CMS lies and open source
It’s a wonderful time to be selling (er, licensing, or renting subscriptions to, or whatever the business model is 
open source. That said, it’s amazing the sort of lies that you hear in the market by those incumbent, proprietary vendors as they vainly attempt to protect their turf. Tony Byrne over at CMS Watch has a great collection of lies/myths that vendors (both open source and proprietary) vendors spew to gain/maintain market share. While focused on the Content Management market, they’re pretty applicable to any software market.
In order, with a synopsis of Tony’s (and my) response, the lies are:
- “Our interface will sell itself”
Tony: Ease of use is in the eye of the user, not the vendor- “You only need XY thousand to get started”
Tony: Entry-level pricing tends to obscure the true costs to get to a workable product.
Matt: What Tony doesn’t mention, but which has become clear to me as I sell against bloated systems like Vignette, Documentum, etc. is that there is a MASSIVE difference in both acquisition costs and implementation costs in proprietary systems and open source systems (the mainstream ones, at any rate, like Alfresco, Plone, Droopal, etc.). It really is a factor of 10X in many cases. I’m daily meeting enterprises that paid $500K+ for a Vignette/Documentum/FileNet/etc. system, and can’t it to work at all, despite hordes of consultants on the case.
For this, source code matters. In good projects, source code access is of critical importance to helping SIs grok and then implement the code. And it’s highly useful for enterprises to be able to make an initial investment in a technology that costs them less than 10 full-time employees.
- “You can recoup your software expenses by re-assigning the web team”
Tony: Sorry, but software doesn’t run itself. It’s simply not the case that any software product is so easy to use that few to none need administer it.
- “Our open-source solution means you’ll get off cheap” and “Our commercial solution is better supported than open-source alternatives”
Tony: He’s right in saying that the “really big expenses lie in customization and integration” but, in my experience with quality open source projects (see above), he’s wrong to argue that “some open-source tools will cost you more than their commercial equivalents.” Well, he’s not wrong, but it would be important for him to point out those projects that end up costing more. I’ve yet to see it.
With a commercially supported product like Alfresco, for example, we have customer after customer that has spent dramatically less on both the licensing costs and the implementation costs. And, again, we tend to be bidding against both greenfield and incumbent installations of proprietary software products that have run enterprises hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars in both acquisition and implementation costs, only to have the overpriced system not work.
Does this happen with open source? Sure. One of our prospective customers is considering a move off their open source system because it hasn’t scaled or implemented well. But the cost of their failure is a fraction of what our proprietary competitors impose.
As for the support question, it all depends on comparing apples with apples. Typo3 support (a la Enomaly is going to be as good or better than you’d get from OpenText. Ditto, in another world, with SugarCRM support from Sugar and/or Corra Technology. Or Compiere in the ERP space. The important thing is to compare apples (commercial company support) with apples (commercial company support from the open source product vendor or their SIs).
- “Access to the source code protects you in an uncertain marketplace”
Tony: “…[I]n uncertain times, the best thing to count on is a large, vibrant user community — something only a minority of commercial products and open-source projects can boast.” Very true. Also true that source code access itself is not a huge comfort, except in instances where the customer is active in the code, which is more common than you might think….
- “No requirements? No problem! Our business analysts can get you started”
Tony: This lack of requirements points to a problem in the enterprise buyer’s business, something that software can’t solve.
- “Most enterprises deploy our solution within 4-6 weeks”
Tony: “Most enterprises deploy a full-blown CMS over the course of a year. Sure, you can implement smaller projects and departmental pilots over the course of say, 3-4 months.”
Matt: I think this is largely true of most software markets. Software is only part of the solution - tying it into an enterprise’s existing business processes is where the real time (and expense) comes in.
- “Our migration scripts will take care of your existing content”
Tony: “Garbage in, garbage out.” As Tony implies, migration is never “point-and-click” simple.- “Our product is better than Vignette, for a fraction of the cost”
Tony: “[Th]ere are tiers in the marketplace. Some products — like Vignette — are geared to tackle big, complex problems. It’s true that buyers frequently overspend on CMS products, including Vignette, when they could have gotten away with something simpler and cheaper.”
Matt: Actually, the “lie” above is actually 100% true in some instances. Again, it depends on which open source product you have in mind. Is Sugar easier to install and administer than, say, Siebel? Absolutely. Does it depend on what the enterprise’s needs are? Of course. Same with MySQL, JasperSoft, Zimbra, etc. But I think, on balance, enterprises do themselves a huge disservice by not considering open source alternatives. They tend to be much cheaper, more stable (for the good - read: actively developed with a robust community - open source projects), and easier to work with.
- “We’re the only product with…”
Tony: This sort of product differentiation tends to be fleeting.
Matt: Real competitive differentiation tends to be customer service, at the end of the day. Open source is licensed in such a way that it must be more customer friendly. I don’t get paid on a day to day basis unless I’m delivering superior customer support - there is no big, up-front license fee to grow fat and lazy on….