BitNami is going beyond the value-add of bundling popular open source “stacks” of software to start including popular plugins and modules for the software. BitNami is starting with WordPress and Drupal by adding popular plugins for each of the popular Content Management Systems (CMS).
We’ve covered BitNami before. The service started by offering pre-configured “stacks” of popular open source software to simplify deployment. Initially the offerings were binaries that would install self-contained stacks on Linux, Mac OS X and/or Windows. (Not all stacks run on all OSes.)
Over time the company has moved from offering just the binaries to also offering full virtual appliances, and finally to offering cloud images and Cloud Hosting to simplify cloud deployment.
Now BitNami is expanding scope once again to simplify deployment by adding popular modules to its stacks so users don’t have to.
With WordPress, BitNami is providing the All-in-one-SEO pack, JetPack, the Google Analytics plugin, Google sitemap generator, and the wptouch plugin. The only thing missing from my standard install here is the Bad Behavior plugin.
Drupal includes plugins for Apache Solr, Google Analytics, SMTP, an admin menu plugin, and several developer-oriented plugins.
BitNami, of course, is looking to get more users to adopt its stacks and sign up for its Cloud Hosting services. It will be interesting to see if adding in plugins makes a difference in adoption. This sort of packaging for the cloud is in its infancy, but I suspect we’re going to be seeing more of it from third-parties like BitNami and from PaaS providers.
