Re: [Evangelism] Article: Is Plone a Good CMS
I've been running this msg thread through my mind for several days now and in light of the idea that we should include testimonials on Plone.net for how the CMS decision was made, here's a go at what we did in Cooperative International Programs at Sandia National Laboratories. Back in the late 90s we "discovered" Python as a great language for scripting, especially data mining. We had a terrific young Python programmer on staff and when customer requirements started to move towards complex CMS domains (ca 2003), we found that Zope was a logical, secure, safe, and effective solution. Within a year, we had found that Plone did all the heavy lifting for us. Since then we've built about 60 sites, large and small, mostly small. Plone lets us serve 500 MB document collections as well as micro-sites for one-off websites to support a single staff member's workshop. Sandia relies heavily on SharePoint for internal information silos and now has an external SP server. However, Plone is easier to customize for project brand identification, goes beyond mere document management, is far more usable, has almost unlimited flexibility, and can be ported to our international partners without a huge MS price tag. International Programs still remains a very small corner of Sandia's IT environment, but as we continue to succeed with pragmatic solutions and solid deployments, we've gotten the attention of other IT and Web groups. As you can see, our Plone decision was actually an organic growth from Python to Zope to Plone. Only this month are we migrating up to 3.x. Nearby City of Albuquerque and Albuquerque Public Schools went to Plone based on their own independent decision-making processes. A few other local entities embraced Plone as well. The end result is a surprising enclave of Plone out here in NM. Because we grew into Plone, the learning curve wasn't as steep as the urban myth would have it. Excellent training has been available at every step along the way (kudos to Joel Burton and Enfold Systems). Much to my surprise, we haven't had to avail ourselves of the many readily available consultancies out there. In the end, I guess we're a small organization embedded within a large organization and I'm of no help in that debate. We get basic CMS site requests on a routine basis, but then there are some off-the-wall requirements that come in. They haven't stumped Plone yet. Low cost, flexibility, security, customizable workflow, UML-to-product development path, and the backing of a solid community have made Plone the right decision for us. All that said, this doesn't help much in targeting the Plone marketing strategy. I concur that emphasizing the positive (what Plone does well) is important and that crafting stories for successful deployments across all scales will make a difference. Just sign me, No regrets Dylan Jay wrote: > > > Still haven't worked out how best to reply. You're talking about both > marketing positioning and company size. I'm not sure if they are > related. > With regard to positioning, we tend to put plone at the bigger end. > It's like sitecore etc but more flexible due to being open source > (more integration hooks) and lower total cost of ownership). However > unlike you Umbraco it's not .net or java so it's going to be headache > if they want to support it internally so it almost has to be better > than the alternatives for many in enterprise to accept it. So perhaps > we should be looking at what Plone really can do better [1] > > As for consulting company size. My guess is that because Plone > requires a big learning curve so it's an investment for any consulting > firm take on for occasional use, even if they were a python shop. That > means most Plone shops specialise in it. But my guess is as good as > anyones. > > [1] for me plone's strength lies in it's filesystem like model that > allows people to build up very different solutions using building > blocks with quite sophisticated delegation of tasks. I wish there was > a nice buzz word for that. > > > > > ___ > Evangelism mailing list > Evangelism@lists.plone.org > http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/evangelism > > -- View this message in context: http://n2.nabble.com/Article%3A-Is-Plone-a-Good-CMS-tp3300458p3435256.html Sent from the Evangelism mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ Evangelism mailing list Evangelism@lists.plone.org http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/evangelism
Re: [Evangelism] Article: Is Plone a Good CMS
On 03/08/2009, at 7:56 PM, Matt Hamilton wrote: On 23 Jul 2009, at 09:34, Matt Hamilton wrote: On 21 Jul 2009, at 21:00, Matt Hamilton wrote: Janus Boye just published an article entitled 'Is Plone a Good CMS?' http://www.jboye.com/blogpost/is-plone-a-good-cms/ A fairly even article saying basically 'Danish Govt say Plone is a good CMS, but is it fair that they pick one?' There are some fantastic comments at the bottom of this post now by Martin Aspeli and Ken Wasetis. Great work guys, some nice insights into 'big firm' consulting and how they go about things. In a further development on this, I privately emailed Janus to ask him: "One question to a point slightly raised on your post. You mention that Plone consulting companies are generally quite small. How does this compare to the other Open Source systems you mentioned, ie. Umbraco, Liferay, Typo3? Do they have larger consulting companies?" As I was genuinely interested to see if Plone consulting companies are *really* smaller than others, or if it is just a perception thing. His response as this: "I would say Umbraco has been the most successful in attracting larger consulting companies. I am speculating this may be due to large consultancies with .NET skills using Umbraco as a low-end alternative to commercial systems such as EPiServer and Sitecore. Let me know your thoughts and then I'll write a blog about it." This is a very interesting point. So he is saying that there are some larger companies using other .NET CMSs such as EPiServer and Sitecore, but when that company needs to do something low