Posted by Ben Finklea on September 2, 2012 at 5:28am
I've done some basic research on this topic. Please contact me directly if you would like for me to share the Google doc with you. This is very hush, hush!
But, the discussion here should center around who are the competitors and what do they do really well?
How do they position themselves in the market?
Comments
Wordpress
Wordpress has made it easy for the masses to create a website that meets many needs of smaller organizations.
DSquaredB
Danita Bowman
Can you be more specific
Can you be more specific about what WordPress has done to make it easier? I hear that it's easier all the time but not much in the way of specific things. Is there a wizard or something?
Ben Finklea
Chair, Drupal Branding and Marketing* Committee
*BAM!
I think the biggest things
I think the biggest things that Wordpress comes out of the box with that are incredibly important are WYSIWYG editors, image/file handling, and a fairly solid blog framework.
While I personally don't enjoy using Wordpress, I find that a majority of my clients (or potential clients) look at Wordpress because "it's easy" or the perception of its use is "easy."
I concur
I second what @laughnan is saying.
The thing is WordPress has made very easy to use and simpler to build for bloggers and developers for their blog websites. But that is it in my opinion. It lacks in the other aspects of the website development. For example it doesn't handle permissions, users, content types, taxonomies, etc. perfectly how Drupal handles them. It lacks in the APIs available for the developers to build their custom widgets. Drupal has a powerful API and code management for core as well as custom modules written by community members.
Yes, its easy for blogging websites but not for a full-fledged websites with a good amount of features included.
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Simple to Install - Simple to update
One of the things I've noticed over the last years is the ease of Wordpress installation.
It's very quick and stable. On the other hand, it's very easy to update as well.
I have suffered some white screens updating Drupal some times and even strange behaviors installing Drupal for the first time. So maybe this opens another question: the need of resources from the server.
I hope it helped :-)
Plugins from the UI
Another big difference I've found is how easy is in Wordpress to install a plugin. You can do it right from the interface without even leaving the site you are building.
This makes the process very easy for the end user, hence, opening their platform for more potencial users.
Some designer have also chosen Wordpress and finally they are sometimes the decision influencers.
So I would say, getting the Web Designers to propose Drupal should be one of the Goals.
Perceived usalbility
Here it's important to differentiate between end users and developers.
For content editors, Wordpress looks easier, friendlier and more elegant upon first login.
The upgrade process is also very smooth since wordpress sites typically depend less on contrib code.
The end user can update core in Wordpress.
For everyday publishing tasks, Drupal and Wordpress should be more or less the same, and once a site is handed over to the client, adding content in Drupal will be as easy as in Wordpress (assuming the Drupal shop know what they are doing and doesn't expose their clients to the entire admin menu :)
I completely agree with this!
I completely agree with this!
Concrete5
Concrete5 seems to be pretty spot-on with easy of use, extensibility, and low learning curve. We could learn a lot from it.
In our organisation, people have tried both and they see it faster to produce sites, still powerful enough for the needs of most sites, and especially easy to train and to use. Spark helps here, but the verdict I got from our developers is that it is still not on the same level as C5.
I, too, looked at Concrete5
I, too, looked at Concrete5 and I have to agree. Although I've not worked with it myself, it appears to be much easier to set up a fairly complex website in short order. That is compelling.
Ben Finklea
Chair, Drupal Branding and Marketing* Committee
*BAM!
Business Models
The main reason I don't like Concrete5 is the business models - lots of paid-for modules.
With Drupal I never encounter payment barriers in terms of being able to build something, and means a potentially wider community of support and maintenance of the modules themselves.
Where I think Drupal will answer the ease-of-use issue is on the distribution side of things, particularly verticals. There are many businesses with similar base business models and methods where industries sharing common functionality means lower TCO, such as building industry, manufacturing, etc. which are all mostly still stuck back in the 80s with big behemoth proprietary stacks still needing disassembling and reverse-engineering - lots of opportunity here IMHO!
Steve
About business model
I think that it is part of their strength (open source movement and ideology put aside) is the commercial aspect. The modules do not cost much (like €20), don't have recurring fees, and save time compared that you should do the functionality by yourself. And they also provide compensation for the coder, and thus lure them to write better modules that would sell faster.
For us, investing a few dozens of euros is not a big deal as we and the customer save time and money by not doing it by ourselves. And the original coder can actually find his living without doing services.
Of course, nothing inhibits you to release your own modules on free licenses.
The extremely long tail
With respect, I disagree - any monetary barrier to code means less potential input from a wider community, that's why Free Software is better than Open Source in the long run (e.g. Android fragmentation).
Many modules are written by people who have already been paid to write them, or they've just written them for a particular need, not always business needs.
