“A Grafieks story to be shared”
We embarked on a journey in the second half of 2019 to develop a true simple self-service Business Intelligence tool (unlike other products in the market) with a belief that people, businesses, and organizations everywhere can inspire and innovate with the power of data. In nutshell, we were and are on a mission to enable them with Grafieks.
We developed two flagship products and released the 1st version aka Beta in Nov 2021:
1) Grafieks Desktop: A desktop Business intelligence tool for connecting to a data source, building reports, and Dashboards.
2) Grafieks Reporting Server: SaaS application for publishing, sharing, and collaborating on uncovered insights hidden within data.
Both of these products were developed by one Lead developer/CTO and two interns, who later decided to work part-time on weekends and I worked on the product management side. While BI space was not new to me but product management role was. This was not the same for developers. Developing desktop and web-based applications was not new to the developers but the BI space was. Thereby, we had to be on the same page and coordinate on each functionality being developed in Grafieks. There was a great learning for us to work as a team. Within these three years, we had ups and downs but never let ourselves down when we didn’t have the solution for the functionality, as we worked as a team. Because of these, we learned many things and as a team, we grew stronger.
Fast forward to the second half of 2022. We have launched Grafieks desktop version 2 as an open source. But we have decided to keep Grafieks reporting server as a proprietary tool.
I guess you must be thinking, after working for 3 long years why did we decide to make the source code open.
The answer is: We wanted to align with our mission and we also believe that, opening up Grafieks desktop source code:
- will allow anyone to download source code, create an executable file, install it in their system and start working with data.
- will allow any developer, student, or teacher to deep dive into the source code, and learn and improve their programming skills.
- will allow seasoned developers to collaborate, enhance the code, add new features and build a community that believes the Business Intelligence tool should be very simple and easy to use.
- will help us pass on the knowledge to like-minded people. We see a better world when knowledge is shared.
- last but not least, as the product was created using open-source tools and codes, it will enable us to give back to the community.
Why Grafieks Reporting Server is not open source?
Grafieks Reporting Server is just a collaboration site, unlike Grafieks Desktop, where any dashboard or data source created in Grafieks Desktop can be published and shared.
In order to continue R&D, hire team members and continue contributing to Grafieks Desktop open-source repository, we have decided to keep the source code of Grafieks Reporting Server proprietary and make it a revenue stream.