end they are using Umbraco. So is this a good thing? What does it mean to the Plone community? Are there companies out there that say something like 'We normally use Vignette, but in this smaller case we will use Plone'? At the moment I think we are often trying to pitch against the big boys saying our system can do everything they can. But maybe the message that Umbraco is using is 'we are lighter/smaller/quicker/ cheaper etc' than the big boys. I know in reality Plone can/does use both messages. What are your thoughts? I want to gather them up to send to Janus. Still haven't worked out how best to reply. You're talking about both marketing positioning and company size. I'm not sure if they are related. With regard to positioning, we tend to put plone at the bigger end. It's like sitecore etc but more flexible due to being open source (more integration hooks) and lower total cost of ownership). However unlike you Umbraco it's not .net or java so it's going to be headache if they want to support it internally so it almost has to be better than the alternatives for many in enterprise to accept it. So perhaps we should be looking at what Plone really can do better [1] As for consulting company size. My guess is that because Plone requires a big learning curve so it's an investment for any consulting firm take on for occasional use, even if they were a python shop. That means most Plone shops specialise in it. But my guess is as good as anyones. [1] for me plone's strength lies in it's filesystem like model that allows people to build up very different solutions using building blocks with quite sophisticated delegation of tasks. I wish there was a nice buzz word for that. ___ Evangelism mailing list Evangelism@lists.plone.org http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/evangelism
Re: [Evangelism] Article: Is Plone a Good CMS
Takeshi, Thanks - I know that this site has been around for years and hadn't checked it out in a little bit. I see that they now have some coverage of commercial tools. I still have many issues with this site and the way that it compares apples and oranges. For instance, it just lumps portal/delivery engines with CMS tools. The characteristics being measured appear more geared toward a web development framework than a CMS. There's no measurement for workflow or level of complexity of workflow supported, no mention of 'structured content types/model', or fine-grained permission management (only authentication mechanisms supported, such as Kerberos vs. NTLM, etc.) We have had numerous clients mention that this is where they started before contacting us, though, so we need to be sure to keep this site updated with each Plone release as much as possible. I know that I've emailed the site administrator in the past when I thought some things were out-of-date on the Plone details. I don't like that there is no key or glossary to help determine what is actually being measured by a certain measurement. Some are quite ambiguous, for example the 'Matrix' yes/no characteristic - what the heck is that? One characteristic that I would take issue with on the Plone measurement side is that of 'front-end web services'. Zope (and therefore Plone) has support for XML-RPC out of the box and has had this earlier than any other known application server. Perhaps what they really mean to measure is support for the SOAP specification in particular. Anyhow, you can see how such a matrix can either be misleading, not give full context or details of what's being measured, and can give false impressions. But it is 'something' and it is a site that clients and prospective clients sometimes use, like it or not. Perhaps we can push for a more CMS-focused section within the comparison list. Something that reviews more CMS-related features such as which WYSIWYGs are supported, complexity of workflow supported (event or activity-basd, serial only, voting pass/fail with quorum/threshold for pass, number of roles/transitions/states supported), permission management/sharing of site/folders/pages/fields, integration of taxonomy management, etc. I'd also recommend we push for measuring the number of security-related patches released per year (as documented by objective sites, not vendors.) These are things that will help Plone shine in comparison to other tools, but also happen to be things that are generally accepted to be evaluation characteristics of CMS tools, not just portals or web publishing tools (such as Wordpress or phpNuke, etc.) Thanks for reminding us of the matrix site. It's important that we get good representation there. Ken Takeshi Yamamoto wrote: This page could be helpful to make a comparison sheet. http://www.cmsmatrix.org/ Click the check boxes of Plone and few more CMS, then press Compare button. Takeshi On Aug 10, 2009, at 2:30 PM, Dylan Jay wrote: that's a tremendous amount of useful information. some very actionable items. Last conference there was a marketing sprint. Are you going to be there? I'd like to be involved in a marketing sprint where work on completing some of the tasks you outline such as creating comparisons sheets and gathering testimonials and putting them on plone.org. It would be nice to a concrete set of tasks to achieve before we hit the sprint (how? anyone? come up with a list of tasks in this forum?) instead of the sprint being about deciding on the list of tasks. I also think it would be really good to encourage the business development people from integrators into that sprint since a good deal of their work is selling people on Plone, day in day out. Marketing knowledge such as yours Ken, would also be fantastic. --- Dylan Jay, Plone Solutions Manager www.pretaweb.com tel:+61299552830 mob:+61421477460 skype:dylan_jay On 04/08/2009, at 2:46 AM, ctxlken wrote: Matt, Back during my 'objective CMS evaluation consulting' days with another consulting firm, it was pretty common to have a 'short list' of recommended CMS solutions to have clients evaluate. I, of course, always tried to have Plone on that list, because usually the functional requirements from clients large and small could be met by Plone, but in those days, open source was only widely accepted at the infrastructure layer (Linux for OS, maybe JBoss as application server), and it was a tougher sell (to IT folks only, really) to pitch 'enterprise' application solutions that were open source and/or that were based on Python, a not-so-widely accepted 'enterprise' development language by IT. The typical 'short lists' looked like this: Enterprise CMS list: Fatwire Percussion Rhythmyx Vignette (becoming OpenText) Interwoven Documentum (now EMC) Stellent (acquired by Oracle) BroadVision (wow, that's going back; only on list because we had a lot of ex