This is one reason why I like the Apps (http://drupal.org/project/apps) initiatives. This model gives the ability to package up Free modules, settings, content, etc. in a way which retains Freedom but enables the kind of business models you mention with Concrete5.
Manufacturing and Proprietary Software
Since most manufacturing software seems specialized and usually extremely costly, I feel it doesn't get compared to Drupal as much as it should. These systems simply take data from automated sources and display the data to users. What they do really well is to collect the data directly from machines and equipment. Where they fall short is in the 80s era dashboards, analytics and costly support contracts.
IMHO - To compete Drupal simply needs a module/helper software that collects the data. Modules already exist for dashboards, email lists, geo-tracking, and analytics.
Squarespace for
Squarespace for consumer/small businesses because it captures the 80% use case for what you'd want out of a site beautifully in a very low-friction UI. Aggressively advertising to specific audiences (see 5by5.tv).
For the biggies: http://www.adobe.com/solutions/digital-marketing/web-experience-manageme... comes to mind, but no hands-on experience with it.
http://umbraco.org/ has a very good site but no experience with the tool itself
Sharepoint
Specific to the Dutch market: Tridion, GX, Hippo.
Open Source CMS market share
The annual Open Source CMS market share report from Ric Shreves might be good for reference here:
http://www.waterandstone.com/book/2011-open-source-cms-market-share-report
We should also check with Ric whether he's repeating his efforts for 2012..
Think outside the FOSS box
We (Code Enigma) may be somewhat atypical, but I don't think we're that unusual when it comes to selling Drupal commercially and we tend to find ourselves in two sorts of pitch situation in Europe:
People who want Drupal (these are easier pitches, it's a more straightforward sell to explain why we're better than other Drupal shops - we tell our story and the prospect either believes us or doesn't).
People who want a content managed website and have not settled on a CMS (this is really tough, we have to sell a combination of Drupal and our ability to deliver, often against much larger and more commercially solid organisations).
In situation 2, I hardly ever hear Concrete5 or Wordpress or Joomla or TYPO3. In fact, more often than not Drupal is the only PHP CMS even in the mix! I'm far more likely to come across:
The now infamous Sitecore (we lost a big pitch in the final round to Sitecore, in London, last year):
http://www.sitecore.net
Let's not forget Vignette and what it became - still around as a serious 'Enterprise' CMS, and we have butted heads with them:
http://www.opentext.com/
Also, and I'm serious here, Microsoft and their enormous web of partners:
http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/
I've come across these guys too:
http://getmura.com/
So while it's interesting to see how Drupal is doing against other FOSS solutions, and while we might draw some lessons from what makes them successful in certain 'markets', the reality for us is they don't figure. They're not the competitors to Drupal we see.
Rising above the competition
Thanks for joining in the discussion and your great comments Greg!
Back in Y2K at RemoteApps we won these sorts of head-to-head situations where the required functionality included some kind of community aspect to it. That really showed off what the difference was between having a modular system as opposed to taking packages X, Y, and Z (community, commerce, content management), paying the licence fees, then the consultancy and development fees on top of that to integrate the packages, if indeed they could. We showed them better, more cost-effective ways of doing this all through one, scalable system.
Where Drupal trumps this is the Free/Libre Open Source Software aspect and ideas such as the one I mention above about industry-specific distros ('accelerators'). Those legacy systems like the IBM AS/400-based ones I used to code in RPG for, were 'paved over' by 'nice interfaces' and to rewrite would be a mammoth task.
Instead we could provide the latest technology to those industries by finding out where Drupal's abilities could have the greatest impact to start with, and gradually replace the legacy systems going by what is needed as and when. Most the time, just rewriting existing failed systems isn't the best idea as old issues just get built in again!
Correct me if I'm reading
Correct me if I'm reading your response wrong, but you seem to be of the opinion these COTS systems are not a threat? I would have to disagree...
The first problem, I believe, is the things we see as the massive strengths of FOSS, that we all articulate to clients, know off by heart, have tatooed on our bums, etc. our clients simply do not apply the same weight to. Naturally. We have to admit we're pretty partisan and we have a different agenda and approach to most of our clients. Speaking frankly and honestly, I am sure we (meaning my company) do a poor job of selling Drupal against other platforms, because we say the things we care about, not the things the customer cares about. We (the community) don't have the message right when we square up to COTS products, which is not really surprising because they're off our radar, but they shouldn't be.
