Today's web applications face very real challenges to deployment. Websites are incredibly content rich, highly dynamic, and subject to massive swings in load because of anything from content gone viral to the death of a celebrity.
Putting a CMS in the cloud addresses the scalability issue--at least, in theory. The cloud must be optimized for the application to get its full benefit. It doesn't matter that three servers are ready to catch extra traffic if they're not configured to do so. Further, a cloud platform that's not configured to match the CMS's particular needs will have to work much harder than it needs to, resulting in higher loads than is really needed to serve the traffic. For example, it makes sense to cache static content: But will the cloud be able to tell the difference between a user who's signed into the application (and therefore receives dynamic content) and one who isn't?
SaaS vendors are looking to lock customers in to long term contracts with no exit strategy, says Jim Shaw, who argues that a new model, OpenSaas, could be the answer.
One of cloud’s best kept secrets is the lack of portability for applications delivered using the Software as a Service (SaaS) model. Many resellers help companies sign up for SaaS applications with the belief that it'll be easy for them to migrate to another if they need to. But that runs against the plans of the SaaS vendors, who look for long-term agreements to lock customers in by providing no exit strategy. A new model, called OpenSaas, is the answer.
Acquia's Bryan House, VP Product Marketing, discusses OpenSaaS and its ability to enable organizations to focus on their core competencies, without sacrificing control over the web experiences that propel their business.
I posted a news blog earlier this month concerning some high profile adoption of the Drupal open source Content Management System (CMS) -- or to use Drupal's preferred description, "The free and open source software package for publishing, managing and organising a variety of content on a website."
With Drupalcon London coming up this August and with the interest that story received I feel it is justified if we revisit the topic with some comment from the commercially-backed spiral arm of the Drupal galaxy.
... and the name you are looking for here is Acquia.
Woburn, MA - June 2, 2011 - Early this past May, co-founder and CTO Dries Buytaert of Acquia, a provider of commercial open source, social publishing solutions for Drupal, shared his insights for web-based business owners, developers and marketers on Drupal in the Enterprise at the 2011 CMS Expo Learning and Business Conference.
CMS stands for content management systems, which are platforms that we use everyday, either built in-house to manage company workflow or well-known platforms like WordPress, which are used by most online publishing sites (like this one). Intrigued by Buytaert’s thoughts on open source’s potential for disruption, I reached out for an interview to discuss 5 reasons why open source will shake the CMS establishment industry.
User confidence in open source continues to grow considerably, according to the fifth annual Future of Open Source survey from North Bridge Venture Partners, conducted with The 451 Group.
The most-cited open source vendors were Red Hat, Acquia, Canonical and EnterpriseDB.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA - Open Source Business Conference - Acquia, the world's leading provider of commercial open source social publishing solutions for Drupal, today announced that CEO Tom Erickson will speak at the Open Source Business Conference 2011 (OSBC) as part of the panel about the Future of Open Source in the Cloud.
Session:
Every few months it seems, a proprietary vendor from the closed source world decides that they can take on open source software. Maybe they think it's an easy target; maybe they're worried about losing more and more deals to free software; maybe they're threatened by the fact that communities of thousands can write great code and build great products. Or maybe they are just plain scared.
Drupal Gardens passed a significant milestone yesterday, 40,000 sites created! This is an especially exciting moment for me as Acquia gets ready to exit the Drupal Gardens beta program tomorrow. Reaching 40,000 blew away my expectations for the number of beta sites, a testament to the market’s excitement of having the most powerful social publishing system available in a SaaS environment.
![Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire - Community Affairs Manager's picture](http://www.acquia.com/sites/default/files/styles/user_large/public/pictures/picture-2485-1368033114.png?itok=tmrXcUh2 "Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire - Community Affairs Manager's picture")
