Acquia
Drupal Gardens
Acquia had two big product announcements at DrupalCon Paris. The first was the general availability of Acquia Hosting, which I'll blog about tomorrow. The second is a status update on "Acquia Gardens" which we first announced in the beginning of 2009.
For those who have not heard about Acquia Gardens, this product will provide an easy on-ramp for people to experience the awesome power of Drupal without having to worry about installation, hosting and upgrading. Think of it as Wordpress.com or Ning for Drupal. Think of it as 'Drupal as a service'.
We announced that the final name for the product is Drupal Gardens. This service is Drupal, so including Drupal in the name emphasizes that point. Plus, this is all about promoting Drupal so we don't want to hide that. Our goal is to make the base service free of charge, and to introduce Drupal to hundreds of thousands of users. Many individuals and organizations want a killer web site, but have no idea that Drupal is a great way to build one or to connect with other websites. Even if they did hear about Drupal, few non-technical people succeed in installing and hosting a Drupal site. I believe Drupal Gardens could play a key role in promoting the viral adoption of Drupal, and the name Drupal Gardens is key to that.
For the same reason, I'd really like Drupal Gardens to stay close to what Drupal does, to work with module maintainers, and give back where we can. For example, it would be awesome if Gardens users could contribute to Gardens, simply by contributing to Drupal -- either by contributing to existing modules that we use to build Gardens, or to new modules that Acquia might contribute. Along the same lines, we want people to be able to export their Gardens site -- the code, the theme and data -- and move of the platform to a any Drupal hosting environment. By doing so, we provide people an easy on-ramp but we allow them to grow beyond the capabilities of Gardens without locking them in. These are the kind of win-win situations that I hope we can create.
We also showed a demo of the current state of Drupal Gardens. The product is in pre-alpha, but we wanted to give you an update and show what we've been working on. The main feature that I demonstrated in my Acquia presentation is a tool we developed called the "theme builder". The theme builder makes it really easy to build a beautiful design for your Drupal site from within your browser without having to write any HTML, CSS or Javascript. The theme builder is enabling technology, and certainly part of my vision of what content management systems should enable users to do: empowering them to quickly and easily assemble powerful websites without having to do any programming.
The theme builder comes with pre-defined themes to start from.
The theme builder comes with a basic layout manager.
The theme builder comes with pre-defined themes to start from, color palettes and a custom color selector.
The current plan is to be in the market the beginning of 2010. Gardens is built on, and depends on, the release of Drupal 7. While we don't yet have the exact timing for this (Drupal 7 is ready when it is ready), we do plan to start inviting people to start alpha testing in the next couple of months. If you are interested in taking part in the alpha program, or if you'd like to get notified about the progress of the product, sign up at drupalgardens.com.
On Drupal certification programs
Every once in a while, the discussion of Drupal cerification comes up. Is a Drupal certification program a good thing or a bad thing? Are certification programs overrated? Isn't one's track record as a contributor on drupal.org the best measure of someone's past (and possibly future) performance? Should the Drupal Association manage the program, and if not, then who? What do other Open Source projects do?
Lots of unknowns and lots of subjective questions always make for a good discussion.
While I'm often skeptical about certification programs myself, I do see the value in them. Certification isn't for everyone but for some people it is valuable. A masters degree from MIT, an MBA from Harvard or a Ph.D. from Stanford is a form of certification too. But, just as there are good examples, there is no lack of examples where bad certification programs deliver certified engineers that don't know what they are actually doing. That fact, though, doesn't invalidate the valuable certification programs that do exist; for example, the CISCO certification program is very thorough and valued by the market. Similarly, I think that employers do value certificates achieved in higher education. All things considered, I believe there is value in having a well-executed high-quality Drupal certification program, especially as Drupal continues to grow.
My personal view is that the Drupal Association is not the best body to create "the" Drupal certification program. It is my belief that we are best served by allowing many organizations to create their own Drupal certification programs, and have the marketplace set their value -- similar to how universities build reputations. Competition around Drupal certification programs could be a great thing, because it would likely improve quality and allow for specialization. A certification, of course, is ultimately only as valuable as the organization standing behind it. In such a scenario, it is very important that the certification programs are labeled properly; that is, "ACME Drupal certified" rather than just "Drupal certified", where ACME is the name of the company or organization providing the service. It has to be ACME's reputation that is on the line for the quality of their participants. The Drupal trademark policy is designed to help achieve that.