The second problem is most COTS competitors (including the likes of Sharepoint with Web Parts, Sitecore with their App Store, etc.) have modernised, embraced the 'modular architecture' thing and, in many cases, are talking the same language as us. It's just their code is compiled and closed and ours is uncompiled and open. Now, you might not like the commercial model of these guys, but you're not the person I'm trying to sell a Drupal solution to and we can't dismiss them. "Hey, but our product is open and modular" is no longer enough to blow away the COTS competition, because the competition has raised its game too. We're not talking about creaking old HTML-builders and FTP push crap any more. No vendor tie-in is still a strong sell, but there's still an awful lot of FUD and concern about 'one throat to choke' and all these other things 'Enterprise' clients care about - the sort of clients who won't even sniff at Wordpress.
From our perspective, Drupal companies, the DA, etc. need to get smarter about how we tackle specific things our competitors outside the FOSS world do well, work out how Drupal either does, or can do those same things better, document and build cases. But if the starting position is we ignore COTS competitors because they're sooooo last century, then we won't be able to do that as a community and I think that's a mistake.
Now, I'm totally prepared to admit this whole thing I'm talking about is totally irrelevant to the tens of thousands of Drupal users who download the product to make a site for their kid's school or their watchmaking club, or whatever it is they do. That said, the message I'm getting from the people who are coding Drupal 8 is that 'Enterprise' does matter (otherwise we wouldn't be doing CMI or working on the database abstraction layer or lots of other things that most users won't care about). And if that's true, then COTS competitors matter as well - big time. They are well entrenched in that market and tooled up to deal with us better than we are tooled up to deal with them.
text
Hi - text can only get across a very limited amount of communication so excuse if you saw only a little of what I was saying!
Drupal innovates faster than any proprietary software. You're saying about competing directly with them when what I'm saying is we should be rising above them and competing at the level Drupal excels on.
When Drupal 8 hits the street we will be highly comparable to these other systems you mention in terms of enterprise-level functionality like CMI, which is doing what we did 12 years ago in J2EE, in fact that's where a lot of the initiative comes from.
So I'm saying aim at our own target, because once we show them what Drupal excels at their minds are usually blown.
drupal.com?
Nice summary Greg.
Code Enigma is not unusual - this is exactly the same situation we at Access find ourselves in most often.
Situation 1 is good. It means Drupal doesn't need marketing, other than to increase the frequency of situation 1 arising.
Tackling Situation 2 is more difficult. It's the issue I raised around this time last year (Steve Purkiss was part of the discussion). Last year the conversation was steered around to 'we need more developers'. 'Market Drupal to developers and the rest will fall into place'. For me, this was not the priority.
Sitecore and other commercial CMSs provide backup in the way of consistent marketing collateral and partner support. There's a nice shiny website that's aimed at various audiences. Sitecore has some clear positioning around the features and benefits and who those benefits are aimed at: Execs, Marketing Managers, Developers, IT professionals. Magento is the closest Open Source 'product' in this approach. Acquia.com is the closest thing Drupal has right now (yes, Drupal is a completely different model than Sitecore, Magento etc - waits to be shot down for even mentioning it) It's easy for them to do this as they don't need to agree it at a community level. They don't need to be all things to all men.
Drupal.org is a developer/community site: The situation 2 audience generally doesn't care about community. (Sorry Steve, they just don't). They don't want to see security patches and issue queues. They want a proven technology, with case studies and results, they want to know what features they are going to get and how it will be supported. They often like the idea it is open source because it is 'free' and that saving of license can be used to invest in other areas of the site build - or just be cheaper. Sometimes the Drupal community gets so wrapped up in the community and open source that it forgets there's generally and end user who's just interested in doing their job. And that's all it is to them - a job.
My thoughts may be simplistic but I still see the need (my need, my company's and the need of the developers it supports) is for a more 'enterprise' approach. Take enterprise to mean professional, commercial and aimed at business, not necessarily Fortune 500.
drupal.com should be 'marketing to potential 'customers' (by segment)
- 'Professional' marketing collateral provided/curated by the DA
- A 'community' tab that links to drupal.org
How we'd get there I've no idea :)
Otherwise every shop/agency is duplicating effort having to create their own collateral to go up against Sitecore and the other better supported open source 'products'.
Marketing Support Material
Hi Mark!
You're absolutely right, in RemoteApps I wouldn't have expected any of my integration partners to go out and sell what I made without giving them the supporting material, and that's one of the areas this group is working on.
Where I disagree is that we should not talk about the community - we are essentially mis-selling our product by not telling people what is is, how it is made, and most importantly why we do it.
I get this all the time "they don't care about it", then I go do the training and suddenly they care. Our council come to our meetings, another company I recently trained comes, and even companies who have been doing Drupal for many years but not been involved in what the community is doing are coming out of the woodwork, investing in our events, coming to our meetings, and taking an interest.
