Acquia Introduces Open Web Experience Management For Drupal

Acquia, a provider of paid cloud services specifically designed to support the Drupal open source web content management platform, is introducing a new concept it calls “Open Web Experience Management” or OpenWEM. It looks like digital marketing has officially come to Drupal.

First, let’s examine exactly what Acquia is trying to accomplish with OpenWEM. The vendor says OpenWEM is a combination of Acquia cloud services, the Drupal platform and the Acquia app marketplace that allows users to “create immersive, digital content and campaigns [and] socialize them across multiple communities and channels,” based on an open standards web architecture.

OpenWEM also allows Drupal modules to integrate with most major marketing automation and social analytics solutions. Acquia says other WEM tools are based on proprietary third-party architectures that make them “slow to adapt to changing business needs and keep pace with the speed of the social web.”

Filling the OpenWEM Toolbox

In addition to offering the OpenWEM architecture, Acquia is also launching beta versions of two new tools supporting it: Drupal Commons 3.0 for Drupal 7 and Media Cloud. Drupal Commons 3.0 is designed to allow the creation of online communities for collaboration and content sharing. Acquia says the latest upgrade features enhanced mobile support, analytical capabilities and user experience improvements.

Meanwhile, Media Cloud is a new media management service designed to support native management and sharing of rich media content within the Drupal environment. Acquia is also partnering with gamification software provider Badgeville to include Badgeville for Drupal as a key supporting component of OpenWEM.

To further ease access to OpenWEM, Acquia is partnering with more than 400 digital agencies and developers and integrating APIs for the top Drupal development tools used most frequently by Acquia customers.

Acquia Opens Up to Developers

Through a combination of open source and free services, Acquia is angling to become the standard means of managing activities on the Drupal platform — the company refers to itself as the “enterprise guide to Drupal."

In addition to its new OpenWEM concept and supporting solutions, back in August, at DrupalCon Munich 2012, Acquia said its Dev Cloud will be permanently free for developing sites. The developer accounts will include all the features of Acquia Cloud: automated developer workflow, separate development, staging and production environments as well as backups, SSH access, Drush integration, Cloud API and Cloud Hooks for continuous integration and more.

Getting In the Digital Marketing Game

Acquia's introduction of OpenWEM, is the real opening of the door for companies to leverage Drupal as a complete customer experience platform. There's the Web CMS, Drupal Commons for Communities, Media Cloud for rich asset management and the ability to integrate digital marketing and social analytics solutions.

This is the kind of end-to-end platform story that many companies are looking for. It's what Sitecore does, Ektron does and a dozen other web content management (aka web experience or customer experience) vendors are doing.

Does the fact that Drupal is open source give them a leg up? These days selling the open source story isn't really a big thing. Some open source solutions can work just as well in an enterprise as proprietary solutions. With a community as large as Drupal's, an enterprise support company like Acquia, and this list of new capabilities, Drupal is well equipped to support the digital marketing needs of an enterprise.  

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Badgeville Releases Its Gamification Platform for Drupal

Drupal, get ready for some fun. Badgeville announced the launch of its gamification and behavior management platform for the open-source content, social and commerce management system.

The integration is designed to simplify the ability to apply what Badgeville calls “engagement mechanics” to websites built and managed with Drupal. It will be offered by Drupal-service provider Acquia to its customers.

Engaging for Rewards

Gamification rewards desired behaviors such as starting discussion forums, commenting and writing and replying to blog posts in order to increase customer loyalty, satisfaction and retention. There are also “anti-gaming mechanics,” which set limits on how many times a behavior can be rewarded.

Badgeville CEO Kris Duggan said in a statement that this is the first integration between an “industry-leading gamification and behavior platform and Drupal.” He added that Badgeville uses Drupal, along with customized functionalities, to manage its own Badgeville Community.

Other current customers who use Badgeville with Drupal include iVillage, Paypay’s X.commerce and PropertyInvesting.com. The company said that its customers typically see increases in user behavior tied to business objectives of between 20 and 200 percent.

Badgeville said that its platform has led to significant increases in customer loyalty and engagement. It cited the example of Mother Nature Network, a site focused on environmental and sustainability news, that uses the Badgeville platform to reward such behaviors as Green Blog posts, reader comments and uploading videos.

Points, Levels, Missions

The gamification platform’s rewards include points, achievements, levels, tracks and missions. Its social gaming techniques include contests, leaderboards and notifications.

For instance, a user is notified that someone has written a review on the site about a new line of sneakers. That user reads the review, writes a comment, and then writes his or her own review. Badgeville’s gamification components can award the user with a Marathon achievement level, which the platform allows to be used for special privileges or discounts.

Based in Menlo Park, California and founded in 2010, Badgeville provides gamification and social engagement solutions to influence and analyze user behavior. 

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Drupal Gains Steam at DrupalCon Munich 2012 #Drupalcon

My travels from Austin to Munich all in the name of DrupalCon did not disappoint! Once again, it was filled with incredible speakers and collaboration. While there, the Drupal community saw another significant merger of leaders in Drupal, new products and proof that the community is just beginning to hit its stride.

