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General CMS Issues
Jun
05
2009
Are Smart Companies Now Supporting Several CMS Platforms?

I'm always on the lookout for business trends in our industry and I've spotted a significant new one in recent months. Increasingly CMS companies are supporting different platforms. The choice for each company is different, but the trend seems real:

Examples of Joomla Companies Supporting Other Platforms

  • Rockettheme: Joomla and phpBB3
  • Joomlart: Joomla and Magento
  • JoomlaJunkie: Working on ProThemer.com and building for Joomla, Drupal and Magento
  • JoomlaPraise: Working on CMSMarket.com
  • CMSExpo: Started with Joomla and expanded to all kinds of Open Source CMS

Why Support More Platforms

New customers and upselling existing customers ... duh! Yes, yes, but beyond that I think the most important reason is diversification. We've promoted the importance of this before. Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, phpBB3 and Magento all have large audiences, but each has weaknesses in their business models.

Joomla and phpBB3 both rely on a revolving set of community members to step up and keep things running. What happens if that well runs dry? Can volunteerism survive a crisis in the economy?

Drupal and Wordpress have the opposite problem. Both are heavily reliant on the one person who founded and runs the projects. Could either project still thrive in their absence? Magento is in a similar situation. It is owned and operated by a single company. What happens if it runs into trouble?

We've seen plenty of projects such as Mambo and OSCommerce lose steam and fade away. Its almost certain that one or more of the current hot five will also fade in years to come.

Limitations to This Strategy

  • Extension developers find moving between platforms to be much harder than designers. Almost all the companies I've listed above are template companies.
  • This strategy is relatively new. It remains to be seen how companies that are successful in one market can adapt to another.

Over To You

Do you think this is a wise strategy for companies to adopt? Are they likely to end up with success on one platform and mediocrity on others? Are multi-platform companies likely to be a growing trend?

 

Comments  

 
#1 Samantha Bovat 2009-06-05 09:21
Hey there Steve,
I would have to agree that diversification is a key component to the success of any business. However, the challenge lies in maintaining focus and being an expert across several platforms (not very easy to do).

Depending on the size of the team, I would suggest that at least one person is out there learning and keeping up with the latest trends so that there are potential options should the climate change. This is easier said than done and is just one of the focal points for businesses being flexible.
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#2 Steve Burge 2009-06-05 09:32
Thanks Sam - I think that's another limitation ... to do it properly requires expanding the company and hiring.
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#3 Ogy Nikolic 2009-06-05 10:11
Agree completely w/ Sam. Also, 2.5 years ago when we started Steve, things looked very bright for Joomla and I think they are looking even better at this moment.
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#4 Bruce Letterle 2009-06-05 12:10
Diversification has led to new avenues of revenue for our company. We have moved from being a Joomla-only integrator to also doing other CMS (eZ Publish), EC (VirtueMart and Magento), and CRM (Info@Hand)pack ages. It has enabled us to expand services to existing clients and also play in the Enterprise market, where things like proprietary licenses and having a company behind the product development are important. We are now more of an Open Source software integrator. One benefit of working with a commercial vendor (like eZ, Long Reach and Varien) is they have partner programs that give support and leads.
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#5 Ivo Apostolov 2009-06-05 12:24
The problem with extension developers is that they either should maintain 2+ different versions or not using the full power of any of the CMSs.
Community Builder is an excellent example of extension really falling down due to the willingness to support multiply platforms. This also slows the development and release cycles (i.e. new features requested by current customers).
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#6 Rick 2009-06-05 12:48
Supporting other CMS / applications is important from a client-service point of view as well. Joomla does just about everything...or you can make it do everything. However, that doesn't always mean it should be used.

Another issue with the client model is being careful not to base your entire business on an application, such as the Joomla CMS. My company does lots of Joomla sites but if we had to use something else or build our own, it's completely doable as well. If a client comes to us and says "We need a Wordpress blog with XYZ customization into XYZ database" and we don't know anything about it (WP)...we're losing business.

I think maybe the 'limitation' to extension developers having difficulty moving over to other platforms is because they are so used to one framework, one way of thinking, that it's hard to adapt their workflow. At the end of the day, it's all still PHP, coding, programming, etc. So being able to port extensions over shouldn't be that difficult if they're used to other ways of thinking.

It's a good practice to do a small site in something like CodeIgniter, CakePHP, Symphony, etc. everyonce in a while to see how other people do it.
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#7 Steve Burge 2009-06-05 16:21
Thanks for all the feedback guys. It sounds like the smart companies really are going down this track.

If you're a non-Joomla-specific company, that's where its really essential, to make sure you know which platform is the right tool for a job.

For the Joomla-specific companies, perhaps its as simple as diversifying into just one more platform. Even by doing that, you've halved your risk.
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#8 Sean Cook 2009-06-07 22:02
A good coding team will help a company move in any direction; however, I agree with all the points above, it is tough to be an expert in all of them, but you should be able to work in any of them.
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#9 Johan Janssens 2009-06-09 19:29
Diversification is indeed an emerging trend and one I expect to continue. It's a logical result of the open source business model more in particular the absense of vendor lock-in.

While it's indeed easier for template designers or solution integrators to diversify it's alot harder for extensions developers due to the radical different nature of CMS core technologies and API's. Take Joomla and Drupal, one has a OO Framework the other a purely procedural API.

At Nooku (www.nooku.org)we recognise this problem and our new Nooku Framework (www.nooku.org/framework) is a first step in trying to resolve this.

The Nooku Framework (www.nooku.org/framework) is designed to run stand-alone and allow extension developers to build portable extensions.

We envision that with the help of our framework extension developers will be able to build portable extensions for Joomla, Drupal, SilverStripe and others ...
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#10 Early 2009-06-10 04:33
I think most of the developers are searching new solutions since from now on it's 100% sure you wont see major extensions for Joomla, due to the new licensing terms. Joomla will benefit only from very small components in ther JED directory which will make it even more harder for the average user to find there something usefull. No major developer will publish proper extensions for Joomla, since they are able to keep their publisher rights on it.
Since Joomla is now like a patient that catched a incurable sickness, of course developers will diversify to other platforms.
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