If we don't then we just keep having the scaling issues - have a read of catch's reply to my previous comments:
http://groups.drupal.org/node/250853#comment-810793
At our Brighton DrupalCamp I made everyone come up to the mic and tell us who they were and why they used drupal - I'm just sorting out the recording now and will post it up online.
The more we tell people about how Drupal works - the process as well as the product, the more they will understand how they get things done. It only took a few minutes sitting next to Terry on Sunday for most of my issue queue woes to be dispersed, we need to scale up and not be shy of what we excel at - contributors.
With strong branding and marketing efforts around this aspect it will put us leaps and bounds above the competition - I'm bored of being compared to CMSs when Drupal is so much more than that, and I've been proved right again and again on this.
Community USP
Hi Steve! (yes I've been lurking but your opinion an input not unnoticed :),
I'm not saying we shouldn't mention the community or the massive benefit it provides. In fact, that's possibly/probably the USP that will remain all competitor features being equal - it most definitely should be used to Drupal's advantage. But that shouldn't be the only focus. To me it should be the USP that sways the decision in Drupal's favour.
I too speak to councils (and BPOs that manage services for councils). I'm currently speaking to .NET devs about Drupal and how it can make their lives easier, the great community they can tap into, the fantastic contributed modules that can fast track their development...
Ultimately the decision maker is higher up the chain and he keeps referring to Drupal as 'Freeware'. He doesn't have to pay a license to get a comparable (yes way better :) platform and features therefore his total cost of ownership is lower and he delivers a benefit to the organisation (Yes, an actual Enterprise in the true sense). He most definitely is comparing Drupal to a 'product' no matter how boring that may be to you. Busy people understand products and features rather than 'it's a community that can deliver whatever you want it to be'.
Part of his decision will be driven by the feedback from the .NET developers about their appetite for change - but let's be clear, it's the Director that has pushed them to evaluate. So I need to do a job of convincing both.
You may have been proved right over and over again but listening to Greg, he's experiencing the same as I do over and over again. Can't we both be right?
I recently submitted a Drupal Commerce proposal going against Magento amongst others platforms. We had a great chemistry meeting with the potential client so they were prepared to look at Drupal - they had already started evaluating various products before speaking to vendors and had a feature list at the ready. I didn't have a great deal of time to pull it together but really struggled to put a compelling case forward even though I knew Drupal was way more flexible, cost effective etc. Commerce Guys could help a bit - and will be able to much more as they define their own product - but a lot of the convincing had already been done via the Magento website. A site that delivers a rather compelling, slick looking, professional, reassuring experience - I'm sure you'll agree. I was on the back foot.
The contract is pending so let's see if I did a good enough job of selling Drupal (or could illustrate a cost saving :)
Back to Ben's question...
Magento:
- clearly communicates its features and benefits via slick, consistent 'F&B' downloads and case studies
- provides reassurance of support to the end user
- provides excellent vendor support (yes, at a cost)
- taps in to the 'open source' ethos (whilst being licensed)
- provides a great first impression via a well polished, commercial looking website.
Busy Business People
Hi Mark,
Having been involved in many large projects for multinationals as well as working with small businesses over the years I've been lucky enough to see the whole spectrum of buying behaviours.
What many people want, as well as lower costs, is to know they are not going to lose their job if they choose product X over product Y. We are at the stage moving from early adopters to early majority, the 'crossing the chasm' phase. We are different than what has come before, our main strength is our community. When people buy into Drupal, they are buying into a community, and the clearer that point is made the easier it will be to win projects as we will be attracting the right kind of customer who will help us grow as a whole.
This may mean a little out-of-the-box thinking - I feel people look to replicate current and past business models as opposed to learn from them in order to forge new ones. We are in a virtual world now where it is not all black-and-white. We do have to product supporting marketing materials, which we invite everyone to join and help us do through initiatives such as our Drupal Marketing Collateral Audit - see group homepage for info and join in! We also have to think about how we can adapt them to be more effective for Drupal, and that's where key selling points such as distributed community and being in control need to be pointed out.
I had the pleasure of spending some time with John Terpstra a few years back when I was living in Toronto. He co-founded the Samba project, a F/LOSS project which allows you to share files and printers between Macs, Linux, and Windows and is used by millions of people around the world. He's basically had to reverse engineer proprietary file formats for his entire career instead of working out how we can populate other planets or something more valuable to the human race. Anyway, he said he was speaking to a worldwide haulage company and he explained the closed source problem thus:
We miss out on our key point by not selling Drupal as a community and the benefits you get from that. Most of that comes from a fear point of view, and admittedly sometimes it's not easy to sell, but then move on, find those clients and niches who do care. I've not lost work by talking about community first, and it immediately sets the scene so misunderstandings are less likely to happen and expectation levels are set appropriately.
