Hi all,
I am involved with a regional Victorian utility company, and they have recently decided that Drupal is their new platform of choice for external web.
It is likely (due to procurement policies and probity concerns) to go to market via an EOI or Tender, looking to partner with a business that can provide development of a new site(s), maintenance and tech support (including hosting/hosting management), and staff/user training and support - as well as provide overall guidance in the "web space" about content best practice, information architecture, style guidelines etc.
One of there primary concerns, and therefore high on the agenda when choosing a new partner, is that they have been burnt (badly) by their current web developer, and been left with a bastardised, out of date Joomla site that no one thinks is worth salvaging, (and it has been "interesting" trying to extricate them from the old vendor's grasp.)
They do not want to be left "boxed in" to one provider, or one niche platform that locks them to a single-point of failure.
Part of that is addressed by the decision to choose a popular, widespread, supportable platform (Drupal on an externally hosted LAMP stack)...
But I also suspect that it would be mitigated if their was some form of collaborative arrangement with the new Vendor - perhaps a co-tendering arrangement, or perhaps even a primary vendor, with a passive "understanding" with a second vendor of services - so that the second was visible, aware of site design and basically "available" to the client, should the primary go AWOL or otherwise abandon ship.
Does anyone know of any situations where this form of collaborative engagement has occurred, or something similar?
I'm not envisioning a full partnership - more of an arrangement where Vendor one says to Client: "I can do the job, and I will provide you extra risk mitigation by keeping you in touch with one of my competitors, who could take over if anything ever happens to me..."
I know there is the risk that Vendor 2 could try to steal the job from Vendor 1 - but this is the Drupal community right? All Peace, Love and Mung Beans? :)
Any thoughts?
Comments
mudsurfer
this is an excellent request and one that we would love to be involved in
We have extensive experience in design and development and collaborative projects utilising the drupal community.
We have no problem with your request re transparency and fail over.
even our quotes are developed so you can take them to an alternate drupal developer and get the sit developed if you dont like us!
Happy to talk further
Cheers
Tim
0414 770 002
tim.miller@itintegrity.com.au
I'm involved in an
I'm involved in an arrangement like this now with a marketing company working with a larger client her in Tasmania. Basically the client has a development and design firm in Melbourne and we as the marketing firm are doing updated development to do with current campaigns.
I can tell you for a fact as the second party I'm not interested in poaching the job as I don't want the liability or responsibility that goes with it. The only thing that is really a downside is having to maintain contact between so many parties and the level of documentation required.
This is exactly the type of
This is exactly the type of situation Acquia (http://acquia.com/) was set up to manage for larger enterprises. You basically arrange your Drupal hosting and support through Acquia and then choose a local Acquia development partner to implement the site. If there's ever any issues with the first vendor, Acquia will line you up with an alternative development firm, whilst maintaining consistency in terms of site management.
I agree with Owen
I agree with Owen, Acquia is ideal for large corporates. Don't be afraid to mix it up, eg. you don't need to use Acquia's hosting services or other services, you might go for the basic corporate support plan using Acquia for vendor vetting, crisis mitigation and quality assurance.
When a certain large Victorian organization used Acquia, they went for minimum chips, then they used Lullabot for quality assurance. If you are building a Drupal site and you know that Lullabot will do a QA review, you work damn hard!
Great Idea
I think its a great idea,
I was in Government dealing with tenders etc, the only problem I see with this is the bureaucracy.
When things go wrong everyone starts to blame each other. And if there are multiple parties involved
it gets messy. Like the Joomla situation we were stuck in a contract with a dodgy supplier and it
was getting to the stage of going to court.
But in saying that there are ways to make it work, I would be interested.
Great Feedback
Thanks all for that great feedback.
Owen, sime: The Acquia idea is interesting and I certainly uderstand that kind of large enterprise support model - in essence that's the same way that Oracle or SAP provide enterprise level services, through engagement with a local partner (usually an overpriced consulting firm!). I'll have a closer look at the Acquia offerings.
However, I'm thinking that this organisation may want to act like a large corporate - but in reality they are a small organisation (200ish staff), and they have a very low level of maturity with regards to web tech, and web marketing. They have a long term strategy statement related to social media - and but very few of the key stakeholders understand what it means.
Their current site requirements are quite basic.
I suspect they they need to start small and low - more likely they hve type of budget that will attract a small development business than a larger player like Acquia.
Full Disclosure: I have thought about trying to pick up the job myself - but would struggle with a perception of conflict of interest. And I only tinker with Drupal as a part time exercise, my day job is a Project Manager and Business Systems Analyst.
Jethrocon, JIspahany - thanks: might be in touch to discuss further - in any event will update on this group if the job comes to fruition.
Dale Baldwin - I'm interested in how the 3 way relationship developed (who approach who in the first instance?) and how you manage the demarkation of responibilities between yourself and the melbourne firm? Is it a clear functional/technology line - or requires more of collaboration?
One model I'm interested in exploring is similar to what I have seen with small groups of owner-drivers in the trucking industry: A few of them get together informally - usually a few blokes in the same town, and although they get their own work, and manage their own businesses - they pass work to each other if they are over capacity, or they sub-contract to each other if one scores a big job. I suppose it's that sort of "loose collective" that I thought might be an interesting model for a group of small developers to explore.
And I think that being a member of that sort of collective might be a good marketing tool to crack into some of these regional corporates/semi gov and gov agencies... providing some risk reduction in them dealing with small businesses.
Again - thanks everyone's feedback - this is really interesting.