New Independent Survey Indicates Open Source Web Content Management Solutions Have The Highest Satisfaction Rate

BURLINGTON, Massachusetts – October 30, 2012 – Acquia, the enterprise guide to Drupal, today announced that a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Acquia, titled “Is It Time To Consider Open Source WCM For Digital Experience?” found that open source Web Content Management (WCM) solutions have the highest satisfaction rate for creating dynamic, multichannel digital experiences. Of those who said they were ‘very satisfied’ with their existing WCM solution, open source had the highest satisfaction rate (37%) over “homegrown” (22%) and proprietary solutions (8%).

The Forrester study, commissioned by Acquia, surveyed 160 senior business, marketing and IT decision-makers from organizations with 1,000 to more than 20,000 employees. The survey revealed that 31% of organizations plan on switching WCM platforms this year and 58% indicate that their organization has considered or is considering open source WCM.

The Forrester study recommends that when organizations consider switching WCM solutions, they should explore open source as an option. Drupal was among the top five WCM solutions used by organizations that participated in the survey, and the leading open source solution. Among those who currently use open source WCM solutions, 72% said it gave them greater flexibility, and 68% said it was easy to customize.

When asked what other enterprise applications they would like to have bundled with their WCM solution, the majority of respondents (35%) said they prefer the ‘best-of-breed’ approach offered by open source WCM, as opposed to using all-in-one suites of pre-packaged tools and services offered by proprietary WCM solutions, which the report says often don’t live up to their promise.

According to one survey respondent from a UK educational institution, adding new functionality enhancements took nine to ten months with a proprietary WCM solution, but with open source, they were able to add new functionality within days. Another respondent said: “the ability to customize, along with the availability of the developer network, helped us keep up our pace of innovation.”

“As organizations retrench to become more dynamic and customer-centric, it’s abundantly clear that proprietary WCM solutions are not meeting the changing needs and expectations of business decision makers, who don’t want to be locked in to a rigid platform for the sake of convenience,” said Tom Erickson, CEO of Acquia. “The Forrester study revealed that marketers – who are responsible for creating compelling content, community and commerce experiences across multiple channels – are now the ones more aggressively pushing for flexible and open WCM solutions like Drupal.”

Marketer Dissatisfaction Prompting Greater Interest in Open Source Solutions

According to the survey, marketing professionals appear more likely than their IT counterparts to consider open source WCM (67% vs. 56%, respectively). The fact that marketers have surpassed their IT counterparts in this regard could be an indicator of their growing dissatisfaction with their present WCM platform.

Indeed, marketers expressed the most dissatisfaction with their WCM solution over IT pros by more than three-to-one (26% vs. less than 8%). With customer-facing digital experiences (including content delivery, community engagement and commerce) ranked among the top five functions of WCM platforms, it is not surprising that the majority of executives pushing for change in their WCM platform are marketers (55%) rather than IT executives (26%).

Acquia helps marketers easily create amazing digital experiences with its new Open Web Experience Management (OpenWEM™) offering, which was unveiled on October 25. The combination of Drupal’s proven WCM platform with Acquia’s tools, solutions and App Marketplace, give marketers an agile platform to create multi-channel digital experiences that cover the full spectrum of their customer’s journey.

Planning Leads To Open Source Success

The study also noted that organizations that were focused more on key business drivers and objectives had greater success with open source, as opposed to leveraging it for its proven cost-cutting capabilities alone.

For instance, the report showed that web site redesigns were more of a business driver for open source (30%) versus proprietary WCM solution users (14%), perhaps reflecting the more complex requirements of creating customer-facing multichannel digital experiences (as opposed to corporate intranets or other corporate/IT uses), and the dissatisfaction with current solutions in supporting those requirements.

Similarly, organizations that made specific plans to engage dedicated third-party providers (such as Acquia), and leverage pre-packaged modules from the open source community, had the most success with open source WCM implementations.

Survey Methodology

Forrester conducted an online survey of 160 organizations and interviewed seven respondents in the United States to evaluate the adoption of open source web content management platforms among enterprises that have not traditionally leveraged open source. Survey participants included decision-makers in their firm’s website or enterprise architecture, or they were part of IT leadership. Questions provided to the participants asked about drivers behind their WCM solution, if and why they chose open source, and details of their WCM implementation. Respondents were offered gift certificates as a thank you for time spent on the survey. The study began in July 2012 and was completed in August 2012.

About Acquia™, the enterprise guide to Drupal 
Acquia empowers enterprises with the open source social publishing system Drupal. Co-founded by Drupal’s creator in 2007, Acquia helps customers manage their growth and scale their online properties with confidence. Acquia’s products, cloud infrastructure, and support enable companies to realize the full power of Drupal while minimizing risk, as it’s done for more than 2,400 enterprise customers including Twitter, Warner Music Group, Turner Sports, World Economic Forum, Stanford University, Mercedes-Benz and NPR. Acquia was recently named the number one software company in the 2012 Inc. 500 survey of the fastest growing private companies. Acquia has also been named one of the 100 most promising companies in America by Forbes Magazine. See who’s using Drupal at http://www.drupalshowcase.com, and for more information please visit www.acquia.com or call 888-9-ACQUIA.