[development] Re: enterprise needs

[Boris Mann]

On 26-Feb-06, at 5:54 PM, Simon Croome wrote:

> pat at linuxcolumbus.com wrote:
>> The only thing Drupal lacks for enterprise acceptance is a  
>> marketing team
>> and a price tag.
> Yes, marketing directed at enterprises would help, if its more  
> enterprise users that Drupal wants.  (IMHO, most won't contribute  
> back to the community, Drupal service providers excepted).

Well...these enterprise users actually usually contribute indirectly,  
through one of two methods:
1. They work with Drupal consultants who get paid to modify/module/ 
whatever and themselves work contributing into their support/pricing  
structure
2. They commit to Drupal as a platform and get the most value from  
integrating/contributing directly

There is a longer discussion about some of these issues (and  
educating enterprise on the values of "community ROI") on the  
consultant's mailing list.

> I also work for a large enterprise (multinational investment bank),  
> and when we selected a CMS last year, Drupal didn't make the short  
> list.  We ended up with a very expensive system because it offered  
> the following features that either Drupal doesn't do, or maybe not  
> to the level we needed for our (granted industry-specific)  
> requirements.

Yep. There are lots of "high end" features for which Drupal is not  
necessarily the right choice...some notes on how this might be  
implemented, merely for interest's sake.

> 1.  True multi-language support.  All content and interfaces in  
> multiple languages, with workflow for helping translators.

Work in progress. Having true multi-language support in a CMS that  
can be run in a shared hosting account would make Drupal truly shine.

> 2.  Content staging and approval workflow.

Staging site with publish-subscribe. Approval puts content into a  
publish queue that can get pushed to 1 or more live sites.

> 3.  Version control of everything (content, templates, images,  
> etc.).  We needed to be able to see what was on our site on a given  
> day.

Education has some similar requirements, but more around archiving.  
Could be done with a non-Drupal solution -- i.e. SVN.

> 4.  Multiple dev teams with their own dev servers, mastering their  
> own content.

I like publish-subscribe for this. Yes, I need to invest some time/ 
money into feedback/funding for JVD to do more with this, or for some  
other people to dive in.

> 5.  Multi-target publishing, with atomic copies and rollback.

Could also be pub-sub, and the rollback feature could potentially be  
added.

> 6.  LDAP authentication and roles-based authorisation, or  
> integration with a product like Netegrity.

LDAP "works today", although configuring it is non-trivial.

> What we got in the end was basically a pimped up rcs/rsync (except  
> for the price tag of course!)
>
> I really like Drupal, and am quite happy that it doesn't have all  
> of these features.  I don't think they would apply to the majority  
> of users.

Yep. All about picking the right tools for the job.

--
Boris Mann
Vancouver 778-896-2747 San Francisco 415-367-3595
SKYPE borismann
http://www.bryght.com