Re: [Evangelism] Article: Is Plone a Good CMS
Back in January Geir Baekholt contacted me about taking over the Plone listing at CMSMatrix from him. I've never been able to figure out what the process is for changing the responsible party, so it's still stuck in limbo. Matt Hamilton wrote: > > > On 10 Aug 2009, at 07:08, Takeshi Yamamoto wrote: > >> This page could be helpful to make a comparison sheet. >> >> http://www.cmsmatrix.org/ >> >> Click the check boxes of Plone and few more CMS, then press Compare >> button. > > Anyone know who is the account holder for this site? The info is quite > out of date now and needs updating (maybe wait until 3.3 release then > update it). > > -Matt > > -- > Matt Hamilton ma...@netsight.co.uk > Netsight Internet Solutions, Ltd. Understand. Develop. Deliver > http://www.netsight.co.uk +44 (0)117 9090901 > Web Design | Zope/Plone Development & Consulting | Co-location | Hosting > > > ___ > Evangelism mailing list > Evangelism@lists.plone.org > http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/evangelism > > -- View this message in context: http://n2.nabble.com/Article%3A-Is-Plone-a-Good-CMS-tp3300458p3421069.html Sent from the Evangelism mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ Evangelism mailing list Evangelism@lists.plone.org http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/evangelism
Re: [Evangelism] Article: Is Plone a Good CMS
On 10 Aug 2009, at 07:08, Takeshi Yamamoto wrote: This page could be helpful to make a comparison sheet. http://www.cmsmatrix.org/ Click the check boxes of Plone and few more CMS, then press Compare button. Anyone know who is the account holder for this site? The info is quite out of date now and needs updating (maybe wait until 3.3 release then update it). -Matt -- Matt Hamilton ma...@netsight.co.uk Netsight Internet Solutions, Ltd. Understand. Develop. Deliver http://www.netsight.co.uk +44 (0)117 9090901 Web Design | Zope/Plone Development & Consulting | Co-location | Hosting ___ Evangelism mailing list Evangelism@lists.plone.org http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/evangelism
Re: [Evangelism] Article: Is Plone a Good CMS
This page could be helpful to make a comparison sheet. http://www.cmsmatrix.org/ Click the check boxes of Plone and few more CMS, then press Compare button. Takeshi On Aug 10, 2009, at 2:30 PM, Dylan Jay wrote: that's a tremendous amount of useful information. some very actionable items. Last conference there was a marketing sprint. Are you going to be there? I'd like to be involved in a marketing sprint where work on completing some of the tasks you outline such as creating comparisons sheets and gathering testimonials and putting them on plone.org. It would be nice to a concrete set of tasks to achieve before we hit the sprint (how? anyone? come up with a list of tasks in this forum?) instead of the sprint being about deciding on the list of tasks. I also think it would be really good to encourage the business development people from integrators into that sprint since a good deal of their work is selling people on Plone, day in day out. Marketing knowledge such as yours Ken, would also be fantastic. --- Dylan Jay, Plone Solutions Manager www.pretaweb.com tel:+61299552830 mob:+61421477460 skype:dylan_jay On 04/08/2009, at 2:46 AM, ctxlken wrote: Matt, Back during my 'objective CMS evaluation consulting' days with another consulting firm, it was pretty common to have a 'short list' of recommended CMS solutions to have clients evaluate. I, of course, always tried to have Plone on that list, because usually the functional requirements from clients large and small could be met by Plone, but in those days, open source was only widely accepted at the infrastructure layer (Linux for OS, maybe JBoss as application server), and it was a tougher sell (to IT folks only, really) to pitch 'enterprise' application solutions that were open source and/or that were based on Python, a not-so-widely accepted 'enterprise' development language by IT. The typical 'short lists' looked like this: Enterprise CMS list: Fatwire Percussion Rhythmyx Vignette (becoming OpenText) Interwoven Documentum (now EMC) Stellent (acquired by Oracle) BroadVision (wow, that's going back; only on list because we had a lot of experience with the portal delivery side of BV) RedDot (acquired by OpenText) Plone (it couldn't hurt to get it more exposure and to show clients that we were knowledgeable of solid FOSS options other consultancies didn't even know of) Windows/.NetShops CMS list: RedDot (.Net for CMS, but Java-basd for portal delivery engine; Used to be just a nice looking and easy-to-use CMS, but very feature- rich now.) nCompass Labs (a really nice CMS that was purchased by M$ and became 'CMS 2002', which seemed to then get killed in favor of Sharepoint. Amazing.) Ektron (low-end cost .Net option, but also more limited functionality) Plone (Realized Plone project wins after pitching it head-to-head against the commercial tools) Affordable/Open Source CMS List: Ektron (especially attractive to Windows shops) Plone Typo3 ezPublish Drupal Joomla (for only very simple CMS requirements; basically to 'add pages') Since Plone continued to beat out other open source tools when clients had more demanding functional equirements, we eventually slimmed that last list down to Ektron vs. Plone Notice that Sharepoint wasn't even on our list at the time, as we saw it strictly as more of a 'DMS' (Document Management System) that could be used on Intranet