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3. 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

4. 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

5. 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.

6. 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

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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…

14. 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

16. 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

17. 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.

20. 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

21. 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