Drupal – An Ideal Open Source Content Management System

Index
This presentation gives an insight on why is Drupal an Ideal Open Source CMS for an enterprise:
An overview of Drupal
What makes Drupal a strong fit for enterprise websites?
Benefits of Drupal
Key Features of Drupal
What makes Drupal a strong & viable product
What do customers, markets & analysts say about Drupal
Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Externally Facing Social Software
eDynamic’s Expertise in Drupal

Drupal’s social publishing system found its niche place amongst many. After being downloaded over 2 million times since its commencement, it moots its supremacy over 400,000web sites globally. Inclusive of an enterprise class content management system, Drupal delivers an array of web applications boasting of single or multi-user blogs, wikis, community networks, digital media portals e-commerce, the works! A magnanimous percentage of companies today are totally addicted to its use. Biggies like Sony BMG, Warner Brothers Records, the New York Observer, Forbes, Disney, Intel, Harvard University, and Amnesty International are but a few names that have succumbed to its charms. It’s not surprising to monitor a gigantic community that swears by Drupal, with thousands of active contributors vying for its open source technology. About Drupal

Intriguingly, Drupal began its journey as a college experiment. In the year 2000, when permanent Internet connections were scarce and those that were demanded a premium for some Universities; a wireless bridge between student dorms was set-up for sharing an ADSL modem connection amongst a bunch of roomies. As word spread gradually, work began on a small news site with a built-in Web board, allowing a larger group of friends to leave each other notes and messages. As the technology spread even further, naming conventions were formed, and a suitable domain name was on the cards. Dries Buytaert, an open-source software programmer and the founder and lead of the Drupal CMS then thought of placing a name for his Web board, and he settled in for 'drop.org' after he made a typo to see if the name 'dorp.org' was still available. Dorp is the Dutch word for 'village‘ ,something he thought was betting for the small community. As days flew by, the message board, which got its name, thanks to a typo, which evolved in to an open source project, was named Drupal in 2001. Drupal actually is a name derived from the Dutch word“ druppel", meaning "drop" or a water droplet . Written in PHP, the Open Source content management system runs on a LAMP stack, now empowering close to 200,000 public facing Web sites with numerous other sites tucked. safely under its belt. Needless to mention it is a familiar name all across the world, with a never growing number of contributors. Overview of Drupal

Why is Drupal an Ideal Open Source CMS for an enterprise Being a powerful platform, Drupal is one open source content management system that allows users to easily publish, manage and share a wide variety of content on the Internet. What’s more, Drupal is also excitingly flexible! You can create corporate and community websites in a ash, while managing teams, host discussions, run polls, communicate and use innumerable forms of productivity-enhancing features with minimal effort. A brilliant mix of the traditional web content management features and the now-so important social features, the tool also enables open communication and participation. While its flexibility helps a tad lot of applications, its modularity provides a strong foothold for companies seeking to build sites at lightning speed and at lower cost than most others. Drupal is perhaps the ideal platform, where dynamic features like question-and-answer forums, live video streaming, and collaborative tools work efficiently while bonding with the site‘s infrastructure.

So what makes Drupal a strong fit for enterprise websites? No guesses for bagging that one really as Drupal is truly the ideal open source CMS for managing large-scale enterprise websites. Thus to reiterate in brief, it provides the following: 1. Rapid business sector adoption 2. Modular architecture 3. No vendor lock-in 4. Backed-up by an expert company - Acquia 5. Community supported

Game for benefits? With Drupal there are truckloads of them for an enterprise
Cost effective: As is with any tool, Drupal is a free and open-source that is a bit of both. At lower costs, such that doesn’t mandate any licensing fee, the system is immensely traditional to vendor solutions. Moreover, Drupal sprints on LAMP stack, so while you save your moolah on hosting, you also save an awful lot on web servers and databases. What’s even better is that you aren’t limited to LAMP alone, as Drupal marries itself with just about any other platform.
Standards Compliant: It also uses standard-compliant methods such as XHTML, segregation of content and layouts through CSS along with squeaky clean URLs that make sites more accessible and improve search engine ranking.
Supported: There is an active developer and user community that participates in mailing lists, forums, and IRC. Acquia supports the developers and the community by offering support and development using Drupal. Acquia Drupal by the way is the free, packaged Drupal distribution that provides a quick on-ramp for building Drupal websites.
Here to stay: While Drupal has been in this tumultuous and continuous development for over eight years, the same group of primary developers have refined and improved the code quite recently.