projects. Later on, my company bought a Microsoft integrator that provided Sharepoint services, so that became a bigger part of our offering, but wasn't really part of the public-facing web CMS (WCMS) list of options we came to the table with. It probably is something my old company leads with now, though. So, we had 'short lists' or recommended tools clients should consider that were based upon client and expected budget size, but also that were based upon these other criteria that I believe come into play: Decision Maker - IT vs. Marketing: If Marketing, we were more likely to get to propose/implement open source/Plone because they just want a great, feature-rich 'solution' for the best price, and don't care about whether it's written in Java or .Net or whatever the standard skill set is of IT. Much of the time, marketing wants to side-step IT and hire contractors and get support from the CMS vendor anyhow. Open Source Adoption Likelihood: Again, if talking to Marketing/PR, this is less of an issue, but in discussing options with IT, we would attempt to determine to what level they might already be using open source, and how difficult a sell this would be, not just for us, but for the internal group trying to get the project approved (Marketing, Human Resources, etc.) Magic Quadrant Effect: If a client is starting off with, say the Gartner 'Magic Quadrant' ECM Report or the Forrester 'Wave' Report (for which they've already paid thousands), then they are less likely to have heard of open
Re: [Evangelism] Article: Is Plone a Good CMS
that's a tremendous amount of useful information. some very actionable items. Last conference there was a marketing sprint. Are you going to be there? I'd like to be involved in a marketing sprint where work on completing some of the tasks you outline such as creating comparisons sheets and gathering testimonials and putting them on plone.org. It would be nice to a concrete set of tasks to achieve before we hit the sprint (how? anyone? come up with a list of tasks in this forum?) instead of the sprint being about deciding on the list of tasks. I also think it would be really good to encourage the business development people from integrators into that sprint since a good deal of their work is selling people on Plone, day in day out. Marketing knowledge such as yours Ken, would also be fantastic. --- Dylan Jay, Plone Solutions Manager www.pretaweb.com tel:+61299552830 mob:+61421477460 skype:dylan_jay On 04/08/2009, at 2:46 AM, ctxlken wrote: Matt, Back during my 'objective CMS evaluation consulting' days with another consulting firm, it was pretty common to have a 'short list' of recommended CMS solutions to have clients evaluate. I, of course, always tried to have Plone on that list, because usually the functional requirements from clients large and small could be met by Plone, but in those days, open source was only widely accepted at the infrastructure layer (Linux for OS, maybe JBoss as application server), and it was a tougher sell (to IT folks only, really) to pitch 'enterprise' application solutions that were open source and/or that were based on Python, a not-so-widely accepted 'enterprise' development language by IT. The typical 'short lists' looked like this: Enterprise CMS list: Fatwire Percussion Rhythmyx Vignette (becoming OpenText) Interwoven Documentum (now EMC) Stellent (acquired by Oracle) BroadVision (wow, that's going back; only on list because we had a lot of experience with the portal delivery side of BV) RedDot (acquired by OpenText) Plone (it couldn't hurt to get it more exposure and to show clients that we were knowledgeable of solid FOSS options other consultancies didn't even know of) Windows/.NetShops CMS list: RedDot (.Net for CMS, but Java-basd for portal delivery engine; Used to be just a nice looking and easy-to-use CMS, but very feature-rich now.) nCompass Labs (a really nice CMS that was purchased by M$ and became 'CMS 2002', which seemed to then get killed in favor of Sharepoint. Amazing.) Ektron (low-end cost .Net option, but also more limited functionality) Plone (Realized Plone project wins after pitching it head-to-head against the commercial tools) Affordable/Open Source CMS List: Ektron (especially attractive to Windows shops) Plone Typo3 ezPublish Drupal Joomla (for only very simple CMS requirements; basically to 'add pages') Since Plone continued to beat out other open source tools when clients had more demanding functional equirements, we eventually slimmed that last list down to Ektron vs. Plone Notice that Sharepoint wasn't even on our list at the time, as we saw it strictly as more of a 'DMS' (Document Management System) that could be used on Intranet projects. Later on, my company bought a Microsoft integrator that provided Sharepoint services, so that became a bigger part of our offering, but wasn't really part of the public-facing web CMS (WCMS) list of options we came to the table with. It probably is something my old company leads with now, though. So, we had 'short lists' or recommended tools clients should consider that were based upon client and expected budget size, but also that were based upon these other criteria that I believe come into play: Decision Maker - IT vs. Marketing: If Marketing, we were more likely to get to propose/implement open source/Plone because they just want a great, feature-rich 'solution' for the best price, and don't care about whether it's written in Java or .Net or whatever the standard skill set is of IT. Much of the time, marketing wants to side-step IT and hire contractors and get support from the CMS vendor anyhow. Open Source Adoption Likelihood: Again, if talking to Marketing/PR, this is less of an issue, but in discussing options with IT, we would attempt to determine to what level they might already be using open source, and how difficult a sell this would be, not just for us, but for the internal group trying to get the project approved (Marketing, Human Resources, etc.) Magic Quadrant Effect: If a client is starting off with, say the Gartner 'Magic Quadrant' ECM Report or the Forrester 'Wave' Report (for which they've already paid thousands), then they are less likely to have heard of open source CMS tools (though this is slowly changing and we need to push for coverage of Plone), and are focusing in on 'enterprise' type software and likely have the corresponding budget size in mind as well. See the Gartner Report here:htt
