Forrester calls out Alfresco and Drupal as the top-two open-source WCM systems

Forrester Research just released a great report detailing the open-source web content management market. In it, Forrester analyst Stephen Powers highlights a shift to open source for managing websites:

As organizations embark on next-generation Web content management (WCM) initiatives, they want to avoid the mistakes made in earlier, more costly WCM projects. As a result, information and knowledge management professionals increasingly show an interest in open source WCM as a way of controlling software costs and increasing their access to product-specific expertise in the marketplace.

That's great: Enterprises should move to open-source web content management offerings. But which ones?

Out of the wide pool of open-source web content management projects (There are, quite literally, hundreds), Forrester says there are two to which CIOs and CTOs need to pay particular attention:

Alfresco and Drupal (Acquia).

In answer to the question, "Why these two?" Forrester answers: Relevance. As Powers writes:

For an open source WCM vendor to be relevant, it must have a satisfactory product offering, proven enterprise-level implementations, and a large--and passionate--community of developers and service providers. Currently, enterprises interested in open source should keep an eye on two offerings--Alfresco Software and Drupal--because:

• Both have taken pages from the commercial vendors' playbooks [i.e., enterprise-class support, stability, etc.]....
• Technologists praise the product architectures....
• Both have strong professional communities.

In sum, Alfresco and Drupal, backed by Acquia, offer enterprises a way to improve their web presence while saving a great deal of money in the process. What's not to love?

Of course, there's money to be saved in licensing costs, but it's how a company reallocates those costs that matters most. As Forrester points out, applying those saved licensing fees to a tailored implementation should translate into much higher levels of satisfaction. Today, most IT projects fail, but enterprises can mitigate the risk of failure upfront by trying an open-source project before they buy.

Disclosure: I work for Alfresco.

[twentworth12]

I agree that Drupal and Alfresco are both great open source WCM choices, but the Forrester report makes an important observation. Forrester notes that open source WCM vendors are strong in areas like document-centric Intranets and static external sites however, open source WCM vendors tend to struggle with persuasive, dynamic customer facing external sites. Stephen Powers points out that the open source WCM vendors tend to lack "personalization, segmentation, campaign management, and other business-user-facing support". These capabilities are critical to a web marketer looking to maximize their online business performance. Many of the customers I work with at Intewoven (there's my disclosure) are moving beyond just managing web content; they are looking to monetize it. Open source vendors like Alfresco and Drupal need to expand their value outside of IT and look at how to better help companies use the web to drive revenue, not just cut costs.

[Matt Asay]

It's a good point, Tom. Just remember: We've been doing this for two years. Think of that. 30,000+ active deployments of Alfresco and 600+ customers in just two years. In addition to announced customers like Activision, Neiman Marcus, Adobe, etc., we have five of the world's largest financial services companies, a wide swath of the world's biggest government organizations, etc. It is *absolutely* true that Alfresco (and Drupal) won't be the right fit every time, just as Interwoven isn't. But the difference is that people don't have to take my word for how well it works. They can download it, try it out, and buy if they like. 30-40,000 people do just that every single month. Admit it: You wouldn't mind that sort of traction in that sort of time.

[botchagalupe]

Matt,

I lieu of my shelling out $279 dollars can you point out who are the "vendors" Forrester includes as the "mistakes" of the past. My point being, "the analysts", can't have it both ways and be credible. You can't take huge amounts of money from old school WCM vendors and then not reference them in an article like this.

my .2 cents.
johnmwillis.com

[Rowanwg]

Why did you link to Aquia's site instead of drupal.org? What has Aquia got to do with this article in the first place?

From Aquia.com: "We are a new software company that will provide value-added software products and services for the Drupal social publishing system."

[jensuismus]

I agree with Rowanwg - why does the article refer to Aquia - its drupal.org . Aquia just happens to be the first company who uses its own version of Drupal - but the project is drupal.org and that should be communicated to the reader.

[jwhatcott]

I appreciate the link to Acquia.com, but it would also be good to link to Drupal.org as well. It's important to help everyone remember that Drupal is not Acquia and Acquia is not Drupal just as Linux is not Red Hat and Red Hat is not Linux.

In the report, the analyst suggests that the emergence of Acquia has made Drupal more attractive to enterprises. Having commercial support available addresses real and valid concerns that enterprise buyers are feeling. So the combined value proposition of the Drupal technology and community AND Acquia commercial support is what Forrester finds compelling.

We're happy that Acquia is helping to positively affect perception of Drupal among previously skeptical audiences, but we don't want to take credit for or in any way diminish what the Drupal community has accomplished on its own.

Jeff Whatcott
Acquia

[stevecrawf]

Isn't comparing Drupal and Alfresco on the same page a bit of apples and oranges?

Drupal seems oriented more towards managing content for website publishing, whereas Alfresco strikes me as more of a document collaboration platform. Sure, each of them could be used to do both functions, but where you're starting from will determine which platform to build on.