Why is Drupal an Ideal Open Source CMS for an enterprise
While this version encourages more people to create additional modules, the group also contributes patches, and writes vital documentation. Murmur has it (something that’s been rather a roar than a murmur really!) that its growing momentum has been noticed by several new corporate websites. For several companies, their innate wish is to handle their project - the Drupal way.
What enterprise adopters say about Drupal?
There are several challenges when new software, tool or even an application is born. And then there are some that are sure shot winners. Drupal, must we add, is one of them. Here’s why:
Its fully integrated social tools are tied to one’s content
There’s always an avoidance to a vendor lock-n
It’s a new breed, en route to being one of the fastest platform
Being fast, Drupal is also wonderfully scalable
What’s more – it also encompasses a large pool of available talent.

To summarize following are some key features of Drupal
1) Security
Enterprise puts security first. Drupal offers a host of security features! These are fresh, out of the box, and best of all, they are compatible with most commercial software.
Audit trails: This helps to keep track of the activities performed by users.
Content approval: Get pleased with editing content workflows.
Granular privileges: Set permissions, be on the prowl to demand and do what you choose.
LDAP, NTLM, OpenID Authentication: There are over a zillion ways to log into the site.
SSL compatible: Drupal also gives you the pleasure of running under HTTPS , completely and/or partially.

2) Ease of Use
Software adoption and the learning curve is a major concern for most enterprises. While not all of them go hand in hand, you are sure to get that solace with Drupal. It excels in providing features and functionalities that make life a lot easier. It’s also breezy for the content administrators managing the website.
Drag-n-Drop content: This one’s a quick and easy way to re-arrange, re-group content using your mouse.
Image resizing: Change the image size automatically into pre-defined thumbnail sizes. As this feature alienates manual handling, images that are defined by you, stay that way!
Mass upload: This is one function that is simply too good to be true! All you do is zip by, upload and process attachments and images all at one go!
WYSIWYG editor: While you edit content on a desktop word processor, you can also interface with a robust toolbar of features.
Spell checker: Check content for any spelling errors as you go – without being bound by the external software.

3) Enterprise Search Indulge in a scavenger hunt through all your web content including document attachments of multiple file formats, auto-complete functionality, spelling suggestions and customizable output of search results. Don’t ever let searching for stuff be a pain! Key Features of Drupal

4) Integration with Content Delivery Platforms Additionally, Drupal has modules that can integrate with BrightCove, Akamai and several other content delivery platforms, all in all improving your website performance. Key Features of Drupal

4) Scalability Drupal can run virtually on any database including MySQL, SQL Server, PostgreSQL andOracle, its scalability is only limited to the knowledge and experience of the technical staff deploying the Drupal site. But what’s appealing is that Drupal can scale to support very large enterprise websites. While there's nothing preventing Drupal from being scaled across any number of webservers, its scalability of open-source databases such as MySQL and PostgreSQL is anongoing issue. Additionally, Drupal has modules that can integrate with BrightCove, Akamai and several the content delivery platforms, all in all improving your website performance. Replicating databases is not always the solution and nor is the reason to be contented enough, so it’s no secret that a very small percentage of websites, daily user visits are counted not in hundreds or thousands but score that’s much more. As a platform, Drupal is a dream; without the apprehension of being built with a preset volume of traffic or throughput. Moreover it is limitless on its scalability. Key Features of Drupal Continued…

4) Scalability In fact, the current version of Drupal offers several mouth-watering opportunities for organizations to build and strengthen their scalability. In time to come, as the platform matures, several die-hard developers will soon be eyeing opportunities based on Drupal’s innate talent of scalability, rather than any particular module. Database sharing too is but a prime example of Drupal development moving towards greater performance. Sharing the database allows it to reside across multiple physical machines – effectively removing the traditional barrier to scalability. Currently, Drupal proudly empowers about 1 percent of Websites, trailing WordPress, running about 8.5 percent of the Web, according to sources. What’s pivotal is to understand Drupal’s scalability there are other opportunities for improvement. Open source software on the whole has the agility to meet challenges at the pace of innovation. Several organizations are aghast with the sea-like flexibility and changes that have been created after the birth of Drupal and consequently, there are several high decibel thoughts on software investment and ownership. We have listed some of the benefits, here’s what Drupal can also manage with Content Management. Key Features of Drupal

