Acquia

The Next Generation Digital Experience is Built on Open Source [May 6, 2013]

christopher.rogers — Tue, 07 May 2013 17:04:25 +0000

OpenSource.com

Monday, May 6, 2013

By Tom Erickson

Massive disruption is occurring as marketing goes digital. Business is moving steadily towards providing a fully personalized and truly integrated digital experience—building upon recent advances in user experience, analytics, cloud computing and storage, and an omni-channel experience across mobile platforms and social media.

Yet while the end user digital journey has improved significantly, we are only in the earliest stages of offering a compelling, integrated digital experience. The biggest impediment? The accelerating rate of change around mobile, web, and social experiences. Existing technologies struggle to keep pace, while new technologies fail to offer either the breadth or depth of the capabilities required. Traditional paradigms in software development are failing to keep up.

The degree of personalization needed for the next generation digital experience requires managing a lot of data. Superdata. As the degree of personalization and anticipation of the online visitor’s needs increases, computing power also must increase. This is where open source is taking the lead. The vision for this next generation digital experience has been emerging over the past few years. Forrester started out calling it Web Experience Management.

More recently, as "web" began to sound a bit less cutting edge, they’ve begun to call it Digital Customer Experience, or Digital Experience (DX). Others call it Digital Experience Management, or DXM.

The good news is that many of the technologies that will allow us to accomplish this goal have arrived on the scene and are now being put to the task. What is also clear is that open source is the foundation on which this next generation digital experience is being built. Big Data is the term given to the idea of gathering, storing, and mining all of the information required to achieve a desired result. Personalization is the process of applying this information to the individual.

The Next Generation Digital Experience is Built on Open Source

Tags:

open source

digital disruption

digital experience

DigitalMusic.org Shows Music Biz How to Top Search Engine Results [May 6, 2013]

christopher.rogers — Mon, 06 May 2013 22:46:52 +0000

DigitalMusic.org

Monday, May 6, 2013

Released today during the Music Biz 2013 event, a new infographic from digitalmusic.org, the home of music business association NARM’s digital initiatives, is giving bands, record labels, physical and digital music retail outlets, and other music companies a crash course in search engine optimization (SEO). Supported by Acquia and titled “Search Engine Optimization for Music Websites,” the infographic walks readers through the basics of how search engines such as Google and Bing work, then provides a series of easy-to-implement tips including the S.T.A.C. (Structure, Topicality, Content, Authority) method, website dos and don’ts, and monitoring strategies that can be used to create a “web of authenticity” that connects their site to other reputable ones on the web, leading to higher search engine results and increased business.

“Whether you’re an up-and-coming band, an established record label, or any other company in the music business, it’s critically important that people be able to find you quickly and easily, and chances are they are going to use a search engine to do it,” said Bill Wilson, Vice President of Digital Strategy and Business Development for NARM/digitalmusic.org. “As DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) compliance forces illegitimate sites down in the rankings, it is crucial for official, licensed sites to implement proper SEO techniques so they can take over the newly vacant spots at the top. This infographic visualizes the steps that must be taken to do so, allowing legitimate sites to easily create connections that will give them the visibility they need to make an impact on the industry.”
“Nielsen’s Global Trust in Advertising report says the fourth most trusted source of information by online consumers is a branded web site. However, the approach of “build it and they will come” simply doesn’t work, especially in the music industry, where millions of artists fight for the attention of music fans,” said Chuck Fishman, media, entertainment and publishing director for Acquia. “Acquia supports digitalmusic.org’s ‘Search Engine Optimization for Music Websites’ infographic because it provides critical and invaluable web development best practices to artists, labels and other music-related businesses, so their sites are easily discoverable by music fans.”

Acquia is joining DigitalMusic.org’s membership in support of its mission to advocate, educate and organize on behalf of the entire digital music ecosystem. Acquia’s passion for connecting performing artists and fans is rooted in its work helping power the digital strategies for many of the industry’s biggest brands, including Warner Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment. Acquia will be present on two work groups, helping to set industry best practices and standards around digital marketing and digital asset management.