Re: [Evangelism] Article: Is Plone a Good CMS
Matt, Back during my 'objective CMS evaluation consulting' days with another consulting firm, it was pretty common to have a 'short list' of recommended CMS solutions to have clients evaluate. I, of course, always tried to have Plone on that list, because usually the functional requirements from clients large and small could be met by Plone, but in those days, open source was only widely accepted at the infrastructure layer (Linux for OS, maybe JBoss as application server), and it was a tougher sell (to IT folks only, really) to pitch 'enterprise' application solutions that were open source and/or that were based on Python, a not-so-widely accepted 'enterprise' development language by IT. The typical 'short lists' looked like this: Enterprise CMS list: Fatwire Percussion Rhythmyx Vignette (becoming OpenText) Interwoven Documentum (now EMC) Stellent (acquired by Oracle) BroadVision (wow, that's going back; only on list because we had a lot of experience with the portal delivery side of BV) RedDot (acquired by OpenText) Plone (it couldn't hurt to get it more exposure and to show clients that we were knowledgeable of solid FOSS options other consultancies didn't even know of) Windows/.NetShops CMS list: RedDot (.Net for CMS, but Java-basd for portal delivery engine; Used to be just a nice looking and easy-to-use CMS, but very feature-rich now.) nCompass Labs (a really nice CMS that was purchased by M$ and became 'CMS 2002', which seemed to then get killed in favor of Sharepoint. Amazing.) Ektron (low-end cost .Net option, but also more limited functionality) Plone (Realized Plone project wins after pitching it head-to-head against the commercial tools) Affordable/Open Source CMS List: Ektron (especially attractive to Windows shops) Plone Typo3 ezPublish Drupal Joomla (for only very simple CMS requirements; basically to 'add pages') Since Plone continued to beat out other open source tools when clients had more demanding functional equirements, we eventually slimmed that last list down to Ektron vs. Plone Notice that Sharepoint wasn't even on our list at the time, as we saw it strictly as more of a 'DMS' (Document Management System) that could be used on Intranet projects. Later on, my company bought a Microsoft integrator that provided Sharepoint services, so that became a bigger part of our offering, but wasn't really part of the public-facing web CMS (WCMS) list of options we came to the table with. It probably is something my old company leads with now, though. So, we had 'short lists' or recommended tools clients should consider that were based upon client and expected budget size, but also that were based upon these other criteria that I believe come into play: Decision Maker - IT vs. Marketing: If Marketing, we were more likely to get to propose/implement open source/Plone because they just want a great, feature-rich 'solution' for the best price, and don't care about whether it's written in Java or .Net or whatever the standard skill set is of IT. Much of the time, marketing wants to side-step IT and hire contractors and get support from the CMS vendor anyhow. Open Source Adoption Likelihood: Again, if talking to Marketing/PR, this is less of an issue, but in discussing options with IT, we would attempt to determine to what level they might already be using open source, and how difficult a sell this would be, not just for us, but for the internal group trying to get the project approved (Marketing, Human Resources, etc.) Magic Quadrant Effect: If a client is starting off with, say the Gartner 'Magic Quadrant' ECM Report or the Forrester 'Wave' Report (for which they've already paid thousands), then they are less likely to have heard of open source CMS tools (though this is slowly changing and we need to push for coverage of Plone), and are focusing in on 'enterprise' type software and likely have the corresponding budget size in mind as well. See the Gartner Report here:http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/microsoft/vol6/article3/article3.html See an older Forrester Report here and notice coverage of Alfresco (open source): http://www.oracle.com/corporate/analyst/reports/infrastructure/ocs/forrester-ecm-q42007.pdf Some clients (especially IT managers) will only blindly follow these reports. It's called 'managing risk-to-resume' and is akin to the old addage that 'nobody ever got fired for buying solutions from IBM'. At least that's an old addage in the Midwest U.S., where 'Big Blue' was always king during the mainframe days. So, IT managers see risk in going with solutions not in the 'magic quadrant' and if we perceived that, we knew that recommending open source was going to be more difficult unless we could really get the business department (marketing, et al) to push hard for it. Since this is the Plone Evangelism list, I think some things to take aware are: 1) Research Coverage: We should do what w
Re: [Evangelism] Article: Is Plone a Good CMS