Drupal E-Commerce Gets a Boost

Drupal for commerce made another breakthrough with a big announcement from Paris and Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Commerce Guys. The company kicked it up a notch with the launch of their Commerce Kickstart 2.0 — an accelerated launch pad for the open-source e-Commerce framework Drupal Commerce.

Mike O’Connor, president of Commerce Guys North America had this to say about it, “The new Kickstart is all about creating enterprise-level Drupal Commerce sites. It’s designed to provide a multifaceted, out-of-the-box baseline of functionality as a starting point for e-Commerce sites. It’s a great advancement for Drupal and our team.”

Dev Cloud Free for All

Acquia did not disappoint to bring more to the community at Munich. They announced a new pricing structure, if you call free a pricing structure! Acquia says their Dev Cloud will be permanently free for developing sites. The developer accounts will include all the great features of Acquia Cloud: automated developer workflow, separate development, staging and production environments as well as backups, SSH access, Drush integration, Cloud API and Cloud Hooks for continuous integration and more.

Women in Drupal

The Drupal project keeps its promise with diversity. To enhance networking and build a community of women Drupal experts, the Women in Drupal Facebook page launched at the Con with over 100 members in the first couple of days!

To boot, during Munich, the number of Drupal developers crossed the 20,000 mark.

It was another great Con — Auf Wiedersehen!

Editor's Note: Another article by Ben Finklea from DrupalCon:

Enterprise Drupal Takes Big Step Foward with Four-Day Merger #DrupalCon
 

About the Author

Ben Finklea is the CEO of Volacci, the leader in Internet marketing for Drupal-based Web strategies, and the chair of the Drupal Branding and Marketing Committee for Drupal Association. He is a serial tech entrepreneur, author and SEO thought leader.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Enterprise Drupal Takes Big Step Forward with Four-Way Merger: #DrupalCon

Perhaps the biggest news at DrupalCon was a four-way merger of leading European Drupal shops to form Wunderkraut. NodeOne, Krimson, Mearra and Wunderkraut joined forces under the Wunderkraut name to create an international team of Drupal service providers.

With over 140 Drupal professionals, offices in 10 countries and some big time European clients, this is another big step in Drupal’s enterprise saga. As more businesses looking to enhance their Web presence turn to Drupal for its incredible flexibility and lack of proprietary fees, the ecosystem of Drupal development companies is thriving. Wunderkraut is making a splash at DrupalCon this week recruiting additional staff and sharing its vision with the community.

The formation of a new, large-scale Drupal company in Europe is another event exemplifying the maturity of the Drupal business community.

About the Author

Ben Finklea is the CEO of Volacci, the leader in Internet marketing for Drupal-based Web strategies, and the chair of the Drupal Branding and Marketing Committee for Drupal Association. He is a serial tech entrepreneur, author and SEO thought leader.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

News from the Front: Simpler, Mobile Drupal 8 Previewed #DrupalCon

For those in the Drupal community, DrupalCon is simply DrupalCon. For the rest of you: DrupalCon is a bi-annual Drupal conference put on by the Drupal Association. It’s a world-class tech conference, it is THE place for Drupal news and it’s happening this week in Munich, Germany. 

Lowering the Learning Curve with Drupal 8

Drupal is considered one of the most powerful Web CMSs available, but one of the biggest complaints about the open-source Web infrastructure is its overwhelming complexity. This is especially heard from non-technical users like copywriters, designers and marketers. In an effort to address this, the project founder and lead Dries Buytaert announced earlier this year that Drupal will be adopting the open-source PHP framework Symfony into its next major release, Drupal 8.

Initially, this announcement left many wondering why such a dramatic shift was necessary or what benefit it would bring to Drupal users. Since then, the Drupal core programmers have been busy and at Drupalcon Munich, a series of significant usability and feature upgrades in the works for Drupal 8 have been demonstrated. These improvements are sure to please CMOs and CTOs alike.

Content creation in Drupal 8 will be greatly simplified for less technical users. Drupal 8 will provide easier layout control and facilitate gorgeous designs with practically no coding. All of these features will greatly lower the learning curve for new developers.

Mobile and Beyond

Drupal’s next core iteration is poised to conquer mobile. With a friendlier admin in mind, a new and simplified pullout menu will leverage one toolbar that works on all devices enabling complete mobile Web administration. Drupal 8 is going to implement responsive design out of the box, even differentiating between phones and tablets. A responsive layout builder was showcased and it’s pretty revolutionary. Entirely new layouts can be created with drag and drop.

Authoring improvements were also on display. The form looked cleaner with most options moved to a sidebar. Inline editing with True Wysiwyg will eliminate the separation of focus between editing and preview modes. And staying in-sync with the responsive/mobile motif, viewport previews will allow you to see what your page will look like on different devices.

Drupal 8 is currently in early development and is expected to ship in 2013. There are more exciting new features planned for than can fit in one post. The key takeaway from Dries at Drupalcon Munich is that Drupal is gearing up to be more accessible and to address the Internet’s latest and greatest challenges. As the Web continues to evolve, Drupal is taking major steps to ensure its place as a leading CMS today and in the future.
 

About the Author

Ben Finklea is the CEO of Volacci, the leader in Internet marketing for Drupal-based Web strategies, and the chair of the Drupal Branding and Marketing Committee for Drupal Association. He is a serial tech entrepreneur, author and SEO thought leader.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com