The infographic is available for free and can be viewed at http://www.narm.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/digitalmusicorgSEOInfo.pdf.

DigitalMusic.org Shows Music Biz How to Top Search Engine Results [May 6, 2013]

Tags:

seo

infographic

drupal

Boston Business Journal Honors Acquia as a 2013 “Best Places to Work” Winner [May 1, 2013]

christopher.rogers — Wed, 01 May 2013 20:02:21 +0000

Boston Business Journal

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

BOSTON - The Boston Business Journal has named Acquia one of the Best Places to Work in Massachusetts in its eleventh annual regional awards program. The honor recognizes Acquia’s achievements in creating a positive work environment that attracts and retains employees through a combination of employee satisfaction, working conditions and company culture.

Acquia was one of over 400 companies to qualify for consideration based on a two-stage nomination process and the results of employee-satisfaction surveys taken throughout March & April.

“Our Best Places to Work event will again recognize the importance of cultivating a great workplace culture as a competitive advantage," said Chris McIntosh, publisher of the Boston Business Journal. "Companies on our list can be justifiably proud of creating a high level of workplace satisfaction during an economy where traditional rewards like big raises and bonuses aren't as easy to give. In good times and in bad, our results validate how the creation of the right corporate culture can create powerful business advantages. Employees are proud to work for companies that are about more than just business.”

The survey project was launched in January by the Boston Business Journal in conjunction with market research firm Quantum Workplace of Omaha, NE. Companies were evaluated on the results of more than 18,000 employee-satisfaction surveys. Employees answered questionnaires that addressed such factors as their pride in the company, company encouragement, support and recognition of achievement and relationships with co-workers and supervisors. The results were analyzed and scored by assigning points to each question.

80 companies total … the top 25 companies in three size categories plus the top 5 in a new category called “PR/Communications” will be awarded during a lively cocktail reception on June 13th at the iconic CitiCenter /Wang Theatre and profiled in a special supplement of the Boston Business Journal on June 14th.

Boston Business Journal Honors Acquia as a 2013 “Best Places to Work” Winner

Tags:

award

best places to work

Acquia

Acquia Named to 2013 OnDemand 100 Top Private Companies [April 30, 2013]

christopher.rogers — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 17:43:06 +0000

AlwaysOn

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

This year's 100 top companies are feeding a burgeoning data macrosphere, propelling the entire computing paradigm into a interdependent, connected, and mobile future.

The fourth annual AlwaysOn OnDemand 100 represents a list of vigorous emerging and mature companies that are going beyond creating new business opportunities. The cloud infrastructure, SaaS, and on-demand marketplace is reinventing computing—how it’s powered, where data is stored, and where and when we access it.

The AlwaysOn editorial team, along with partners at KPMG, Bridge Bank, General Catalyst Partners, Menlo Ventures, GSV Capital, Mayfield Fund, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Intel Capital, New Enterprise Associates, Azure Capital, Allegis Capital, Venrock, InterWest Partners, Illuminate Ventures, Madrona Venture Group, AT&T, Jafco Ventures, Institutional Venture Partners, Oak Investment Partners, Greylock Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, and industry experts across the globe, went out into the entrepreneurial ecosystem to find the top 100 private companies that are disrupting the entire computing paradigm.

These startups are bringing a new world of highly nimble, versatile, and mobile services to everyone participating in the new digital era. While these businesses are transforming the way we interact with computers and computing resources, they are also creating high-growth businesses that offer huge upside potential for investors.

Stable Cloud, Mobile Audience
This year’s OnDemand 100 launches at a time when the entire world is experiencing a shift in the way it relates to technology, information, and media. Only a few short years ago, the cloud was being warily considered as just another clever marketing buzzword being used to describe something that sounded too good to be true. As we look at the top companies on this year’s OnDemand 100, it’s clear that the buzzword has become reality—and lived up to its promise. Cloud infrastructure is expanding into and enhancing every sector of the technology world.

