Joomla! enterprise - small but noticable
Wednesday, 06 July 2011The world sometimes seems divided between two kinds of people: Those who like Joomla! and those who don't. Generally, those who like Joomla!, choose Joomla! because it is free. And those who don't like Joomla! tried out Joomla! 1.0 on a hosting environment where PHP Safe Mode was enabled (ugly) along side Register Globals and allow_url_fopen (the perfect playground for hackers).
Meet the Joomla! ecosystem
But besides these 2 majorities of people, there is much more to Joomla!. For starters, Joomla! itself is made possible by a large numbers of developers (both developers as non-developers) - a fact that always leads to the complicated task of convincing the majority of Joomla! users that free software does not equal free beer.
Add to these volunteers, the large number of extra developers that make money out of Joomla! (but still might have their part in the voluntary processes) and you can see how complex the Joomla! ecosystem actually becomes: Joomla! is not only for personal blogs, it's there as well for smaller companies, non-profit organizations, etcetera. But is Joomla! a good option for enterprise-environments?
Only a small part of this ecosystem is enterprise-oriented
When Joomla! is compared to Drupal, many claim that Drupal is more enterprise-ready than Joomla!. Looking at comparisons made in the past, many comparisons are already outdated since Joomla! 1.6 adds many of the enterprise features that is was lacking in the past (solid framework, ACLs, Form API, to name a few). But now those who favor Drupal turn to the argument of market shares: The percentage of Drupal sites that are built for enterprise, is higher then the Joomla! percentage.
But this argument is a bit silly: The total number of Joomla! sites that currently exist, outnumbers the number of Drupal sites being built by far. Therefor the percentage of Joomla! sites being used for enterprise, might be less than with Drupal, but the actual number of sites being built with Joomla! for enterprise might be higher. In total, only a small number of the total of Joomla! ecosystem is oriented on enterprise, but - considering the total size of Joomla! - it's a very significant part.
What makes enterprise enterprise?
So if specific features or the number of practical examples don't matter even anymore as an argument, what does? Which specific needs does an enterprise organization have and how does Joomla! do with these needs? Our experience is that Joomla! has all the capabilities when dealing with enterprise organizations. But enterprise customers need professional webdevelopers and ongoing support - not something that the average Joomla! template-hacker can offer.
But still, there are numerous Joomla! specialists large enough to deal with enterprise customers. So, besides the Joomla! system itself, the ecosystem is certainly ready for it. So is Joomla! ready for enterprise? Certainly.