When our founder, Shaun Walker, created the first version of DNN on Dec 24, 2002 he never imagined the impact it would have on the .NET ecosystem... or anticipated that it would still be so widely used more than two decades years later.
Three years ago, in 2020, he did a presentation at the dnnGLOBAL.ca virtual conference event titled "Migrating from DNN to Oqtane". The session was focused on the risks and realities of using legacy software and the approaches for mitigating those risks through an effective migration strategy. Coincidentally a few weeks later, Mitchel Sellers published an "official" announcement on behalf of the DNN Technical Advisory Group which stated that there was no plan to migrate the DNN platform to a modern version of .NET.
In the years since, the DNN ecosystem has experienced a gradual decline of its stakeholder community including users, vendors, consultants, hosting providers, and open source contributors.
From a commercial perspective, the Evoq CMS product was acquired by ESW Capital in 2017. ESW Capital's business model is to provide basic support and maintenance services for mature enterprise products... and double the license cost every year. Customers are now being quoted as much as $200,000 for an annual support license of Evoq in 2024.
Based on the above, it is not hard to conclude that there are many DNN users who are feeling anxious about the future. And as time goes on, the need for an effective migration strategy becomes increasingly more critical.
If you are a DNN user and are interested in discussing your options, please feel free to reach out. We are happy to discuss how Oqtane (a new modern open source project based on DNN’s core concepts) may be a viable path forward. We can also discuss other potential technology approaches as well... as it is always important to consider multiple options.