DigiCULT
.
Info
13
would encourage people to share resources
and work together. Zope was responsive to
our needs and we're now working with
them to create a CMS solution that we
hope will transform Duke's online activities.'
6
ZOPE, OPEN SOURCE AND THE CMS
COMPETITION
W
eb content management tools are
big business in the US marketplace
today. Industry analysts have content man-
agement trends on their radar screens and
have produced assessment reports over the
past three years that document increasing
hype, marketplace mergers and consolida-
tion, and the relatively rapid maturing of
the product environment.Three of the
largest technology analysts have articulated
the case that an open source content man-
agement system might be a viable option,
at least until the commercial sector stabilis-
es. Among these analysts, however, only
Tony Byrnes' independent CMS Watch has
given substantial attention to any of the
open-source CMS tools. In some ways, the
failure of open-source CMS to register a
share of marketplace or to compete direct-
ly with large-scale enterprise applications is
understandable. How do you identify `mar-
ket share' when the only product being
sold is a service? How do you measure
return on investment when the core soft-
ware product is freely available for down-
load?
F
reely available and extendable software
has been around in many forms virtu-
ally since the inception of computing
technology. In particular, the educational
and research emphasis of the early evolu-
tion of Unix has fostered a robust commu-
nity of developers and users that has freely
shared and cooperated on open-source
software projects for many years.The more
formal concept of `free' software as an
organised and licensed initiative is credited
to Richard Stallman, who founded the
Free Software Foundation in 1984 and
introduced the GNU project.Today,
began with a thorough review of the exist-
ing technical literature and a set of consul-
tations with industry analysts.The
committee assessed products from fourteen
companies and then issued a formal
Request for Proposals (RFP) to four ven-
dors. Representatives of these companies
attended a half-day bidders conference to
clarify the requirements and then submit-
ted full responses to the RFP. A compre-
hensive review of the four proposals led
the committee to recommend the selec-
tion of the Zope Corporation
specific content management system based
upon the open-source Zope content man-
agement framework
D
uke University signed a contract
with the Zope Corporation to
develop a product called `Zope4Edu' with
Duke as the first user. `None of the leading
CMS packages seemed quite right for our
situation,' said Tracy Futhey, Duke's vice
president for information technology and
chief information officer. `Our challenge
was political and institutional as much as
technical.We needed a system that was
very flexible, with open-source code, that
the eventual growth of a CMS on cam-
pus is predictable, a CMS must be easily
scalable and expandable.
· Openness. The University has a strong
interest in ensuring that solutions
deployed at the enterprise level support
open standards, both to protect against
vendor lock-in and to ensure the long-
term utility of campus software imple-
mentations. Of particular interest to the
University are open-source solutions that
feature the active involvement of devel-
oper and user communities and vendors
that demonstrate a willingness to train
local users and participate in open stan-
dards development.
· Modularity.The major components
of a campus implementation must be
capable of functioning with relative
independence and have modular com-
ponents that can be adopted in varying
combinations by various campus units.
· Enterprise. Enterprise-level strategies
for selecting vendors, platforms and
support mechanisms will be used to
specify a CMS product.
B
ased upon the requirements described
above, a campus-wide committee
managed a vendor selection process that
INDUSTRY ANALYSTS
CMS Watch.
of information, news, opinion and analysis about Web content management.'
CMS Wire.
and product information.'
Butler Group.
Company providing Analysis without compromise.'
Faulkner Information Services.
in-depth technology information services to public and private sector organisations
worldwide. Our products include subscription and custom-developed reports, stud-
ies and databases.'
Gartner, Inc.
sory firm that helps more than 10,000 clients leverage technology to achieve busi-
ness success.'
6 Zope Corporation press release, 9 Oct 2003.