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!

One of the very cool things about my role with Jama is the unique and diverse range of customers we have. When you get right down to it, most of our customers are using Contour for the same reason. However, it’s really exciting to learn the story behind our customers and learn what value they deliver to their clients. Micro Beef Technologies is one of those interesting stories.

Now that I have children (2 1/2 year old Parker and soon-to-be here Kellen), I often find myself thinking about safety. Safety pretty much consumes much of my thinking. It comes in every form from the toys they play with, to the clothes they wear, to cars they ride in. Mostly I find myself thinking about how safe the foods are they eat. Its weird how I pretty much threw anything down the hatch before I became a Dad. Now, I constantly read ingredients, pay close attention to expiration dates, etc… I totally annoy my wife with this by the way. But, I love the little stinkers so what’s a dad to do?

I also love beef. Micro Beef Technologies really caught my attention because they make systems that track cattle and are helping make the Beef industry much, much safer. Micro Beef Technologies is a cutting-edge, research and development based innovator of patented computerized management systems for comprehensive individual animal information collection and management decision making and has 35 years experience pioneering information, marketing, health, and nutrition systems. MBT introduced the beef industry’s first individual animal identification and food safety assurance tracking system in 1986 with the revolutionary DRUG-TRAC® Animal Health System which has individually tracked and managed millions of cattle. MBT’s ACCU-TRAC® Electronic Cattle Management System has utilized RFID technology since the early 1990s for individual animal data collection and traceback along with advanced management and marketing practices.

It’s really cool when a company that is committed to making the world a safer place wants to use your product in helping them achieve this. We look forward working with the team at Micro Beef Technologies.

The team at Jama would like to extend a warm welcome to Stauder Technologies for recently selecting Contour as their Requirements Management solution. Located in St. Peters, Missouri, Stauder Technologies has evolved into a leading provider of geodetic and communications software for the United States military. Stauder’s proven history of affordable, on-time solutions give our customers what they need, when they need it.

The highly-skilled system and software engineering team develops and integrates very complex technical products; however, the company’s focus is always on making the products intuitive and easy-to-use for the end-user. Mmmmmmm………..I think we may be onto something here. Contour was a great fit for Stauder for many of these same points. We look forward to delivering on this pursuit together.

Celebrating its twenty-eighth year of technical excellence, MacB has been providing the US government and prime contractors with technical and management services, quality studies and analysis, and IT solutions (both hardware and software) since 1980. With a long history of improving technology and processes with their clients, it is imperative that the emphasis on quality is the primary objective. So it is quite the compliment to our team when Contour is trusted to help our customers such as MacB get it right the first time. MacB is the perfect fit for Contour. They have an absolute commitment to excellence in their field and they will be using Contour right away on a project where they are improving the way their clients tackle their internal processes. It also goes without saying that quality can never be over-emphasized. Just ask the United States Air Force.

Welcome to the growing Jama Community, MacB!

Tectura Aerospace specializes in working with clients on unique and critical business processes that are complex, highly regulated and controlled, high risk, and leverage emerging technologies. By leveraging its extensive aerospace background, Tectura Aerospace assists companies both strategically and tactically to deliver long and short-term results. Focusing on unparalleled execution, working flexibly and collaboratively with clients, Tectura Aerospace ensures success. Not to mention – this company is a joy to work with as well.

Contour was chosen after a very comprehensive and thoughtful selection process and we couldn’t be prouder to win their business. It was specified that what won the day for Contour was 1) The ease in which a user could set up and manage trace relationships; 2) Contour’s clean, Ajax interface; and 3) Jama Software’s openness and unguarded company philosophy. I was particularly pleased with number 3 since this is something we truly strive for and it’s such a great feeling when a customer validates it as something that won them over. We can’t wait to get up to Seattle to train Tectura’s team and experience a little bit of their company culture as well. Welcome aboard Tectura!

Several years ago I took what I considered a leap of faith and had Lasik surgery performed on my eyes to correct my near sightedness. I look back at this decision as one of the best things I’ve ever done for myself. I was downright giddy for months about the little things like being able to read a street sign without squinting – or accidentally falling asleep with my contact lenses still firmly attached to my eyeballs. I left after my hour at the eye clinic feeling very impressed with the precision technology that was giving me a new found freedom. It dawned on me that those Doctors must really trust their equipment to move people so efficiently through this delicate surgery.

So it came as no surprise to me when OptiMedica approached us about their need to perform Risk Analysis and Hazard Reporting into the development of their precision laser equipment for treating retinal diseases. OptiMedica’s PASCAL Photocoagulator provides significantly improved performance for the physician and an enhanced therapeutic experience for the patient. Contour will help provide the design and development teams at OptiMedica with a central repository for storing all of their artifacts and then allowing them the flexibility to easily perform the custom reporting required by the key stakeholders as they move through the development life cycle.

We’re very excited about working with OptiMedica. Not only because they do something that’s very cool, but also because Contour is such a great fit for the developers of all Medical Devices. The fact that providing Traceability back to Test Cases is required for mandated approvals makes having a solution like Contour mission critical. No other solution can set up those trace relationships quite as easy as Contour. We welcome OptiMedica to our growing community of happy users!

With more than 300,000 products installed and flying over 30 million hours annually Dukes, Inc. is a proven world-class supplier to the aerospace industry. Dukes Inc, is able to provide its customers with over five hundred off-the-shelf designs which can typically be modified to meet unique requirements. Having a sound requirements management practice is critical in such a precision intensive industry. Having a web-based solution that is easily deployed and easy to learn will help Duke’s project teams rapidly adapt to the demanding challenges of new projects. The team at Jama is thrilled to welcome its latest addition of customers in the aerospace industry and look forward to helping Dukes meet customer expectations.