[consulting] CMS comparison

[Darrel O'Pry]

I think the fact that Drupal is on the go, creates a lot of the business
opportunities around it. You can create stabilized distributions, See
CivicSpace, you can do an ASP see Bryght, you can do consulting, see
lullabot, advomatic, trellon. Just to name the first few that come to
mind.

However, I don't think any single person posing as a consulting firm can
keep up with all of Drupal, and and have all the skills necessary to
implement advanced Drupal setups. You need to find partners and develop
relationships within the Drupal community, and I think working with it
as platform and business will be easier. I haven't really had a lot of
problems with upgrades yet, but I came around at the beginning of 4.6
and my first upgrade has been 4.7. Which had a lot of update code added
to simply the upgrade paths. 

.darrel.



On Wed, 2006-05-10 at 11:05 -0400, Jenny Hsueh wrote:
> Fully agree with what John said here. if creativity and unbound playing 
> field is a decided focus of Drupal, then  for us on this consulting 
> list  we have to come up with plan B if we to continue using  drupal as 
> a business solution or plan C to keep drupal as a sandbox toy for ideas  
> inspirations.
> 
> The plan B - business wrapper around drupal can be provided in several 
> layers,  such as providers of commercial grade modules/distros that is 
> offered with a fee and with support, distribution/hosting  platforms  
> with backward compatibility and performance issues all taken care of, 
> individual consultants for specialized customization work and  finally 
> the lazy guys who just go out,  find customers, collects the money and 
> distribute them to all :-)
> 
> With the way drupal is going, we all have to be a Jack of all trades 
> master of none. I  can not  live up to the promise of what we said to 
> our customers - routinely upgrade to the latest feature that is 
> available in Drupal - as it is indeed very costly to upgrade!  The ASP 
> model that Civicspace and Bryght is offering or planning to offer  is 
> moving  to the right direction I think.
> 
> Jenny
> 
> 
> John Sechrest wrote:
> 
> >"Jeremy Epstein" <jazepstein at gmail.com> writes:
> >
> > % Personally, I hope Drupal never grows up. I think it's amazing that
> > % Drupal has managed to stay young for this long, to consistently look
> > % ahead to the next release with absolutely no fear of anything, and
> > % with a bit of ideas and a bit of a plan, and a whole lot of passion.
> > % And I think that our branding should continue to reflect that. Because
> > % that's how we'll continue to attract 'plumbers' who are eager to dive
> > % into the sand and start building castles with us. Other software
> > % products wish they were young at heart, wish that they still had a
> > % happy-go-lucky ambition and a super-charged imagination. I say, let's
> > % hold on to that for as long as we can.
> >
> > There is a decided focus on this idea. It happens when Dries 
> > says things like there is no roadmap. And when there is no
> > backward compatability for older releases. And when the solution
> > to problems is to upgrade.
> >
> > And as a result, the platform is be definition unstable. 
> > And as a consultant trying to create a site that is supportable
> > by a client, it causes me trouble. Upgrades are as painful
> > or more painful than the initial install. 
> >
> > The need for clean, fast , pretty out of the box experience is 
> > useful for not only the newcomer, but for the consultant trying
> > to make a good impression on the first rapid install.
> >
> > The alternative presented by drupal is to do what Bryght is doing,
> > which is to basically to maintain an automation suite which
> > is like having your own distribution. 
> >
> > If the decided goal of drupal is to be a platform for invention,
> > then that is a different goal than having a stable platform that 
> > organizations like city governments and businesses need for
> > the stable support of their tasks. 
> >
> > Why would an organization like a city government, which is aiming
> > at consistancy and quality want to engage in using drupal if
> > the tool goal is to be a platform for invention? 
> >
> >
> > 
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >-----
> >John Sechrest          .         Helping people use
> >                        .           computers and the Internet
> >                          .            more effectively
> >                             .                      
> >                                 .       Internet: sechrest at peak.org
> >                                      .   
> >                                              . http://www.peak.org/~sechrest
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> >  
> >
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