Early this past May, co-founder and CTODries BuytaertofAcquia, a provider of commercial open source, social publishing solutions forDrupal, shared his insights for web-based business owners, developers and marketers on Drupal in the Enterprise at the 2011 CMS Expo Learning and Business Conference.
CMS stands for content management systems, which are platforms that we use everyday, either built in-house to manage company workflow or well-known platforms like WordPress, which are used by most online publishing sites (like this one). Intrigued by Buytaert’s thoughts on open source’s potential for disruption, I reached out for an interview to discuss 5 reasons why open source will shake the CMS establishment industry.
CBM: Tell me a little about your company, what is Acquia?
Dries Buytaert:Acquia is the company I co-founded in 2007 to provide support and services for Drupal, the open-source content-management system I created ten years ago. Drupal’s growth has amazed everybody, including me: what started as a dorm-room project now runs hundreds of thousands of web sites, including some of the world’s biggest. Enterprise clients increasingly turn to Drupal — but they demand enterprise-level support, hosting, training, and other services. That’s where Acquia comes in.
CBM: What are five reasons why open source will shake the CMS establishment?
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DB:Some of the reasons Drupal wins CMS battles are shared by other open-source projects: it’s free, you can adapt it for your needs, and so forth. But the content-management field is one where proprietary systems are on especially shaky ground, for five reasons:
CBM: How will this affect web-based business owners? developers? marketers? content creators?
DB:First off, let’s dispense with the obvious: Free software lowers costs, period. That alone means that members of these groups can try out more ideas and roll out more sites without budget fears.
But let’s look beyond cost. As you know, the “network effect” is huge in software development: If you use a platform that’s well-supported, you have a greater selection of consultants, service providers, and supporting software. Proprietary CMSes have had an edge in the past because they had a head start, and they had better marketing. Advantages from that head start have evaporated: They simply have no technical advantage anymore. And with the growth of open-source ecosystems, their marketing advantage is disappearing as well.
What say you to the future of CMS? Are Open Source platforms the future? I believe so.
Story byCourtney Boyd Myers
Courtney Boyd Myers is the founder of audience.io, a transatlantic company designed to help New York and London based technology startups gr(show all)Courtney Boyd Myers is the founder ofaudience.io, a transatlantic company designed to help New York and London based technology startups grow internationally.
Previously, she was the Features Editor and East Coast Editor of TNW covering New York City startups and digital innovation. She loves magnets + reading on a Kindle.
You can follow her onFacebook,Twitter @CBMandGoogle +.
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