On 4 Aug 2009, at 08:21, Dylan Jay wrote: I'm not sure where this leaves us, but I think that it is really interesting that plone as a community doesn't know much about its integrators. A survey on all the companies servicing plone would make an excellent talk at the conference... at least for me. Think about it this way. If Plone were a propriatory product, the mother company would know a awful lot about it's value added resellers. The reason is, they are an essential part of creating a successful product. Modern software companies know that enabling your channel partners and resellers to make a successful business means the product gets out there and in more useful ways than the mother company ever could by itself. Plone as a community is as interested in growth as much any propriatory company is. Understanding our who our integrators are could be a valuable first step to increasing it's take up. Right. This was something I talked to Dave Shapiro (and Karl Horek maybe?) about at the last Plone Conf. We were talking about a 'Plone Census' of some kind. Using the details that are in plone.net to start with we were going to call/email around every company listed on plone.net (break it up into sections and divide to a group of volunteers) and 1) prompt each of them to update their details on plone.net. 2) prompt them about sponsorship etc. We were also I think going to try and get some more metrics and information from them. I really think that plone.net could possibly do with some love beforehand, and bring it on brand with the new plone.org. Then maybe do a push to integrators after that. I like the talk idea. What sort of form would you see it having? Would it be a case of a survey done beforehand and then the results announced, discussed etc during the talk? There is going to a un- conference style day as one day of the Plone Conf in which talks will be spontaneously proposed, maybe it could be something you might want to champion there? At the moment I think we are often trying to pitch against the big boys saying our system can do everything they can. But maybe the message that Umbraco is using is 'we are lighter/smaller/quicker/ cheaper etc' than the big boys. I know in reality Plone can/does use both messages. We generally pitch it as an enterprise system for those that want more flexibility. Plone isn't really simple enough for a small web consultancy to pick up for the odd jobs. It's really a full time thing. We also try to sell it into the bigger market because plone plone can compete where others can't... workflow, flexible security, web document management, multisite deployments, so the customers value it more. If you want something to put up a quick brochure ware site then your compete against all teh cheap php coders and it's a waste of plone talent. I agree 100% with this. And I think we pitch it at a similar market to you guys. What I guess I really wanted to get some thoughts on in this thread was the topic that Janus raised in his blog post and email... about Plone consultancy company sizes versus other projects (such as Umbraco). Does size matter? If so, why? Comparing Umbraco's 'certified partner' list there is 15 companies listed, versus over 300 on plone.net. Does the number of companies matter? Umbraco also have a list of 'certified developers' who have undergone some kind of test (10 multiple choice questions from a random pool). They have 150 developers listed there. We have 120 Plone Foundation members. I know we've talked about certification and what it means many times before in the Plone community, and I don't think we ever reached any kind of decision. So... does size matter? -Matt -- Matt Hamilton ma...@netsight.co.uk Netsight Internet Solutions, Ltd. Understand. Develop. Deliver http://www.netsight.co.uk +44 (0)117 9090901 Web Design | Zope/Plone Development & Consulting | Co-location | Hosting ___ Evangelism mailing list Evangelism@lists.plone.org http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/evangelism
Re: [Evangelism] Article: Is Plone a Good CMS
--- Dylan Jay, Plone Solutions Manager www.pretaweb.com tel:+61299552830 mob:+61421477460 skype:dylan_jay On 03/08/2009, at 7:56 PM, Matt Hamilton wrote: On 23 Jul 2009, at 09:34, Matt Hamilton wrote: On 21 Jul 2009, at 21:00, Matt Hamilton wrote: Janus Boye just published an article entitled 'Is Plone a Good CMS?' http://www.jboye.com/blogpost/is-plone-a-good-cms/ A fairly even article saying basically 'Danish Govt say Plone is a good CMS, but is it fair that they pick one?' There are some fantastic comments at the bottom of this post now by Martin Aspeli and Ken Wasetis. Great work guys, some nice insights into 'big firm' consulting and how they go about things. In a further development on this, I privately emailed Janus to ask him: "One question to a point slightly raised on your post. You mention that Plone consulting companies are generally quite small. How does this compare to the other Open Source systems you mentioned, ie. Umbraco, Liferay, Typo3? Do they have larger consulting companies?" As I was genuinely interested to see if Plone consulting companies are *really* smaller than others, or if it is just a perception thing. His response as this: "I would say Umbraco has been the most successful in attracting larger consulting companies. I am speculating this may be due to large consultancies with .NET skills using Umbraco as a low-end alternative to commercial systems such as EPiServer and Sitecore. Let me know your thoughts and then I'll write a blog about it." This is a very interesting point. So he is saying that there are some larger companies using other .NET CMSs such as EPiServer and Sitecore, but when that company needs to do something low end they are using Umbraco. So is this a good thing? What does it mean to the Plone community? Are there companies out there that say something like 'We normally use Vignette, but in this smaller case we will use Plone'? I was talking two a founder of a .net/sharepoint shop the other day. A couple of things are interesting. 1) .net/sharepoint seems pretty common (or other CMS). Consultancies working on bespoke work at the .net level and doing CMS work when called on. I've come across some bigger java/jboss type shops that are similar. I suspect they are supported by big corporate custom systems, the sort of thing that doesn't get done in python. Being a generalised software consulatncy is going to broaden your client base and so increase your growth as a company I suspect. 