Look forward to catching up in Manchester in November, sounds like a great camp!
I'm with Mark on this - we do
I'm with Mark on this - we do sell Drupal as a community, and it is one of the strengths of Drupal, but it doesn't figure as highly as we'd like it to on many client's shopping list. As he says, it's not about not selling community - it is an important part of Drupal's potential appeal, but there are lots of other reasons people buy into Drupal as well. Sometimes community is high on the agenda (we have two clients who would definitely say community was a major selling point for them) but sometimes it doesn't figure at all (we also have clients who couldn't care less about the community aspects and are using Drupal for the reduced costs and lack of vendor tie-in, having been bitten in the past).
So my key point is don't focus too hard on the things that matter to us as development shops, at the expense of the things that matter to our end clients.
Being different
I understand many don't care, but we still make a point of labeling Fair Trade coffee as such so people have an understanding of where it comes from.
Here's that audio from 50 people saying why they use Drupal. I think it shows just how many great selling points we could be talking about Drupal which would not only sell it to all as we are speaking at a more inspirational level, but also ease some of the misconceptions brought about by not telling people what it is.
I am currently dealing with yet another company who are distressed with their current development house, a well-recognised outfit as much as yourselves (although not yourselves just to clarify!). Once he knew there was a local community who could help he sounded far more at ease. And I can tell you, he is one of your target market people you talk about above. Talk from the why first, the TED talk guy is right!
http://archive.org/details/Badcampuk2-WelcomeSession-WhyDrupal
Absolutely no argument there
Absolutely no argument there at all. I completely agree with you, and I suspect Mark does too. All we're saying is community is just one vector, let's not ignore the many other vectors that are equally (and sometimes more) important to some clients. The Why question is fundamental, again, no disagreement, but sometimes community isn't part of the Why. Sometimes it is. That's all we're saying.
targeting decision makers
Having now actually read Ben's question. I'll simplify my response...
Sitecore
Magento
Alterian
Umbraco
All do a better job of assisting their developers/partners to sell their 'product' by having a more professional, consistent approach to targeting decision makers, based on their needs.
Who our competitors are and
Who our competitors are and their advantages vary depending on the type of project. Based on number of deals, we/Drupal loses to WordPress more than any other platform. Typically this is because the client has two goals, a good looking site and getting traffic to that site. WordPress excels at delivering on both.
Most agencies in Dallas bill themselves as full service, and tend to have more of a focus on marketing, creative and small development projects. They don’t necessarily have the chops for complex websites, so they go with something simple. WordPress is a great fit. Joomla also gets a fair share of these projects.
I would estimate that maybe as high as 75% of projects we lose to another platform go with WordPress. Many of these I don’t worry about too much as their budgets were too small to support proper Drupal development anyway, so there was never much of an opportunity in the first place. We are seeing a concerning trend though of more mid-level and larger projects going WordPress, particularly after the WP 3.0 release.
For larger, complex projects the competitors we find are (ranked by level of competition):
1. Sitecore
2. Ektron
3. SharePoint
4. Telligent
5. Vignette / OpenText
Microsoft has deep roots in Dallas. Probably half the deals lost to Microsoft based platforms are because the IT department dictates that they can only support Microsoft products or they already have SharePoint in house. I would speculate much of the other half are won by Sitecore and Ektron because they have great sales and marketing. Telligent is local so that helps them in this market.
Vignette / OpenText seems to be the preference for many of the large SIs in Dallas.
Unfortunately there is not too much that can be done to fight maintaining a homogeneous IT environment when the IT department is dug in. However, I think this group can do a lot re-capture the other half were we get out marketed, and out sold, by the likes of Sitecore and Extron.
Website: www.leveltendesign.com
Twitter: @levelten_tom
Learn Drupal: Tutr.tv
Another competitor: ExpressionEngine
After building two sites with ExpressionEngine, I decided to expand my horizons to open source CMS packages. I investigated Joomla long enough to decide I hated it, built one quick WordPress site for a workshop I was in, and have since been learning Drupal. I really like its gestalt in the same way I like EE's; it's hard to get your mind around how everything fits together, but once you do it's like having a giant Tinkertoy to build sites with.
ExpressionEngine, though open source, is not free. It costs $300 for a commercial license, $150 for a nonprofit one, and $100 for a developer to use on his or her own site. Many of the most useful plugins will cost you too; I've bought ones ranging from $5 to $65. In theory, these numbers shouldn't put a client off; they're a small part of the overall cost. In reality, the cost is a turnoff. "Why should I pay for this when Wordpress/Joomla/Drupal/ModX is free?"