Incredibly intelligent entrepreneurs have taken this concept and turned it into the reality that will carry us into the computing future. Continually enhancing cloud tools, platforms, security, and data storage, management, and delivery, cloud infrastructure companies are becoming the go-to resource for deploying today’s critical business and consumer applications. Whether it’s public, private, or hybrid, the cloud infrastructure companies that are providing the most robust, trustworthy, always-on performance are the ones propelling us into a completely new computing universe.

The robust applications, mobile technology, and on-demand innovations being supported in the cloud are enhancing almost every sector of the online world. We’ve seen the borders being pulled down between desktop, TV, tablet, smartphone, and laptop. And while the amount of data being generated and consumed is continuing to expand almost faster than we can harness its power, the rigorous determination of the OnDemand 100 winners is meeting and exceeding this continual entrepreneurial challenge. The data macrosphere is a reality—a binary organism that’s fueling our creative process and bringing new ideas to fruition. As it grows and expands into every corner of the cloud, the applications it inspires will continue to feed the success of the Global Silicon Valley.

Reimagining the Computing Paradigm
This year’s OnDemand 100 companies, like their predecessors, were selected based on a set of five criteria: innovation, market potential, commercialization, stakeholder value, and media buzz. As the cloud infrastructure, SaaS, and on-demand community redefines the world of technology, it continues to push the limits of computer power and how data resources are created, stored, and delivered—developing new ideas and creating new companies with outstanding growth potential.

Congratulations to all the 2013 OnDemand 100 winners. These top venture capital-backed on-demand and SaaS companies are taking advantage of an increasingly stable and reliable cloud infrastructure to develop, maintain, and deploy a continuous stream of disruptive technology to every single computer user on the planet. The technology platforms and services represented in this year’s list are feeding a burgeoning data macrosphere, propelling the entire computing paradigm into a interdependent, connected, and mobile future.

Acquia Named to 2013 OnDemand 100 Top Private Companies

Tags:

award

cloud

open source

Discussion Point: Marketing Automation - Feature vs Platform [April 17, 2013]

christopher.rogers — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 18:41:40 +0000

CMS Wire

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Here's how I think about a platform — you work in a platform. A platform is designed for a specific business function like marketing, sales, HR, finance, etc. Platforms connect to other platforms, so integration is key.

The important part of the definition is that a platform is something you use every day, and plays a critical part in the success of your role. For example, the Acquia marketing team lives inside of Marketo, setting up programs, writing emails, scoring leads and analyzing results. Marketo is the first application we open in the morning and the last we close at the end of the day. It plays a pivotal role in making sure we're passing the best leads to sales at the right time, while nurturing our earlier stage prospects.

Discussion Point: Marketing Automation - Feature vs Platform

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marketing automation

platform

paas

web content management

Acquia Says Open Source Helps Enterprises Thrive in Today’s Digital Disruption [April 16, 2013]

christopher.rogers — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 13:56:13 +0000

Sandhill.com

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Enterprises are rapidly adopting open-source software to achieve value far beyond just lowering costs. Tom Wentworth, CMO at open-source provider Acquia, discusses how open source addresses trends in evolving enterprise needs and shares examples of return on investment that enterprises achieve through open source.

Enterprises, like all businesses today, are trying to survive in a time of digital disruption. The market is beyond competitive. Look at how digital pioneers like Netflix and Amazon have transformed their industries. It’s only a matter of time before that happens to every industry, if they aren’t ready to innovate.

Open source allows enterprise business to place its bet on the freedom to innovate. The global developer communities bring unforeseen development speed, and the lack of high license fees mean that resources can be invested in a great digital experience. Most importantly, though, open source provides the freedom to innovate, plan out your own product road map, and respond quickly to market demands. That equals survival.

Acquia Says Open Source Helps Enterprises Thrive in Today’s Digital Disruption

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Drupal, MODX: Open Source Communities, Vendors, and Giving Back [April 5, 2013]

christopher.rogers — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 22:20:54 +0000

CMS Report

Friday, April 5, 2013

By Bryan Ruby

This week, I received an email from some marketing folks that Acquia was announcing they are open sourcing their mobile application code for posting content to Drupal sites. For those that don't know, Acquia is a commercial open source software company that provides products, services, and technical support for Drupal. This isn't the first time Acquia and other Drupal vendors have given code back to the Drupal community and you can be assured it won't be the last.

