Making the business case for Drupal (or open source in general) in large organizations

I don't know if it'll fit the bill but there's many resources outlined here: http://drupal.org/node/9067

In the forums, you can easily find many sites similar to what you are pitching, they may be a great help in demonstrating advantages to your management. Look in the showcase forum for some great examples of what can eb done with Drupal. ;)

And please share your presentation if you end up creating something yourself :)

Cheers

Gérard

A few good ones below that cover both the features of drupal and the open source angle:

http://drupal.org/node/28585
http://drupal.org/node/29603
http://www.advancedwebdesign.com/drupal/websites

Keep in mind that outsourcing your project to a service provider and using Drupal are not mutually exclusive.

The following apply to Drupal and to some, but certainly not all, other open-source projects.

* Control. Because you have source code, you can make changes to meet your needs without having to persuade a vendor that it's in his/her interest. Drupal's documented API and modular extension concept make it possible for you to extend the platform without having to understand all of it.

* Quality of code. While not all open-source projects create good code, Drupal's code design and implementation are of verifiably high quality. A healthy open-source community process will inherently produce more secure code than a comparable closed-source, proprietary process (compare Linux security with Windows security).

* Support. Most problems can be solved with an appeal for help from peers, and a healthy open-source community process provides that. In addition, there are many commercial resources that can provide Drupal assistance if needed.

* Riding other people's coattails. This, I think, is the big one -- the best open-source platforms have now moved into the lead in terms of rapid, innovative improvements. The contributed modules list for Drupal 4.7 is impressive at first glance, and even more so when you look closely at how some of the modules can interact.

For your purposes, I think you should carefully document your vision of what the site should be, and then discuss exactly how Drupal and its modules will hit that target.

I don't think Drupal is a perfect solution for a site featuring multimedia and social networking; Drupal profiles are maddeningly difficult to control with the templating system. If you're going to try to build a YouTube clone, you're going to have some heavy coding to do, as there are no modules for managing a bank of dedicated video transcoding boxes in the background, etc. But if you use it the right way, Drupal can serve as a great development framework that won't lock you into an aging system.

I would suggest getting in touch with Boris Mann. He has done several of these types of presentations.
http://www.bryght.com/blog/boris-mann

-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain

I think I can help you out. I work for a bigger comapny as well and I did lots of writing on why (and why not) to use oss.

i would say, break the rules. dont do gartner, idg, meta etc. and tell them why (fud, "independent' studies etc. there are studies from gartner that say linux is cheaper and studies from gartner that say that linux is more expensive. just read the fine print, ibm or msft)

my company for example is an integrator of ict services. in "the old" economy roughly one third of all cost (wrongly called tco, since you dont "own" software in most cases) is hardware, one third software and one third maintance / implementation cost. now what if -given a more or less fixed budget with the company- if the software would be "gratis" and the hardware would be the same price? yep, more money to be made from the integrator pov. I am telling you this, because imho you should go where the money is. dont try to sell "futureproof", "openstandards" "vendor lockin" or whatever. just go for the money, tell them why oss is better today; faster innovations, better quality and most of all, show it where oss is cheaper.

and be sure to read dwheeler as well

--
groets
bertb

There's also lots of good stuff in the Drupal Marketing group http://groups.drupal.org/drupal-marketing and in the links from within the posts on that site. In particular, the "Important Projects" review of Drupal is pretty helpful when looking at a way to compare multiple products.

--
Growing Venture Solutions
Drupal Implementation and Support in Denver, CO

The problem with open source is always liability and support.

Jan

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The Smart Boy - Free Scripts and Linux Guides
Support Drupal! - Drupal at Free Scripts Forum

A lot of NFPs think that open source is a free solution. It isn't. It's only free software.

If an organisation wants to go with Drupal, then they MUST have a Drupal person within the organisation, (and be prepared to get a new one if they leave), or the budget for commercial Drupal support, or access to such on a professional basis (not just "a guy who likes what we will do and will sort some code for us").

Remember - every new release is an upgrade problem (scary to most non programmers). Every special mod is an upgrade issue that might need code changes. Fast.

DO NOT let your project join the myriad of other NFP projects that fall over because they didn't take a realistic attitude to support issues.

Note - if the support budget is low, stick to core and well established mods, do not get any code written, wait for new mods that will do what you need. It's code that carries the biggest potential costs re support.

http://groups.drupal.org/greenpeace-support

Specifically:
"Greenpeace UK Evaluation" - http://groups.drupal.org/node/411

Greenpeace UK is in the middle of an evaluation of CMS's. See http://importantprojects.co.uk/archives/000077.php for detailed information about their process. I will be making a presentation this Friday to them and addressing how Drupal could meet their needs. I am looking for help in this, specifically I will want to show them working examples of each of their areas of interest. Check out their requirements spreadsheet...

and
"Presentation Report Back" - http://groups.drupal.org/node/458

Good luck with your business case presentation...reminds me of business grad school...

Walt Esquivel, MBA, MA, Captain - U.S. Marine Corps (Veteran)
President, Wellness Corps, LLC
DreamHost Rewards Affiliate Program

I convinced the web development company I work for to scrap our own CMS and start using Drupal. The president said he wants me to present the features/benefits of Drupal next week or so.

----
http://PointHomes.com

I think it would be easier convincing companies and organisations of the merits if there was a list of all the well known organisations that use Drupal.

The list should be published on the drupal.org in quite a prominent place, maybe even with Testimonials. It's always easier to convince people if they know that other companies are using the same thing successfully.

So far we have heard about Greenpeace, MTV and there are rumours that Yahoo use it for something behind the scenes. Anyone know any other big users?

Just wanted to thank you and who gave a feedback, since in 2 weeks I will also have to make a presentation to over 10 NGO's from all over Europe (Iceland to Greece, Spain to Poland) all working on the youth and short movies fields. I hope to convince them in using Drupal as a common platform for working together.
Will let you know.

This might assist a little. There is always the if it's good enough for IBM strategy to add to your pitch.

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Charlie Lowe | cyberdash
Tips for posting to the Drupal forums

Hi amanda, hope this helps:

Comparing Drupal with other content management systems (CMS) is tricky because it is like comparing Walkman and iPod for consumers who have never tried iPod before. We can say that both can play music and are portable, and iPod is at a clear disadvantage because it's the younger technology. It is difficult to explain why iPod has more advantages, and the only way is to demonstrate what it does and which famous celebrities endorse iPod (like U2 and Madonna, for instance).

Read the full article here: http://digitalsolutions.ph/couchkamotereviews/why_choose_drupal

"Drupal and the Power of Categories (Taxonomy)"
http://digitalsolutions.ph/couchkamotereviews/power_drupal_categories

May I ask what country you are in? I've tried to push OSS through my company http://www.OWAL.co.uk/ but I find that the best way is to just convince the techies and let them use it without management's interference.