2) They do ok for reselling sharepoint licenses. It's extra revenue. And in general the market value of .net work is higher than python. I'm not sure where this leaves us, but I think that it is really interesting that plone as a community doesn't know much about its integrators. A survey on all the companies servicing plone would make an excellent talk at the conference... at least for me. Think about it this way. If Plone were a propriatory product, the mother company would know a awful lot about it's value added resellers. The reason is, they are an essential part of creating a successful product. Modern software companies know that enabling your channel partners and resellers to make a successful business means the product gets out there and in more useful ways than the mother company ever could by itself. Plone as a community is as interested in growth as much any propriatory company is. Understanding our who our integrators are could be a valuable first step to increasing it's take up. At the moment I think we are often trying to pitch against the big boys saying our system can do everything they can. But maybe the message that Umbraco is using is 'we are lighter/smaller/quicker/ cheaper etc' than the big boys. I know in reality Plone can/does use both messages. We generally pitch it as an enterprise system for those that want more flexibility. Plone isn't really simple enough for a small web consultancy to pick up for the odd jobs. It's really a full time thing. We also try to sell it into the bigger market because plone plone can compete where others can't... workflow, flexible security, web document management, multisite deployments, so the customers value it more. If you want something to put up a quick brochure ware site then your compete against all teh cheap php coders and it's a waste of plone talent. What are your thoughts? I want to gather them up to send to Janus. -Matt -- Matt Hamilton ma...@netsight.co.uk Netsight Internet Solutions, Ltd. Understand. Develop. Deliver http://www.netsight.co.uk +44 (0)117 9090901 Web Design | Zope/Plone Development & Consulting | Co-location | Hosting ___ Evangelism mailing list Evangelism@lists.plone.org http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/evangelism __
Re: [Evangelism] Article: Is Plone a Good CMS
On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 11:56 AM, Matt Hamilton wrote: > At the moment I think we are often trying to pitch against the big boys > saying our system can do everything they can. But maybe the message that > Umbraco is using is 'we are lighter/smaller/quicker/cheaper etc' than the > big boys. I know in reality Plone can/does use both messages. > > What are your thoughts? I want to gather them up to send to Janus. I think it depends highly on your perception of what small / medium / large here means. Is a small CMS a personal Wordpress blog or one-off brochure-ware site? Plone isn't very competitive in that scale unless you have already invested in Plone. Looking at the projects we do over here, we have anything from what we call small 10 to 50 hours projects, medium sized 50 - 250 hour projects and numerous large projects that exceed that scale. Our largest project right now is a multi-year project soon going to hit 8000 development hours, an intranet for an international company with about 5000 logged in users. Doing a project of that scale with an essentially 10 man company next to other stuff isn't easy and has some challenges. But looking at those numbers I find it quite hard to judge what constitutes a small or large project and how that relates to "what the big boys" do. Hanno ___ Evangelism mailing list Evangelism@lists.plone.org http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/evangelism
Re: [Evangelism] Article: Is Plone a Good CMS
Matt Hamilton wrote: > > > ... > > So is this a good thing? What does it mean to the Plone community? Are > there companies out there that say something like 'We normally use > Vignette, but in this smaller case we will use Plone'? > > At the moment I think we are often trying to pitch against the big > boys saying our system can do everything they can. But maybe the > message that Umbraco is using is 'we are lighter/smaller/quicker/ > cheaper etc' than the big boys. I know in reality Plone can/does use > both messages. > > What are your thoughts? I want to gather them up to send to Janus. > > -Matt > > Our corporate IT folks have been studying enterprise CMS for years. Our internal portal has gone from Vignette to Oracle to (probably) JBoss. SharePoint is used for a tremendous number of internal collaboration sites. Meanwhile, for external use, my small group has been using Plone for over 5 years and its success is starting to catch the attention of corporate decision-makers. Gotta busy day and will expand in detail later. Karl -- View this message in context: http://n2.nabble.com/Article%3A-Is-Plone-a-Good-CMS-tp3300458p3378275.html Sent from the Evangelism mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ Evangelism mailing list Evangelism@lists.plone.org http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/evangelism
Re: [Evangelism] Article: Is Plone a Good CMS
On 23 Jul 2009, at 09:34, Matt Hamilton wrote: On 21 Jul 2009, at 21:00, Matt Hamilton wrote: Janus Boye just published an article entitled 'Is Plone a Good CMS?' http://www.jboye.com/blogpost/is-plone-a-good-cms/ A fairly even article saying basically 'Danish Govt say Plone is a good CMS, but is it fair that they pick one?' There are some fantastic comments at the bottom of this post now by Martin Aspeli and Ken Wasetis. Great work guys, some nice insights into 'big firm' consulting and how they go about things. In a further development on this, I privately emailed Janus to ask him: "One question to a point slightly raised on your post. You mention that Plone consulting companies are generally quite small. How does this compare to the other Open Source systems you mentioned, ie. Umbraco, Liferay, Typo3? Do they have larger consulting companies?" As I was genuinely interested to see if Plone consulting companies are *really* smaller than others, or if it is just a perception thing. His response as this: "I would say Umbraco has been the most successful in attracting larger consulting companies. I am speculating this may be due to large consultancies with .NET skills using Umbraco as a low-end alternative to commercial systems such as EPiServer and Sitecore. Let me know your thoughts and then I'll write a blog about it." This is a very interesting point. So he is saying that there are some larger companies using other .NET CMSs such as EPiServer and Sitecore, but when that company needs to do something low end they are using Umbraco. So is this a good thing? What does it mean to the Plone community? Are there companies out there that say something like 'We normally use Vignette, but in this smaller case we will use Plone'? At the moment I think we are often trying to pitch against the big boys saying our system can do everything they can. But maybe the message that Umbraco is using is 'we are lighter/smaller/quicker/ cheaper etc' than the big boys. I know in reality Plone can/does use both messages. What are your thoughts? I want to gather them up to send to Janus. -Matt -- Matt Hamilton ma...