Why Drupal

Drupal is highly modular and designed to be assembled to fit precise requirements, rather than trying to build requirements around a preset system. The blocks of this system are modules which are open source and freely available. There are over four thousand contributed modules available to cover most needs and there are around five new modules released daily. In addition, it is easy to write a new module for any custom requirement that arises. However, with in-depth knowledge of the weaknesses and strengths of what is available, custom modules are not needed as often as people would usually expect. One of our major aims is to reduce dependencies on development time and associated maintenance costs.

Open source is emerging as a conservative and prudent business choice in a time of economic uncertainty. With open source, your business has the assurance of community support, further backed by other companies using your software.

There are currently 240,000 community members and over 700 contributors to Drupal core (this doesn't include contributed modules).

Drupal has a dedicated security team with over 30 members who respond to security for Drupal core and work with the authors of contributed modules.

SLA-level support is available at various subscription levels through our partner Acquia. Acquia was founded by Dries Buytaert, the original creator and project lead of the Drupal project, and Jay Batson, previously founder and CEO of Pingtel. Their investors include North Bridge Venture Partners, Sigma Partners, and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures.

With proprietary software, you are vulnerable to any licensing or price changes dictated by the vendor. You are also completely dependent on the financial wellbeing of your vendor to provide:

• Security patches
• Bug fixes
• Continued development

As this process is behind closed doors, even if your vendor is currently solvent you can never be sure what resources are directed to which areas.

If your requirement is based around web publishing, your company's CMS is the key part of your business infrastructure. Choosing Drupal allows you to use a public infrastructure for your business rather than trying to build and maintain your own or to put your business in the hands of another company.