Open source content management systems have made major progress in recent years. The systems have matured usual weaknesses such as usability, integration, lacking features and weak documentation has been addressed. In addition many large and complex organisations have adopted open source CMS and are now running busy sites on the platforms.
Illustration credit: Siteworx
For buyers, a significant barrier to open source adoption has always been the lack of large competent implementation partners with open source CMS experience. In the past, open source CMS developers used to be mostly freelancers or boutique consultancies with less than 10 experienced developers. Very often these had low rates, but weak project management and a poor track record. Today most system integrators and digital agencies, even the large ones, have experience with open source CMS.
The increased adoption by viable implementation partners has been partially driven by the many government agencies that mandate the use of open source, often due to the systems' strong support for standards. This has forced large digital agencies, e.g. LBi and Sapient to build skills with several open source systems. As a testament to this, LBi hosted an UK Umbraco meetup at their London offices earlier this month.
When looking for an implementation partner, consider specifically asking for open source, as many of the partners still promote commercial alternatives, e.g. Day Software or Sitecore, as those projects tend to be more profitable for them.
The marketplace for commercial and open source systems are equally crowded. A long list of open source projects will meet your requirements, have relevant references and a few available implementation partners.
To expand on our recent CMS Shortlist, here are the open source tools that we consider good candidates for your shortlist:
In certain regions you will find strong penetration of other viable open source systems such as Alfresco, Hippo, Jahia, Magnolia, SilverStripe, Squiz and even WordPress used as a CMS.
I still commonly get the question whether open source CMS comes with any major disadvantages. For a while my answer has been no. Open source tends to share some of the weaknesses found in commercial systems, but today there are no good reasons for automatically excluding open source from your CMS selection.
Thanks to @McBoof and @tristanrenaud for valuable input.
Hi there..
I like Open Source CMS’ a lot. It feels so much more “right” not having to pay for this kind of commodity software that a WCMS is these days. Also, as a consultant with strong development skills I like the O/S CMS’ more because they adopt the latest technologies quicker and it is thus a lot more fun to develop in those systems – I know its selfish ;).
I am often talking to my clients about Open Source CMS’ and the two main concerns I hear from them occasionally (and which I can appreciate) are;
– Warranty of the software
– Intellectual Property
Warranty
The clients ask who will fix bugs in the CMS as they arrive (the product, not the implementation)? The community if they feel like it? Sapient after booking them on a daily rate and waiting for them to get to the bottom of the core source code of the O/S and understanding that and the bug? The concern is that at least with a commercial WCMS you get product warranty (usually under a maintenance fee) that entitles you to bug fixes free of charge (and within certain timeframes/SLA)
Intellectual Property
The big scare around Linux a few years ago is still raised on (admittedly rarer) occasions. With open source software you have a harder time guaranteeing that there are no IP infringements in the source code.. A developer found some code that solved a particular problem and integrated it into the CMS – problem if that code was not his to use! This area can be a huge legal liability for people even just using the CMS unknowingly about the infringements.
Anyway, these are only 2 tricky items and against all the many great points I think it might not be a big issue.
What are other peoples thoughts?
Regards,
J..
Jason
that’s what commercial open source is for.
- B
Another barrier that exists for many customers in the US, that is also a consideration for many implementation partners, is the availability of commercial support and maintenance option.
For the buyer, they want the assurances that a professional support organization is available to handle technical issues, resolve defects and troubleshoot a production outage. Likewise, most integrators do not want to be in the business of handling Level 1 or 2 support calls for an Open Source product.
Not every open-source short list will be appropriate to every customer, of course. Joomla! isn’t as easily scalable as some of the others on your list (is it?), for example, and favors scenarios in which tight coupling of management and delivery layers is not going to be a problem.
I see another scenario for open source that isn’t mentioned here, which is the use of an open-source product as the basis of or foundation (the starting point — not the end point) for in-house development of an otherwise bespoke system. To me that makes perfect sense. If you’re struggling with buy-vs-build, and you’ve got the resources to build rather than buy, why not start with foundational pieces that are already built and (at least somewhat) proven, then put your own business logic and required functionality on top of that? In that kind of scenario, the open-source pieces give you a head start on stuff you don’t really want to build anyway. It’s the best of both worlds. But still a tradeoff, of course.
You’ve talked about open source and commercial alternatives in this article. What I’m missing is the in-between “commercial open source” players that are gaining momentum as well: e.g. Alfresco, Nuxeo, Sense/Net, Aquia Drupal (it’s not just Drupal).
[...] Janus Boye | microsoft, open source, plone, umbraco | No CommentsDespite much hype we did not see a breakthrough for open source CMS last year. When I launched the discussion last year, we received some great comments, e.g. on [...]