Predictions for the Joomla World in 2010

Joomla will enter more of the enterprise arena

Interesting article... and I agree the mentioned trends are pretty clear.

I would also add that bolt-on web app frameworks for Joomla, like Nooku and jXtended are also on the rise and will continue to stay ahead of the core framework for Joomla.

Finally, a trend that I am noticing is clients *looking specifically* for Joomla developers and solutions instead of being guided to these solutions by Joomla shops.

Very good post.

Artisteer seems to be very promising and I'm wondering how major template developers plan to compete with this new player. Of course they have template frameworks but which one is more flexible and easy to use? Artisteer or template frameworks?

Joomla is fairly easy to use and anyone who reads a book about how to build a website with Joomla will be able to offer Joomla Services and the competition will only be growing. In my point of view actual players will have to offer far more than Joomla services, they'll have to offer services such as project management (for outsourcing, which is growing every day), Online Marketing, Social Networks, and SEO.

Joomla 1.6 will, in my point of view, bring Joomla to a higher level. ACL will allow Joomla to be implemented in other projects reserved so far to enterprise solutions.

Another big happening will be the release, I hope, of Nooku framework V 1.0, this frameworks seems to be very promising and will simplify and speed up Joomla development.

I really liked point #6. It's very true, but often untold. Joomla! began as a small market and there was a lot of room for experimentation. As those "experiments" gradually grew into solid "products" and the market became immense, a clear need of dedicated businesses to develop, support and bring them forward has sprung.

IMHO we should be getting accustomed to Commercial GPL as a natural form of distribution dominating the high-end of the Joomla! extensions market over the next two years.

Actually I predict two new releases of Joomla. 1.6 early in the year and 1.7 late in the year, approximately 6 months apart.

The shift of Joomla! to the enterprise world is ongoing, yes, and it will be interesting to see how this develops in 2010. I for one dont see Commercial GPL as a bad thing (get over it people!). Commercial GPL will probably mean more quality, dedication and support. And those elements are essential for the shift to the enterprise world.

Acquia/Drupal are already acting on this.

We already have tons of professional web developers, template developers, and now are getting really professional extension developers (JXtended, JoomlaTools, Dioscouri), its just part of our ecosystem. An ecosystem evolves, most of the time independently of what others want. The Joomla! ecosystem is evolving.

I will be especially curious to see how the current "discussions" around the Joomla! project leadership will end/be solved. In what way will the Joomla! leadership embrace the projects evolution, or just wrk against it?

He Andrew, you know we are gonna keep you accountable for that

It's only my "prediction" But you guys have to help

With regards to point #4, "Projects become gatekeepers", I want to clarify the Drupal policy a bit. ANYBODY can prepare a Drupal certification program, but they're required to avoid naming it or marketing it as "The Official" certification program (because there isn't one, and won't be one). So we might see the "ACME Inc. Certified Drupal Module Builder" program, but we might also see the "FOOBAR Inc. Certified Drupal Module Builder" program as well, by a different company/group, and that's all fine.

So to react to the title of the prediction, the Drupal community is NOT becoming a gatekeeper, and we don't want one, either. It's an open marketplace with trademark guidelines and professional etiquette to guide us all.

-Robert

Steve -

Let me share a better link from Dries on the Accreditation.

As you can see from Dries's post, the community can create certification programs, like "Acme Drupal Certification" mentioned in his post. The market will decide, not the project, as it should be.

Read in his post how he uses the Trademark to ensure official certification is not suggested, but allows everyone to participate provided it's clear.

From my perspective, what is making Drupal grow like a field of weeds is that Dries, and other leaders in that community, work very hard to get *out* of the way of the community and try *not* to be gatekeepers.

There is room for Drupal and Joomla! and WordPress (and other free software) to continue to grow like crazy in 2010. My prediction is - those projects who know how to empower their community will grow, just like Drupal.

Thanks for your post!
Amy

With my respect to Andrew, I don't see 1.7 in 2010.
I expect more and more extensions to become commercial and these developed slowly to loose market share.
If it happens that 1.6 contains so many changes in the language files (as it seems), I expect commercialization of translations as well.
I expect increased market share, more out of the box solutions and more and more controversy within the community.
Hopefully it will be a good year.

Good to see Robert posting.(Glad I didn't say something different than he did! hehe!)

Steve - I see Acquia in the same light as JXtended. Those are private companies, even though the members are certainly very influential in our projects.

It may be tough to compete against an Acquia or a JXtended, but that means that contributing has market value. Three cheers for that since contributors are needed! If a company wants to be competitive, maybe they should contribute? I think it works perfectly.

BTW - Lullabot also had a long discussion on certification on their site. I am not certain what they decided to do but they also have a heck of a good reputation in that community, again, built on contributions.

I can also see firms, such as yours, in that space, Steve, with your learning program and community involvement.

The trademark is an important tool for a project. Not as a gatekeeper, though, since that would impede growth. When used as a protection for the community, it's a useful tool for keeping the market open.

As I understand it, Acquia will offer certification of their particular distribution, as will no doubt be the case with others too. No one will have a "Drupal Certification" as such. Rather they will have a certification of their particular offering which by the way uses the Drupal core as its framework.

Nothing wrong with this I guess but I, like Steve, suspect this subtlety will be miseed by many and whoever gets there first will become the de facto standard.

Same goes for Joomla! and any number of other projects who, for financial, management for any number of other reasons, do not run a standardized certification program.

JXtended is a product company only, it wouldn't be enacting such things. You would be more likely to see New Life in IT partnering/collaborating with other organisations for technical expertise to create certification "stuff". But on the point that certification will grow out of ecosystem, that's certainly my prediction, if not presumption, at least for 2010.

I believe you will find a handful of companies providing Joomla! as a service.

I also see big big changes in the Joomla! database driver world. I think Joomla! will gain major capabilities in scaling. enabling companies/people to use the framework to build out large scale multi-tenant SaaS applications.

@garyjaybrooks

from website developer point of view i am really looking forward to the maturing of the very promising cck products around the corner, those being flexicontent in the first position, but also k2 which have gained some momentum but where various required parts are hugely missing among which the less than flexible field additions infrastructure. simply looking forward to the frustrating exercise of picking among cck:s flexicontent, k2, resources each time you boot your project. i favor flexicontent b/c its really well built and a flexible system, but also b/c it is as integrated in J as it can be, w/o being a hack

look also really forward to virtuemart actually capturing its gained user base and make something good out of it by doing an overall haul of the J1.0 system, which i understand is already underway

another development i believe will take place is that of the silence development of joomla usage in the developing world, like the place where i am in, Ethiopia, will gain more and more formalized and hope to see and be part of various joomla user groups be born