the highest level of visibility to the most complex environments.

OpenNMS has always been lucky to have a wonderful community of users, contributors and customers. With their support the next fifteen years should be as great if not better than the first. I am humbled to have played a small part in its history.