eBay has announced an agreement to use open source content management system (CMS), Joomla, to launch a community portal as part of eBay’s internal analytics platform. Known as “community analytics,” the initiative will be accessible by all eBay employees (16,400), and will incorporate social aspects of active collaboration, including content creation, sharing and open discussion.

“eBay has always made it a key priority to encourage employees to collaborate and drive business innovation,” said Bob Page, eBay vice president, analytics platform, “We are working with the open source community to elevate insightful ideas and innovations across our company, from our greatest resources, our employees.”

With the largest commercial data warehouse in the world, more than 100 times larger than the Library of Congress, eBay requires immense computing capabilities to mine and decipher actionable data. The new community analytics initiative enables employees to source and analyze massive amounts of data to power ideas and learning across the company. eBay will also contribute back to the open-source community.

“eBay is a welcomed addition to the Joomla open source community,” said Ryan Ozimek, president of Open Source Matters, a not-for-profit created to provide organization, legal, and financial support to the Joomla project. “With such a large data demand, eBay is pioneering open-source employee-based projects for the enterprise.”

It’s no coincidence of course that this news comes on the first day of Joomla Day USA West 2010 being held on the eBay/PayPal North campus in San Jose, Calif. today through Sunday, Oct. 3. The event is showcasing the latest developments and best practices within the Joomla open source community, including a speech from Oliver Ratzesberger, senior director of analytics platform at eBay.

Cheers,
RBH