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Equinox Software Announces New Hosting and Support Services for Koha Libraries

Equinox Software, Inc. (www.esilibrary.com) announced two new hosting and support services for the Koha open source ILS to libraries. Koha on Demand is aimed at libraries looking for quick provisioning of new Koha databases. This service provides a modern, full-featured ILS with system administration managed by Equinox. Koha Dedicated Hosting provides a virtual private server (VPS) with Koha installed. This service is geared toward libraries looking to outsource the provisioning, hosting, and basic maintenance of a Koha database while still having direct access to customize and develop their Koha installations as they see fit.

According to Galen Charlton, Equinox vice president for data services, "Equinox Software will, of course, continue to support and develop Evergreen. However, we are taking advantage of in-house Koha expertise to be able to diversify our service offerings. In addition, we plan to build on our expertise in resource sharing in the context of a single ILS and extend it to encompass sharing among multiple ILSs."

There has been debate in the Koha community about certain issues regarding development and community assets. One of Equinox's advantages for Koha customers is the Equinox promise (http://blog.esilibrary.com/2009/09/16/the-equinox-promise). Full access to the source code will always be available to hosted customers, to use, modify, or redistribute under the terms of the General Public License (GPL). Furthermore, source code will be available in a form that makes it convenient for a customer to manage and submit contributions to the Koha project.

Created in 1999 by Katipo Communications for the Horowhenua Library Trust in New Zealand, Koha is the first open source integrated library system (ILS) to be used worldwide. The software is a full-featured ILS with a dual database design (text based and RDBMS) built to be library standards compliant. Koha's OPAC, staff, and self-checkout interfaces are all web applications. Distributed under the GPL, libraries are free to use and install Koha themselves or to purchase support and development service. For more information on Koha, visit http://koha.org or http://koha-community.org.

Founded by the original Evergreen designers and developers, Equinox Software is a growing team of skilled professionals who work to continue improving Evergreen, the consortial, open source ILS. Equinox not only continues to develop Evergreen but also consults, migrates, integrates, supports, and offers hosting packages for libraries that prefer not to maintain local servers. Equinox also engages and supports a rapidly expanding Evergreen community.

Source: Equinox Software