If you hang out on EE's forum, you'll find that many EE disciples say the cost is justified by EE's support. That support is via the forum, and people will say that it's fast and good and well worth the cost of the software. And you'll see statements there (and elsewhere) that users have submitted questions to the Drupal (or other open source CMS) community and never gotten an answer.
I have mixed feelings about such statements. On several occasions I've submitted problems on EE and gotten answers that indicated the tech support person hadn't really read through my post. Once I had to go through three back-and-forths before I got across what the problem really was. But everything does get handled eventually. As I haven't submitted any problems to the Drupal community yet, I have nothing to compare to.
But let's talk about bugs. Yesterday I ran across this one. It's been hanging around for over a year, through multiple Drupal 7 releases. It's still not fixed, and I had to work around it. Something like this would be handled quickly with the ExpressionEngine crew. You'd likely have an official fix within a few weeks.
EE has virtually no themes available; you pretty much design your site from scratch. You put together templates, which are a mix of HTML and EE tags. Nary a drop of PHP to be seen, unless you need something truly custom. (I had, I think, one blob of PHP on one of my sites, and later found a way to replace it with native EE stuff.) It's a whole different mindset from blocks and panels and context and the like, and at the moment the thing I'm finding the most difficult about Drupal is getting my head around all the parts of a theme and how they all fit together. I'm certain I'll get it, but at the moment I prefer the EE way. This is neither here nor there with respect to the OP's question, but simply points out that EE may appeal to a different type of developer.
Moving off EE for a while, I suspect Joomla is a valid competitor, if only from the Internet conventional wisdom that it is, and the existence of so many Drupal-vs.-Joomla discussions. (Like I said above, just a couple of days made me shun Joomla the way I shun native JavaScript.) At the moment, I see WordPress appealing mostly to smaller, less complicated sites. Yes, I've seen the many statements that WP isn't just a blogging system anymore, that it's a full-blown content management system. And it may well be, but (to me at least) it just seems less, well, serious. Just the absence of custom fields out of the box is a sign of that.
WordPress is, as someone said above, good for the masses. I can't see Drupal being as easy as WP to use for, say, an office manager whose boss said "build me a website by the first of the month" for a long time. Then again, I don't want it to be. There are a million people building WP sites, and many of them aren't very talented, and I really don't want to be competing with them. I'd rather be competing with (and collaborating with) people who enjoy the giant Tinkertoy experience that I got from ExpressionEngine and that I sense I'll be getting from Drupal.
Support
Great reply, I've not played much with EE but heard many good things about it from people I respect. With regards to the support, we do need to take notes from how support is provided in other open source projects and proprietary products.
From what I saw over the weekend at our local camp when we did a marketing sprint, it's a case of finding out what the issues are, working out how to solve them, rinse and repeat. I looked at the case study issue queue last week and had no idea what to do, but within a few minutes of sitting next to someone in the community who knew how they worked I had all my questions answered. Drupal is so big though that you won't get just one person or company who knows everything.
The more people who aren't developers join in the community, the more resources we have to find and solve these issues, which is one of the reasons for opening up this group a little more.
Let's do a freakin' survey!
Let's make it easier for ourselves to find out what our potential clients/end users really think and need by asking them (that's ultimately what we are trying to do - right?).
Why don't we just ask the people we are trying to target as customers both successes and failures what factors are important to them?
Anecdotal evidence is great but some quantitative and qualitative survey results from decision makers would help us wouldn't it?
Drupal shops (large and small) could get consent from organisations that they have pitched to in say last 6 months to add them to a survey list. Drupal shops would also add key info such as project type, size, organisation etc.
Organisational and personal information could of course be redacted.
The list recipients would then answer something very short and sweet such as...
Q & A's would need some thrashing about no doubt but the key aim would be fast and easy to answer.
Further to our recent pitch/discussion blah blah
cms 1
cms 2
cms 3
cms x
factor 1
factor 2
factor 3
factor 4
factor 5
thanks blah blah
My key question for this group is why we should not do this?
Richard Moger
That would be great if we
That would be great if we could access a meaningful pool of participants, but all the contacts I could bring to bear already use Drupal, so that's no use. We'd probably need to commission something or someone to get to the people who are using competitor systems and find out why they made that choice...
But in principle, we should definitely have some proper market research. But that's likely to mean someone spending some money.
Edit: by way of a postscript, your idea of hitting up companies we pitched to and lost might work. It's certainly worth a try. I'm slightly cynical as to how many would respond, but I'd have no qualms sending the email. =)
I get your point about
I get your point about existing clients etc. I would hope that at least some failed pitches would respond, if for no other reason than to assuage some of the guilt they must feel about the work we put into their proposals! ;-)
Would be good feedback for us as businesses too.
