SEATTLE, WASHINGTON -- (Marketwire) -- 11/13/12 -- Socrata, the leading provider of cloud-based open data systems, today announced the "Socrata Open Data Server, Community Edition," to be offered as an open source reference implementation for open data standards. Designed expressly to promote data portability throughout the open data ecosystem, and support open source software policies in public organizations around the globe, the "Socrata Open Data Server, Community Edition" will be released in the first quarter of 2013, as freely downloadable open source software and fully integrated with other components of the company's commercial software products.

To learn more about the proposed open data standards, or to get involved in this community effort, please visit http://open-data-standards.github.com.

A Huge Leap Forward for the Open Data Movement

A key goal of the Socrata open source strategy is to enable customers to rapidly accelerate the process of breaking data out of traditional enterprise database "silos," moving it to the cloud and opening it for mass consumption to end users and developers. Socrata's mission is to help government organizations everywhere reap massive economic benefits from data liberation by promoting unfettered access, shareability, consumability and reuse of public data.

"Socrata is investing in an open source product because it will help us accelerate mainstream adoption of the open data cloud model as the de facto enterprise data architecture. We envision a future where the 99 percent of data still locked up in legacy proprietary systems will be open and accessible to the masses," says Kevin Merritt, Socrata's Founder and CEO. "As the volume, variety and velocity of open data grow, the scalability, cost-savings, and end-to-end simplicity of our cloud-based platform become even more compelling to our customers."

Promoting Vendor Interoperability and Data Portability to Spur Downstream Innovation

The "Socrata Open Data Server, Community Edition" will support the ongoing development of open data standards in three key areas, that are required for a thriving open data ecosystem:

1. Data Catalog Interoperability - Enable universal federation of different open data catalogs using a standard catalog schema, based on the W3C Data Catalog Vocabulary (DCAT).

2. Data Portability Based on Standard Data Formats - Standardize outputs including JSON, XML, and CSV, as well as RDF and other Linked Data standards. The goal is to evolve towards standard schemas that developers can use for popular data sets, based on real-world examples and collaboration between data publishers.

3. Application Portability Based on Open Data API Standards - Standardize the Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) used to programmatically access open data, using established paradigms and protocols such as REST, HTTP, and Structured Query Language (SQL).

"Socrata is constantly inventing new products that help people visualize and contextualize data in consumer-friendly web and mobile experiences, and as machine- and developer-ready APIs. We are part of a broader ecosystem that is creating massive downstream benefits and economic incentives for government to open the data floodgates," adds Kevin Merritt. "It's not enough to reduce friction in the supply of data, we also need to hardwire interoperability and data portability into the open data experience, to keep everybody honest and create a financially-sustainable business model for the entire ecosystem to thrive."

The "Socrata Open Data Server, Community Edition" will be available in Q1 2013. To learn more about the proposed open data standards, or to get involved in this community effort, please visit http://open-data-standards.github.com.

About Socrata

Socrata develops and provides Intelligent Data Experience solutions - including our market-leading Open Data Cloud(TM) - to help data-savvy organizations unlock their data, to transform the way they share information, deliver digital services, make data-driven decisions, and benefit from innovations in modern data ecosystems on the internet.

The Socrata Data Experience Platform(TM) optimizes the entire data lifecycle, from capture and collection, to distribution and consumption on web, mobile and machine-to-machine interfaces (APIs). Socrata customers are able to cost-effectively virtualize large and diverse data assets to the Socrata cloud, then easily surface that data as accessible information experiences, optimized for a wide range of user contexts.

Socrata customers include the world's most innovative cities like Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, and New York; progressive states like Oregon, Illinois, Maryland and Colorado; and forward-thinking federal agencies like Medicare, EnergyStar, SAMHSA and GSA (Data.gov). Internationally, Socrata powers leading open data programs at the World Bank, the United Nations, the government of Kenya, as well as in Italy and Australia.

Socrata is a private company, based in Seattle, Washington, with venture financing from Frazier Technology Ventures and Morgenthaler Ventures. To learn more about Socrata, visit www.socrata.com.