5) Content Management
It can create, manage and control content.
It can help in the usage of editorial workflows to manage content lifecycle.
It also possesses user templates to publish contents.
Untarnished document management.
Allows the storage and organization of documents, images, attachments – virtually any content.

Backed up by Acquia to be enterprise ready Drupal is backed up by Acquia – a company founded in 2007 by the original creator and project lead of Drupal, Dries Bartaert. Acquia engineers work with Drupal’s community to fix bugs, to implement missing features, when they are not writing documentation or helping sponsors and organizing community events. Acquia’s success is driven by the overall success of its predecessor, Drupal whose project at large is a story in itself, stands alone, unaffected by the demands of any one customer. The company is thus able to look broadly across Drupal as it identifies gaps to be filled in contrast to other companies. Acquia today has positioned itself as a strong contributor within the community's overall effort to make Drupal even better. With every passing day, Acquia invests into making Drupal enterprise a tad more compatible than it was! According to sources, selling services or hosting software is the way to go for any company doing business in open-source (RedHat, Bryght,Zimbra to name a few), but the actual need today lies in services surrounding products like Drupal for sure. People need websites, but companies use web agencies. Individuals use blogs, geeks install Drupal themselves; the charm of Drupal never seems to rest! So what is it that makes Drupal a strong & viable product

So what do customers, markets & analysts say about Drupal Drupal's marketing resources provides market and promotional material for the software. Drupal assists those who publish stories by providing anything from its logo to informational leaflets or additional text and references for a report. For starters, Drupal — no matter how friendly Acquia and the community make it — is stil la download and all you install is a bundle of software. It's also one known for having a fairly steep learning curve. Analyst’s feel that the curve can be addressed to some extent, unless there are changes made to the complete model al togeher. However it is a fact that Drupal’s download, configuration, installation and server management could possess minor issues. Staying abreast is a tall order for Drupal; one that can be dimmed that easily, as the web content management system market becomes a crowded place. On the flipside, Drupal has some great things going for it. The architecture has a grace about it an with a thriving community, the LAMP platform too scores high. Open source is increasingly accepted in the enterprise. With Acquia today there is lies a funded organization working to make Drupal more attractive and critical to enterprise IT managers.

The social software market is evolving fast; at the point of being very rapid. In response to this Gartner is working on a presentation that places each of the social software players on a pedestal. It compares the different players in the enterprise market, including open-source projects like Drupal.
As part of that process, Acquia was also invited to review the presentation and provide comments about the social software landscape and of course on Drupal's success stories.
These success stories, important as they are in Gartner’s analysis, also help it positioning Drupal against its ever growing competitors. Gartner considers three different use cases for social software:
Team collaboration software,
Community software and
Networking software.

Each of these scenarios has varied requirements that naturally emphasize its vivid features of social software. User profiles and group support carry a lot of weight in their evaluations. Thus in each of these use cases, Gartner considers two different deployment scenarios:
Sites inside the workplace
Externally facing websites
While publishing their Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2008 back in October 2007 at their Gartner Symposium/ITXpo event, they mulled over the good fortune the IT industry had garnered in the form of the Social Software category. The category included many different point technologies including blogs, wikis, tagging, bookmarking, and social networking.
And the greatness about Drupal is that it does all of this AND more. It does traditional web content publishing/management., it’s not blog software with wikis bolted on, nor is it wiki software with blogs bolted on, or a web publishing/content management system with wikis and blogs bolted on.
It is architecture for doing all of this and more, mashing them however you want. The genius of what Dries and the community has done is to reduce all aspects of social software to their core DNA; content nodes and membership, in building a platform that can be infinitely extended to allow the assembly of almost any style of online social interaction.