I also don't believe that a certification program is a zero-sum game: that is, holding a certification doesn't imply that your track record on drupal.org (through your user profile) is of either less or more value. Again, the market and the buyer will determine the value of a drupal.org user profile versus a certification program versus a resume versus a portfolio versus degrees obtained through higher education. In any event, it is unlikely that one would hire someone solely on the basis of having a Drupal certification. I certainly wouldn't.
When we launched Acquia two years ago, we announced a Drupal certification program code named 'Yellow Jersey'. That program hasn't materialized yet, and we're not putting resources in it at this point in time. Building a high-quality certification program is a significant undertaking and we're not ready to take on such a program. And last but not least, the marketplace hasn't demanded these types of programs to a sufficient degree. Yet.
Other Open Source projects like MySQL, Zend, Linux, Ubuntu, RedHat, BSD all have certification programs so I think it is a matter of time before we see one or more Drupal certification programs emerge. Personally, I would support a well-executed high-quality Drupal certification program.
Acquia adds 200 new customers in six months
I've posted a good bit about Acquia lately, because we had a lot of exciting things happening, and because I'm proud of the body of work that the Acquia team is producing, often in close cooperation with the Drupal community.
Still, a lot of people ask me how Acquia is doing and whether the support business model is working. In this post, and in an accompanying press release, I want to provide some additional insight in the state of Acquia's support business model.
As you might remember, Acquia opened for business in October 2008, less than one year ago. In less than one year, Acquia now supports over 250 enterprise customers across a wide variety of markets. In the last six months, we've quadrupled our customer base and now help support open-source solutions in places where proprietary software once predominated. Places like The Economist, Intuit, WEEI, Sony Music, Adobe and more.
The reality is that with less than one year into the Drupal support business, it is too early for us to tell if the support business model will be viable for Drupal. We need many more customers before we've built a scalable business; however, the early signs are good and beat our expectations.
Acquia has grown substantially from its beginnings less than two years ago, and since opening its doors for business less than one year ago. The road to making Acquia a successful company is still long but I'm very excited about what we have accomplished to date, and where Acquia is heading with its new products and services.
Acquia.com website refresh
For those who haven't seen it yet, we've refreshed the Acquia website, both the design and the content. I think we've taken a big step forward with the new design (apart from putting my picture on the main page). The most noticeable change is that the previous version of the website was targeted at the existing Drupal community, whereas the new version speaks to new and different target audiences; designers, developers, and business owners that might not be familiar with Drupal. This is a fairly radical change in our messaging -- we'll have to see how that plays out for us. We are also trying to highlight more the importance and work of our partners.
To me, this reflects an important trend for the Drupal community at large though. Traditionally, Drupal has been very developer centric and we have grown organically through word-of-mouth marketing and good reputation. While we obviously need to continue to foster that, we also need to get traction with the designer community as well as get the attention of senior business decision-makers. It is something we all have to work on, but I hope Acquia's refreshed website contributes to making that happen.
As always, our website continues to be a work in progress, so let us know what you think! As a reference, I included screen shots of older versions of our site.
Acquia.com in March 2008
Acquia.com in July 2009
Acquia raises $8 million series B
I'm very pleased to announce that Acquia has raised an additional 8 million USD in a Series B round of funding. As explained in our press release, the investment was led by our existing investors, North Bridge Venture Partners and Sigma Partners. Combined with our Series A funding, this brings our total funding to 15 million USD.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) published our filing faster than expected and as a result, some of you may have already heard this news. That will teach us to coordinate things better -- not a big deal, but another lesson learned. Interestingly, there is nothing like a scoop to generate coverage and the funding news was picked up by TechCrunch, Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Mass High Tech, Venture Beat, CMS Wire, Xconomy and many others.
Raising this additional money is no small thing, especially in the current global economy. It is a testament to the hard work and dedication of all the Acquians and the momentum we have achieved.
Pitching our investors over Skype. Tom was attending the meeting in person but I couldn't travel because my wife was about to give birth to our son, Stan. Taken with my iPhone.
But how will the money of our series B funding be used, you ask?
First, this new funding lets us accelerate our existing support business. Our support business is performing better than we expected but, of course, there is still a lot of work to do. We'll use the money to grow our support business and to expand the market for Drupal in the enterprise world.
Second, the new funding allows us to complete the strategy that we laid out early in 2009, directly leading to new products like Acquia Hosting, Acquia Gardens and Acquia Training. We'll also be looking to add some new products and services to the Acquia Network as part of our subscription offerings.