@netsight.co.uk Netsight Internet Solutions, Ltd. Understand. Develop. Deliver http://www.netsight.co.uk +44 (0)117 9090901 Web Design | Zope/Plone Development & Consulting | Co-location | Hosting ___ Evangelism mailing list Evangelism@lists.plone.org http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/evangelism
Re: [Evangelism] Article: Is Plone a Good CMS
Well done, Martin, Ken et al! On Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 1:34 AM, Matt Hamilton wrote: > > On 21 Jul 2009, at 21:00, Matt Hamilton wrote: > >> Janus Boye just published an article entitled 'Is Plone a Good CMS?' >> >> http://www.jboye.com/blogpost/is-plone-a-good-cms/ >> >> A fairly even article saying basically 'Danish Govt say Plone is a good >> CMS, but is it fair that they pick one?' > > There are some fantastic comments at the bottom of this post now by Martin > Aspeli and Ken Wasetis. Great work guys, some nice insights into 'big firm' > consulting and how they go about things. > > -Matt > > -- > Matt Hamilton ma...@netsight.co.uk > Netsight Internet Solutions, Ltd. Understand. Develop. Deliver > http://www.netsight.co.uk +44 (0)117 9090901 > Web Design | Zope/Plone Development & Consulting | Co-location | Hosting > > > ___ > Evangelism mailing list > Evangelism@lists.plone.org > http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/evangelism > ___ Evangelism mailing list Evangelism@lists.plone.org http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/evangelism
Re: [Evangelism] Article: Is Plone a Good CMS
On 21 Jul 2009, at 21:00, Matt Hamilton wrote: Janus Boye just published an article entitled 'Is Plone a Good CMS?' http://www.jboye.com/blogpost/is-plone-a-good-cms/ A fairly even article saying basically 'Danish Govt say Plone is a good CMS, but is it fair that they pick one?' There are some fantastic comments at the bottom of this post now by Martin Aspeli and Ken Wasetis. Great work guys, some nice insights into 'big firm' consulting and how they go about things. -Matt -- Matt Hamilton ma...@netsight.co.uk Netsight Internet Solutions, Ltd. Understand. Develop. Deliver http://www.netsight.co.uk +44 (0)117 9090901 Web Design | Zope/Plone Development & Consulting | Co-location | Hosting ___ Evangelism mailing list Evangelism@lists.plone.org http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/evangelism
Re: [Evangelism] Article: Is Plone a Good CMS
On 22 Jul 2009, at 01:37, Dylan Jay wrote: On 22/07/2009, at 6:00 AM, Matt Hamilton wrote: Janus Boye just published an article entitled 'Is Plone a Good CMS?' http://www.jboye.com/blogpost/is-plone-a-good-cms/ A fairly even article saying basically 'Danish Govt say Plone is a good CMS, but is it fair that they pick one?' It's a very sticky question which we've recently been dealing with a gov in our country. Probity is very important for governments it seems, or at least ours. We do seem to be making real progress and were thinking of giving a talk at the conference about this subject. You must have come up with similar barriers with your gov work Matt? To be honest, we've not really come across it yet, but we don't do a massive amount of govt. work. What we have done in govt has all been with clients who are already using Plone and need additional help. The UK Govt has recently come out to say that Open Source should be considered in equal terms to Commercial, but AFAIK they don't recommend any one system. There was a project called DOTP - Delivering on The Promise, which was meant to be a single CMS system developed for the government. But uh it failed to deliver on the promise and has been quietly taken out back shot and buried. -Matt -- Matt Hamilton ma...@netsight.co.uk Netsight Internet Solutions, Ltd. Understand. Develop. Deliver http://www.netsight.co.uk +44 (0)117 9090901 Web Design | Zope/Plone Development & Consulting | Co-location | Hosting ___ Evangelism mailing list Evangelism@lists.plone.org http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/evangelism
Re: [Evangelism] Article: Is Plone a Good CMS
On 22/07/2009, at 6:00 AM, Matt Hamilton wrote: Janus Boye just published an article entitled 'Is Plone a Good CMS?' http://www.jboye.com/blogpost/is-plone-a-good-cms/ A fairly even article saying basically 'Danish Govt say Plone is a good CMS, but is it fair that they pick one?' It's a very sticky question which we've recently been dealing with a gov in our country. Probity is very important for governments it seems, or at least ours. We do seem to be making real progress and were thinking of giving a talk at the conference about this subject. You must have come up with similar barriers with your gov work Matt? ___ Evangelism mailing list Evangelism@lists.plone.org http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/evangelism
[Evangelism] Article: Is Plone a Good CMS
Janus Boye just published an article entitled 'Is Plone a Good CMS?' http://www.jboye.com/blogpost/is-plone-a-good-cms/ A fairly even article saying basically 'Danish Govt say Plone is a good CMS, but is it fair that they pick one?' -Matt -- Matt Hamilton ma...@netsight.co.uk Netsight Internet Solutions, Ltd. Understand. Develop. Deliver http://www.netsight.co.uk +44 (0)117 9090901 Web Design | Zope/Plone Development & Consulting | Co-location | Hosting ___ Evangelism mailing list Evangelism@lists.plone.org http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/evangelism
