Driven by the power of the Open Source software community, Drupal is disrupting the enterprise software market.
DENVER, Oct. 17, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — Imagine one of the largest school districts in the country reducing their software costs from $90 a student to $1 per student. By creating a complete set of applications built on Drupal, and replacing or repurposing licensed tools, the district would be able to reduce 50+ different applications down by over half, while simultaneously adding substantial new features and functionality, all with a single, main interface for 500,000+ students in dozens of schools. With one Drupal platform there is less maintenance, less training needed, and fewer updates… plus, an ongoing savings of millions of dollars a year.
Web development companies like NewMedia in Denver are putting Open Source tools like Drupal on steroids to create transformative enterprise solutions for school districts, state governments, and large companies. They are pushing the boundaries of where Drupal can go in the enterprise and changing how business looks at open source software.
Steve Morris, Director of Business Development at NewMedia says, "Drupal itself cannot run a billion dollar enterprise, but it can link together and control the things that do and interface many of those things along the way. It can be a stand-alone entity that does things all by itself or a connector for five other entities, so they can all work together. It can be a controller of five other entities and run them all at once, by modifying it in new and previously unintended ways. That's the flexibility of Drupal."
NewMedia has been pumping up recent projects with Drupal both as a framework and/or a component for complex enterprise needs:
– The University of Colorado was introduced to Drupal when NewMedia redeveloped their 7000 page static website with it, and the experience has dramatically changed how CU operates its websites ever since. What used to take 5 full-time people to maintain, now takes one person 20 hours per week, and CU has gone on to become a recognized leader in Drupal among educational groups.
– NewMedia helped the State of Colorado significantly cut costs by developing straightforward Drupal application frameworks to allow the State to build and manage 151 Colorado State division sites without relying on technical resources or expertise.
– Six Flags Entertainment Corporation operates 13 parks across the US, Mexico and Canada, and receives millions of unique website visitors per month. NewMedia helped them create a new global website using Drupal to allow for centralized administrative control by Six Flags, while offering individual park-level administrators controls of their own, in one cohesive system that increases efficiency, reduces costs, and allows for massive scalability.
According to Steve, enterprise projects are by definition multi-faceted, multi-component, complex projects, but by continuing to expand the limits of Drupal, developers like NewMedia are disrupting the enterprise. He says, "Drupal is the Open Source solution that is challenging how companies license software. Developers who look at enterprise projects holistically will find that Drupal can be used as the glue to hold applications together or as a component where other software may handle a job more efficiently."
With the largest Open Source Community in the world (over a million people in 228 countries), the benefits of freedom of use and scale are profound. In addition, there is a significant reduction in risk with Drupal because you pay only for the site design and implementation. Companies can use it and scale it all they want – it scales for nothing but infrastructure and implementation costs. Packaged software simply can't compete with Drupal in terms of innovation, cost, or scalability.
Drupal will continue to evolve the enterprise marketplace. As visibility expands beyond developers to more CIO's and CMO's, decision makers will quickly realize the value in a framework that provides unparalleled flexibility, scalability, and innovation. Companies like NewMedia are using Drupal and their open source community to present a new paradigm to the enterprise where the structure of information is re-imagined.
To interview NewMedia's Steve Morris on how Drupal is disrupting the enterprise, email or contact me at 914-572-2707.
Richard Berman
Berman & Associates
914-572-2707
Email