Convincing your clients to use open platforms
Open platforms have many benefits to small and large businesses alike, but many decision makers fear the concept of open source.
In this interesting article on Six Revisions, they discuss ways in which current open platforms can meet the business objectives of your clients and allow their project to stand on the shoulders of these giants.
We use open source for our rich media like video and photos. Also WordPress and Magento ecommerce which are both widely adopted open source platforms.
We are finding that a wide range of clients are asking for WordPress as they have heard about the flexibility and scalability of the platform. Something which has never happened with any other web software or products we use for our client projects.
It is certainly easier to support the quality of a product with the vast number of online tutorials and showcases for an open source product.
The main reason why we use open source applications are that they are generally more robust and scalable, than licenced ‘closed’ source software. Open source allows an active community of web designers, developers, thinkers, etc to contribute their own code for others to use for their own projects. Take a look at the library of extensions at WordPress.
Recent examples of the pro-active open source communities include suggesting features for future updates to Magento’s roadmap, beta testing for new features to WordPress 3.0, and pin-pointing security holes in desktop application that an in-house team may have missed.
A Short Recommended List of Open Platforms
Video
Pictures
Audio
Open Website platforms
- Drupal
- WordPress.com, and WordPress.org
- Django – a web framework in Python
- Ruby on Rails – a web framework in Ruby
- CakePHP – PHP framework