My vision for Acquia has always been to offer a unique combination of products, services, and technical leadership that complement and help fuel the Drupal project, and that help Drupal reach its full potential. It is why I started Acquia to begin with, and our Series B investment doesn't change that vision. Expect us to continue to give back to the Drupal community through code, by organizing sprints, through attending and sponsoring events, and more.
Last, the new funding means that I can continue to follow my heart, directing my time, resources and passion toward Drupal and the many people it touches. I have found a joy in participating in Open Source and doing start-ups that I have not found in academia, and that I likely wouldn't have found as a programmer at a local bank. ;)
I'm writing this blog post in San Jose where I'm attending the annual OSCON conference to meet and work with people in the Drupal community, and to educate people about Drupal. It is on days like today that I am reminded of how lucky I am, and of what both Drupal and Acquia enable me to do.
CIOs are starting to take notice of Drupal
Drupal.org recently featured a detailed use case about InterMedia Outdoors switching to Drupal. InterMedia Outdoors boasts a network of 16 websites, a portfolio of 15 magazines, 25 market-leading television productions, 2 syndicated radio shows, and more.
What the use case didn't mention is that they are migrating off of FatWire, a proprietary web content management system (WCMS) that is Forrester's current poster child in the Q2 2009 Forrester Wave for "Web Content Management For External Sites". To me, that is the most interesting part because it means that Drupal is starting to disrupt traditional web content management systems, including the leading ones.
In other words: CIOs are starting to take notice of Drupal.
Many of the proprietary content management systems are difficult to customize, expensive, hard to set up, and slow to adopt new trends. Contrast that to an Open Source solution like Drupal and you get the exact opposite: all the code is made available, anyone can change it, it is very extensible, well documented, and massively adopted. Developers are plentiful, it is bleeding edge, and best of all, there is no license fee -- which matters a great deal in today's economy.
Furthermore, on the business side, Open Source companies get a ton of sales and marketing for free while proprietary vendors presumably have to put more resources into sales and marketing. In other words, Open Source companies should be able to win on all fronts: technology, sales, and marketing. And we do -- I see it in the Drupal community every day.
But no matter how many times we've whacked proprietary vendors over the head with a foam clue bat, some still think that open source is a fad. That is why it is good to see organizations move from proprietary systems to Open Source solutions.
Excited about this event, I reached out to Howard Stevens, the CIO of InterMedia Outdoors. In an e-mail conversation, he asserted the following:
"The primary reason that we selected Drupal is the extensive flexibility that it provides us to enhance our sites over time. While we are very excited about the launch of In-Fisherman, we also recognize that it is a work in progress--the digital media landscape is evolving so quickly it was important for us to implement a content management system that enables us to continually improve our sites without the constraint of vendor roadmaps and proprietary code. The transparency of Drupal’s source code and engaged developer community ensures that any deficiencies in the code are quickly discovered and remedied, new features can be developed as necessary, and we will always retain the flexibility to keep our sites on the cutting-edge."
While use cases like InterMedia Outdoors are really helpful in convincing CIOs, we need to think about more and different ways to encourage CIOs to abandon their proprietary web content management systems. A common misconception among CIOs is that Open Source solutions require a lot more customization and development than proprietary CMS solutions. Howard Stevens wrote:
"One of the hurdles that dissuaded us from implementing Drupal originally was our very small in-house development team. The promise of an out-of-the-box proprietary solution was appealing as it seemingly mitigated the majority of the development risk and complexity. In reality, Drupal was much more effective at helping us manage those risks ..."
The reality is that with 4000+ contributed modules, Drupal has access to a lot more pre-built functionality than any proprietary CMS. Additionally, the number of developers who actively develop in Drupal combined with the number of developers who possess the prerequisite skills (and the plethora of published materials on developing in Drupal) greatly outnumbers the skilled resources with knowledge of nearly every proprietary CMS.
The point here, is that CIOs often look at Drupal differently than developers do. It is less about the technology, and more about finding ways to save time and money and to mitigate risks. Personally, I think the combination of commercial-grade support, Drupal distributions, electronic services and a healthy ecosystem of expert Drupal shops are key in removing barriers for CIOs. Other barriers to overcome include lack of a roadmap (I don't want to fix that), licensing issues (increasingly better understood), training and certification, and of course, functional gaps.
Personally, I'm most interested in identifying the functional gaps because closing those is what the Drupal community excels at. Whatever the functionality gaps, I'm confident we'll close them over time. If you're a proprietary vendor, you can't say we didn't gave you an advance warning. ;-)