Quantitative data is helpful
Quantitative data is helpful but the conversations (at this point) is more meaningful. A survey with only options that we write wouldn't be much use for a branding exercise - at least I think so. If it would reveal why people choose one platform over another then I'd love to see that but only if we got the options right.
We could start out with a short answer field and then switch once we started seeing the same answers.
Now how would we get this in front of non-Drupal crowd...
Ben Finklea
Chair, Drupal Branding and Marketing* Committee
*BAM!
SilverStripe
I came across SilverStripe whilst managing a bid process for a charity in June 2011. At the time I didn't think it was up to the task of building the site that was required.
Why, because to complete the site would have required a lot of bespoke development because of a lack of modules, so for the long term a potentially high maintenance overhead.
It has a similar model to Drupal, open source core and add-on extensions: modules, themes and widgets. At the time the current version was 2.4 but they have recently released 3.0 so I can't comment on its current capabilities.
The big sell is that it is really easy for content editors to use, WYSIWYG & Drag and drop text editor out of the box, good image handling and a fairly intuitive UI.
D.O could take some lessons from their website, (just visited again), in terms of features and benefits especially for the non techies!
http://www.silverstripe.org
I will collate all the CMS's offered in the bid, as a real life example, and post a summary of them if that helps??
Nigel
CMS's from a real life project bid
As promised above here is an analysis of the CMS's offered.
25 companies were invited to pre-qualify for tendering.
13 offered FOSS solutions:
4 - Drupal
5 - Joomla
2 - Wordpress
1 - SilverStripe
1 - Django
12 offered commercial offerings:
6 bespoke inhouse CMS’s, 6 other commercial CMS’s
Full document at http://t.co/58rzK0yk
Hope it helps, Nigel
Having not read everything I
Having not read everything I thought I'd chime in.
We're migrating one client into Drupal from http://www.imis.com which they use for CRM and event booking/manging etc.
We're migrating another client from modx and http://www.max.co.uk/ - maximiser.
The main selling points are:
1) Having one codebase to make the UX for both staff and end-users more seamless
2) No- vendor lock-in (they were both burned in the past). Being able to drop us and pick up other drupal developers
3) The Community for training. They both like the idea that they could train people in-house to be able to use views, fields and panels and do a lot of stuff through the free forums/ irc, etc.
What they don't like:
1) How unpredictable the Drupal community is. Will they actually get any help? Will other developers like the specific set of modules they have picked.
2) Lack of case-studies all this stuff is new (cause its using Drupal for CRM).
3) Not knowing how much of the stuff out there will "just work" and how much they will have to do themselves.
I suppose "unpredictable" sums up all those 3 points. I think that is an inherent downside to the positive "community" that steve brings up.
Content Management Systems (CMS) Buyer's Guide
I have access to this full report, but as it's not a free report I can't post here:
http://econsultancy.com/uk/reports/content-management-systems-cms-buyers...
It's free to download a sample. If anybody would find it useful I could share some of the information.
It's classed as a 'supplier selection' document and interestingly Drupal CMS is down as Drupal (Acquia).
Competitors:
Adobe CQ
Alterian
Amaxus (Box UK)
Blaze (Byte9)
concrete5
Cookie Jar (Solid State Group)
Drupal (Acquia)
Ektron
EPiServer
GOSS Interactive
IBM Web Content Manager
Joomla (Open Source Matters)
LavaSuite Content (DesignUK)
Limelight Networks Dynamic Site Platform
OpenText Web Experience Management
SDL Tridion (SDL)
SilverStripe
Sitecore
Squiz Matrix (Squiz)
TERMINALFOUR
TYPO3
There's a good section on SWOT analysis and a review of each system. <-- addressing this swot analysis might provide some compelling marketing positioning.
Companies that have downloaded this report include...
B&Q • Barclaycard • Bupa • Camelot • Camelot UK Lotteries Ltd • Citi • COI • Dyson Ltd. • Electrocomponents • Hibu • HSBC Bank plc • John Lewis.com • Legal & General • Mercedes-Benz UK • Novartis Pharmaceuticals UK Ltd • Post Office • RBS Insurance • RedEye • RSPCA • Saga Group Limited • Scott & Co • Shell • Signet • THE OUTNET / NET-A-PORTER LTD • TUI UK…
A bit more about the community USP...
These companies are probably not that bothered about knowing that it's community built other than if that community aspect delivers them a business benefit.
A large active developer community needs to be marketed in different ways...
Thanks, @markhope. I am a
Thanks, @markhope. I am a subscriber and have looked through this report before. Handy stuff.
