Marketing MODx: Corporate Examples

I’ve spent the last five days evaluating different CMSs. The one thing that management and other interested parties always ask me is "who’s using it?"

TYPO3 has DaimlerChrysler
Plone has Wal-mart
Drupal has IBM

Each of these CMSs has other examples too, but those big names that immediately come to mind.

I know there’s a list buried in the MODx site that shows corporate users. I’d like to see a front page menu link that says "Who’s using MODx". Divide the list into different settings. Not to slight the little guy, but the big easily recognizable names need to be near the top.

When you start off the management sales pitch with, "I think we should adopt the same CMS that Wal-mart is using", you’re immediately three steps further along.

I don’t expect MODx to gain any companies that qualify a "Fortune" in front of their name until the end of 2007 at the earliest. We’re new, and there’s not honestly much more to say than that. Never mind that we’ve got some really respectable educational institutions who’re jumping on board and of those we actually beat out some quite respectable commercial CMSes, but not so much in the big business world for now. Soon enough though... soon enough.

Does the fact that Wal-Mart uses Plone mean that it would be equally suitable for my client’s corporate site? Does it mean that Plone is so a wonderful CMS that I should force my client to use it because Wal-Mart uses it? I doubt it.

I do refrain from following that pattern. Instead I put stress on architecture of the ideal solution (standards, separation of layers, etc.) and explain why it is important to my client and what benefits it brings. Then I show him the way, which in my case is MODx. In other words I try not to sell a particular CMS but rather a solution and use an appropriate tool for that task. Such an approach makes a big difference. And MODx fits perfectly to this pattern.

As Ryan has answered to an another post of yours, MODx is rather a framework than a CMS. And this makes a big difference too.

Anyway, I would refrain from showing the info about MODx on my client’s corporate site front-end for several reasons, which include security, the client’s PR, etc. However, I don’t mind counting my client sites as MODx reference if only it will not reveal them. Maybe this could be done by including a ping mechanism based on site unique ID (or whatever else) which would allow to count live sites running MODx without identifying them should designer/administrator/client allow it?

MODx already powers a wide range of corporate websites over the world, just not fortune 500 or big corporations websites (yet). As Ryan hinted, what we have in the hopper for 2007 will definitely bring us closer to the Enterprise Content Management segment of the market.

The fact that typo3 or Plone or Joomla have entered this segment is mainly thanks to years of building up their reputation, accumulating lots of components and over time having some key features handy of ECM deployment. It doesn’t mean (by a long shot) that those systems are state of the art - bleeding edge content management tools or that they really fit the clients needs. More often than not, they lack a LOT in the area of content/presentation separation and templating, and they are costy to deploy because of their inherent rigidity. They also inherit an architecture that was built a few years ago and even with all the code rewriting, it’s hard to get past this... look at how hard it is for Typo3 and Joomla to generate standard compliant / accessible websites...

If you ask me, saying let’s pick Plone or Typo3 because X or Y use it does not make sense. It might be re-assuring, but the first thing you have to do is establish what you NEED. Then you check out what is POSSIBLE. Then you check if the existing features are RELIABLE. Then and only then you can pick a SOLUTION...

Anyway, back on the real issue. Entering the ECM segment will require two things for MODx :

1) Key features for ECM

You most definitely won’t qualify if you don’t have those :

• multi-language and internationalisation capabilities
• multi-site capabilities
• revisionning
• database abstraction layer : enterprise environnement require being able to connect to various databases, Oracle comes to mind but most companies have heterogeneous environment so you better be as flexible as possible.
• integrate business logic : either allowing to build web application out of the box with the framework, and/or connecting to other applications to retrieve, sort and display content. And that’ all kind of content, so you better be ready to handle a variety of content types...
• authentification : you have to be able to handle IMAP, LDAP and other authentification protocols
• ability to handle high server loads, which means highly efficient cache mechanism, possibly load balancing... etc

2) A commercial infrastructure and network

Now that’s key too.
You can have a good fit for your project, who are you relying upon to build, support, maintain your website and web applications ? If you’re a big firm, can’t rely on a small company or freelance. You need guarantees. When you choose a solution, you are committed for several years. It means long term (commercial) relationship. You need support, maintenance, training... and more often than not, you need them worldwide on top of that.

And as David said, lots of fun things happening in 2007 on all those fronts.

"If you ask me, saying let’s pick Plone or Typo3 because X or Y use it does not make sense."

You wouldn’t think "who’s using it" matters, but I find that it does. It must be some where along the lines of "if it’s good enough for x, it’s good enough for me".

Listing Web sites using MODx is no different than an advertising agency or consulting firm putting a client list on their Web site. For some, knowing that their peers or similar organizations made the same choice is important.

As MODx looks to market itself in 2007, a "Who’s Using It" list is an easily created thing (a thread like this where users could voluntarily share URLs) that just provides more information for a sales pitch to management (who usually don’t understand why all the technical parts are important).

Quote from: melriks at Dec 30, 2006, 02:40 PM

You wouldn’t think "who’s using it" matters, but I find that it does. It must be some where along the lines of "if it’s good enough for x, it’s good enough for me".

Ok let me refine what I said. I am not saying knowing who uses a given application does not matter or does not help comforting the choice, just that it should not be the primary factor to choose an application. Basically what I say is : choose a solution AFTER you’ve defined what you need, NOT before.

I am not sure - in this regard - that an application being good enough for X makes it good enough for Y. Not only the existing technical environment might differ, but there is also the human and management factor : maybe people’s computer/internet skills will be different, maybe management is more centralized, etc... which might call for a different choice. More or less, that’s what they pompously call "Strategic Information Systems Alignment".

Quote from: melriks

Listing Web sites using MODx is no different than an advertising agency or consulting firm putting a client list on their Web site. For some, knowing that their peers or similar organizations made the same choice is important. As MODx looks to market itself in 2007, a "Who’s Using It" list is an easily created thing (a thread like this where users could voluntarily share URLs) that just provides more information for a sales pitch to management (who usually don’t understand why all the technical parts are important).

True !

We sure will build such a list, and we have a few references posted in the "You and your site" forum but it’s not centralized. We have a selected list (see bottom of page)of MODx website published but we definitely should build up a more comprehensive list.

A lot of small to medium business, educationnal institutions and administrations are (happily) using MODx, but I am not aware of big companies using MODx (yet). As Ryan and I said, we’re young, some key technical limitations for high load, multi-site, multi-language corportate websites and web applications will be lifted in the upcoming month with the new codebase, and also as pointed out we don’t have yet the infrastructure behind MODx that will make this possible right now.

In other words, we’ll be targeting the Enterprise Content Management segment when we’re ready and that should be 2007

David, I believe that clients are being referred to here. Logic does not necessarily enter into the picture.

Just to lend further support to the argument that MODx would benefit from publishing a list of high profile clients, I recently pitched to a company whose chief concern was that whatever CMS I suggested would be suficiently secure, robust and scalable for their needs. I showed them a couple of sites with similar functionality to what they were looking for, built in MODx... at which point they asked me who else used MODx.

I can see their point too: not having any reason to have the same degree of faith that I do in the quality of the product (it’s new, they’re not technically aware, etc, etc), they were looking for the reassurance that having someone like IBM relying on the same solution would give. The fact that MSFT’s advertising pitch for Exchange Server 2003 is that it’s used by the London Stock Exchange is a good example of this - as it is that I’m using precisely the same technique to make my case!

From what’s been said already, this is something you guys plainly get. Keep up the fantastic work!

Is there any ASP version of this CMS available