Ideally speaking, Drupal is ably equipped to be used as a base system for creating a custom social networking site like Facebook and MySpace. While these large social networks have scratched their pug marks on niche social networking, the web sites in turn can help promote businesses, products, projects, and hobbies of any nature. Social Networking in the workplace is increasing annually at rapid paces, something that has been rejected on the number of vendors creating new software or making their existing products “socially-aware”. Drupal is perhaps another visionary in this process. Social Networking for Businesses

Gartner, Inc., the leading research and advisory firm, identifed Drupal CMS as the pioneers for Social Software in the Workplace." Here is an image of what that quadrant looks like: According to Gartner, Drupal did well enough last year in its intended area of the market to merit a 'niche player‘ title. This year however they've managed to break the mould, say sources. According to Gartner, Drupal has its place amongst the visionaries’ quadrant because of its consistent and efficient use of the open source model as it drives to popularly adopt and provide enterprise services through organizations such as Acquia. A strong content-centric, community and web application is the foundation that holds Drupal. It is also noted that Gartner appreciated the software’s rapidly extending characteristics that embraces hundreds of modules, including many that could be used for collaboration and social interaction support. Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Externally Facing Social Software

Rated as a leading CMS product by Gartner, Forrester & other analyst firms, Drupal has merged as a leader of the pack among Open Source CMS Products with rapid adoption globally. It is easy to assess Drupal’s effortless means of creating content and seasoned experience of dealing with websites. This not only helps you in achieving your business goals but also aids in the spiraling sales and search engine visibility; all this while being simple to integrate and administer.
eDynamic provides end to end services for Drupal CMS:
Consulting, Strategy & Roadmap for Drupal implementations
Solution Design, Development/Implementation and Deployment
Managed Services
Large & Multi-site/multiple website/portal implementations on Drupal
Content Migration
User Experience and Design
Re-platforming/Migration services from other CMS platforms to Drupal

eDynamic Differentiators as Drupal Implementation Partner:
eDynamic is uniquely positioned with proven expertise as one of the largest Drupal implementers globally:
eDynamic has a Global Delivery Model with local and offshore teams that bring unmatched cost & scale advantages to its Drupal customers.
eDynamic has one of the larger Drupal teams that can manage projects of significant scale
eDynamic’s global delivery model provides flexible engagement options to our customers based on strategic needs, scale and budget:
Local: All local Drupal expertise from our offices in New York, Phoenix, Los Angeles and Toronto in North America, Dubai in the Middle East or New Delhi in India.
Blended: A team of offshore resources are engaged to work in conjunction with local/client site experts.
Offshore: A complete team of offshore experts who manage the Implementation

Managed Services/Support Models:
Design, Build and Run Model: eDynamic can manage websites and Drupal applications from a support and maintenance perspective.
Dedicated Seat Model: A dedicated team of offshore resources are provides to manage and run websites & Drupal applications.
eDynamic offers end-to-end Drupal content management solutions for:
Corporate Websites
ePublishing
Social Media
Intranets
Knowledge Management
Document Management
Portals

About eDynamic
eDynamic ( www.edynamic.net ) is an end-to-end Web solutions and IT Consulting firm. We are a one stop web shop offering a wide range of services from Web and Enterprise Content Management, Portals, Web Design/User Experience to Online Marketing, Custom Application Development, Business Intelligence and Managed Services.
Established in 1999; 275 consultants
Offices:
New York, Toronto, Phoenix, Portland, Dubai, London and New Delhi
Near-shore Delivery Center in Toronto
Offshore Delivery Center in India
eDynamic blends strong user experience with exceptional technology capabilities to deliver best-of-breed web solutions
Our Global Delivery Model helps us to deliver cutting edge solutions
We blend strategy, technology and creativity to deliver integrated, fully customized business solutions, and partner with our clients for cornerstone strategies and critical Web initiatives.
By blending strong user experience & technology, eDynamic has been delivering best-of-breed web solutions to customers such as American Express, Pepsi and New York Life.
Web Strategy Web Design Web 2.0 and RIA Online Marketing Interactive Media Web Content Management Intranet Intranets Web Portals

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Drupal – An Ideal Open Source Content Management System

by eDynamic on Oct 19, 2010

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Drupal – An Ideal Open Source Content Management System — Presentation Transcript