Ben Finklea
Chair, Drupal Branding and Marketing* Committee
*BAM!
Joomla has JomSocial Social Networking.
This has been an extremely informative and multi-faceted discussion. I am a small-time internet developer, but not a programmer, and never had Drupal on my radar until people started recommending it in a WebHostingTalk discussion as definitely above Wordpress or Joomla for ambitious projects. With the only caveat that Drupal is much less DIY than Wordpress, so that I should partner with someone with programming skills.
After further surfing of opinions, I definitely would feel most confident with Drupal as my core platform for my most ambitious project. However, although this starts as primarily a blogging community, I want to explore Social Networking features. I am told that Drupal requires about 50 modules for a "social networking" site, resulting in a finicky frankenstein. Joomla in comparison has the direct solution JomSocial.
Perhaps my understanding is wrong about Drupal's alleged lack of readiness for social networking? As I said, I am not a programmer. I will be doing a Drupal installation to test this assumption relative to my specific needs. If the assumption seems correct, I will have to switch to Joomla or JomSocial, and my suggestion for Drupal developers would be to think in the direction of more efficient social networking solutions.
In the space of half a decade, Facebook has emerged from relative obscurity, to overshadow MySpace which previously was unchallenged in its niche of a personal page, and in addition to expand the niche to define the social network, which has suddenly become standard equipment for individuals, celebrities, television shows, activists, corporations and government agencies alike.
--Krystoff0
Segmenting
Hi there,
Although the CMS functionality is a very important feature, I'd be very interested in other use cases (segments) since the 'best tool for the job' is what we compete on. May it be CMS, E-commerce, Social networking or something else. (see Mark Hope's post in this discussion: http://groups.drupal.org/node/251648#comment-820288)
Would it be an idea to make a division in segments togther and then work out approaches on how to compete on those?
Segments:
- CMS (limited to managing content/users on corporate/organization's websites)
- Publishing platform (newspapers, mags, etc.)
- E-commerce (webshops)
- Social network (internal social networks, interest based social networks, etc.)
I'm fairly new to the BAM initiative so I might have overlooked any posts that are already made on this topic. If so; je m'excuse...
I'd be happy to put effort into this and develop marketing material together.
Cheers!
Jan
Frigg Digital
Still Wordpress & Joomla..
People moving from Drupal to Wordpress or Joomla will feel suffocated by the limitations and lack of options
People going from Joomla or Wordpress to Drupal will feel confused and helpless by the lack of pre-built "features"
Still Wordpress & Joomla which are used by masses cos of popularity, are a tough competitior to Drupal.
Drupal Development
New to Drupal...from Sitecore
Hi everybody,
I just joined Acquia and have come over from Sitecore. Prior to Sitecore, I worked at OpenText/Vignette and IBM. I guess you could say that I decided to make CMS my niche way back in the early 2000's.
I stumbled upon this thread while digging up some material to use in a presentation, and thought I might add my own thoughts and insight.
Sitecore's main value proposition is that you can get all of the features that you need in a single, unified platform, that was built from the ground up.
With a Sitecore install, you get all of their core CMS features and most digital marketing features with a single, five minute install.
This means that you can potentially install, and start working immediately creating content, presentation, campaigns, goals, personalization, etc. with no additional modules required.
Additional modules exist for Email Experience Management, Print Experience Management, Commerce, and Forms. These are all very simple installs and require you only to download a zip file from the Sitecore Developer Network, and ingest it through a Sitecore wizard.
Sitecore sales will have you believe that this approach saves your organization a lot of time on implementation, installation/configuration, and integration activities. It is a fantastic story that resonates with executives and marketers alike.
That being said, Sitecore does not have as deep a module library as Drupal, nor as large a developer base.
Areas that I see Drupal beating Sitecore include the following:
Accessibility (D8)
Mobile Administration interfaces (D8)
Multi-site
Hosting (Acquia)
Support (Acquia)
Integration - not every company wants to be locked into a single vendor. Many organizations that I'm trying to sell to have existing investments in things like Email Campaign Management, Marketing Automation, Analytics, etc. They don't want to replace. They want to integrate.
Anyhow...those are some quick thoughts. I'm new to Drupal, so go easy on me, and if you have any questions, feel free to drop me a line.
Great thoughts
Thanks James - this is a great contribution, and welcome to the community!
There are a few compare/contrast threads around, and Dries has often said we need to be looking more at the sitecore's and less at the joomla's of the world - so helping those of us with no exposure to sitecore understand what it does well, and what it doesn't is going to be really useful!
cheers
Donna
Donna Benjamin
Former Board Member Drupal Association (2012-2018)
@kattekrab