Honestly, I had not been following the development of Drupal Create so it's taken me some time to better understand the significance of this story to open source. SparkPR's Eric Sokolsky explained it to me in his email this way:

Today, Acquia released source code that will allow Drupal website content owners and developers to create their own customized mobile content publishing apps. These apps – the first of their kind on the Drupal platform -- will enable developers to create or curate content on their iOS phones and publish it directly to their existing Drupal-based sites – without being tethered to a laptop or desktop computer.

If I didn't know any better, I would have thought Acquia was eavesdropping on some recent discussions I've had regarding my observation on the potential conflicts between open source vendors and open source communities. Their action alone suggests that perhaps I worry too much. Let me explain.

Drupal, MODX: Open Source Communities, Vendors, and Giving Back

Tags:

mobile applications

drupal community

Le code source de Drupal Create sur GitHub pour créer des apps sous iOS [4 Apr 2013]

christopher.rogers — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 14:20:56 +0000

Le Monde Informatique

Thursday, le 4 April 2013h

Les développeurs vont pouvoir créer des applications sous iOS pour produire du contenu pour Drupal. Acquia a publié sur GitHub le code source en Objective-C de son application mobile Drupal Create.

Avec la mise à disposition du code source Drupal Create, les contributeurs qui sont amenés à publier des contenus sur des sites réalisés avec le CMS Drupal, peuvent le faire à partir de leur terminal sous iOS. L'intégralité du code source de l'application mobile a été mise à disposition en Objective-C sur le référentiel Github, vient d'indiquer la société Acquia qui pilote le projet Open Source de gestion de contenus web. Il permettra aux développeurs de créer des apps personnalisées pour communiquer avec leurs sites montés avec Drupal. Une app prête à l'utilisation, Drupal Gardens, est par ailleurs proposée sur iTunes.

Le code source de Drupal Create sur GitHub pour créer des apps sous iOS

Tags:

mobile applications

Acquia Releases Drupal Create Source Code for Building Native iOS Publishing Apps [April 3, 2013]

christopher.rogers — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 14:16:02 +0000

CMS Wire

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

By Anthony Myers

Like posting content to Drupal sites from an iOS device? Acquia, the commercial provider of Drupal Web CMS services, has released the code base for building native iOS apps that can post content right to a Drupal website — the first of its kind.

Produce Content from an iPhone or iPad
What has to be one of the most difficult things for website owners to do is to create content from a mobile device — any content producer will vouch for this painful reality. But while laptops and desktops provide ease of use, they are not exactly practical to use when publishing content on the go.

Some work related items have to be done remotely as is seen in the many discussions on the bring your own device phenomenon. Quite often, however, this is in the context of document collaboration, social media and other collaborative work settings and rarely about content production. In this case it's widely accepted that mobile devices are really not preferable at all.

Acquia Releases Drupal Create Source Code for Building Native iOS Publishing Apps

New Report: Crafting a Comprehensive Digital Government Strategy [March 27, 2013]

kfogarty — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 14:31:58 +0000

GovLoop

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Excerpt of Executive Summary | View Online Below or Download PDF
Throughout the ages, technology has played an essential role for government to craft a better society for citizens. In the Roman Empire, the aqueducts revolutionized services provided to Roman citizens. Leveraging gravity alone, the Romans were able to transform communities, providing water to distant cities and towns, and create an engineering marvel that would lead to years of economic dominance and influence society for years to come.

Report Highlights

Report covers a recent survey from GovLoop community on how agencies are moving to digital solutions to meet increasing demands from citizens
Insights based on interviews with government leaders and experts from our industry partners
Special section: 6 Ways Emerging Technology is Facilitating Digital Government

http://www.govloop.com/profiles/blogs/new-report-crafting-a-comprehensive-digita...