With the introduction of the lightweight Drupal 8 (What about Drupal 7?), the CMS market is abuzz about its growing popularity and the increased competition it poses to the proprietary enterprise platforms. The new version introduces the improved level of documentation and a more diligent application environment to suit evolving business needs.
World over Drupal has left a positive impression and is a trusted CMS for Government offices, Universities and leading organizations from around the world.The list of heavy weight customers include Government of Bermuda, University of Colorado, Pfizer,Al Jazeera, Cisco, Puma, NBA to name a few.
Let’s see what is it that makes Drupal an ideal choice for enterprise CMS.
It’s Super Customizable & Scalable
You are no longer dependent on the proprietary platform to help you quickly achieve your own unique requirements and start customizing according to your own needs. Drupal offers more than 43000 modules and offers almost everything that a business would require. And even if you can’t find what you want, Drupal doesn’t restrict in terms of what you can customize, be it modules or the core CMS itself, you can customize everything
Further, in order to scale up your aging systems you can easily upgrade the hardware by increasing the number of cpu cores and if you prefer to grow it horizontally you can do that in a more intricate manner by increasing the number of servers to reduce the overall load of a single server.
It’s Multi-Site Compatible
Any Enterprise today has multiple sites running and Drupal can easily centralize all of them to its platform. You will not have to individually take care of the deployment and management of all other associated sites. This becomes even more useful at the time of code upgrade as there is just one code base and website document root that needs to upgraded.
It’s Secure
The foremost concern any organization has is whether the platform is secure enough to completely rely on. Drupal has a highly proactive Security Team and Core Committee which monitors and regulates the timely security patch and security module release schedule that ensures the client sites are never vulnerable against cyber attacks.
Also, the Drupal community has a working group that has members from around world who discuss and contribute towards the greater benefit of the users.
It’s Straightforward
Drupal offers a very user-friendly back end interface to its users and it hardly requires any technical understanding of CMS in order to alter the content. It also gives the option to customize the functionality depending on the preference of the user.
It’s Design Focussed
Drupal offers an array of design elements and templates which are readily available for the users to adapt on their website. Instead of starting from scratch, these templates can be used as a starting point of the whole design process and can be easily customized to deliver a unique user experience.
It Justifies ROI
Lastly, though Drupal requires upfront investment to setup the development environment in terms of functionalities and customization, it will prove to be cost effective solution in the longer run for your business. Also since It’s a open source platform, you can simply head towards Drupal’s website and download it and that’s it, you are ready to roll.
Final Thought
Drupal is clearly a serious option for those who are looking for a secure, customizable, and scalable CMS platform. There’s no doubt that it can easily deliver like any other good proprietary CMS platform. Having said this, there are certain things which one needs to look into before finalizing for example How big is your content repository? Do you have qualified Drupal developers at your disposal? What extent of personalization you are looking at?
A thorough analysis may reveal the best CMS, be it Drupal ( or any other) for your business.
