For some time now, there has been increased adoption of Drupal by businesses, which require enterprise-grade services for Drupal. We are seeing large corporations asking themselves: What is the enterprise version of Drupal?
Let's see the essentials:
- Drupal is open source software, Drupal is owned by the community, not any particular company.
- It is specialized companies or independent developers that offer professional services around Drupal.
- Drupal itself is enterprise-grade software and has been built by the community for free use.
- Companies like SeeD EM specialize in offering enterprise-class services around Drupal that complement it with service levels according to the client's use of the software.
The rules of the Drupal community are very different from those of the paid software market, so it is necessary to understand that this is a reality of the model adopted by Drupal. It is important to understand that there are no enterprise versions as such in Drupal; there are distributions from development companies that have added value to these distributions, enriching the “vanilla” version with multiple functionalities generally oriented to meet the specific needs of different verticals. The Drupal core is one and there is no discrimination between a community version and an enhanced version.
Business services do not refer to the size of the client or the development company with which they work, but rather the way in which the project is worked and how it is adapted to the needs of the clients. To have what is commonly called an enterprise version or “enterprise”, it is normally a development carried out for a large and complex company, however, that alone does not make a development become an enterprise one. To work in-house, you must be able to adapt to the situations and organizational structure of an enterprise client.
Typically, Drupal developers work with multiple business units, different levels of management, and we must be aware and flexible enough to realize how to effectively deliver and communicate results to customers (who often have different ways of measuring Performance). In these situations, we must be aware of how our developments contribute to the organization, company or digital transformation plan, and be aware of how the results are evaluated. Today, clients who have had confidence in the quality of the development of a software factory or a digital agency are evaluating the work on an ongoing basis.
An Enterprise Drupal means a development that integrates multiple systems. As your client's business may have different markets and products, we (as implementers) must use Drupal efficiently to link your clients' different systems for these different markets and products. Drupal alone is not called upon to do absolutely everything. In implementing this is the ability of developers and architects to understand where Drupal adds value to the organization's digital ecosystem.
What does this mean? With a large number of developers and site builders in the Drupal community, not all of them may be aware of the commercial drivers of the enterprise gear. In these cases, we often see many people trying to build custom solutions in Drupal, when there is already a cloud product. Yes, there is a chance that you can do better, however, who will support that concept within the organization? Can your client even justify the uncertainty or your project when there is already a commercial solution? Sometimes you need to know when not to use Drupal.
Enterprise Drupal means knowing your clients' expectations and the expected end result. Working on an enterprise project means knowing how to show your client "early wins" and also knowing what your CEO and board of directors, and your team, need to show them.
One of the most powerful ways to add value to Drupal from a business point of view is by providing ongoing support to the developments that are in production. That is why at SeeD we strive to maintain a high level of support to our clients and users of the platform who have done their developments directly or with other development companies, through professional support services such as Code Audit , Information Architecture , Drupal Training, SeeD Cloud, specialized hosting with Drupal support, and in general all activities related to Drupal development.
