What Acquia's Recent Changes mean for Drupal

Submitted by Sara Parks on 11/07/2014 - 10:17:am

Acquia, the company responsible for much of the support surrounding the Drupal CMS, is making some changes. Instead of only focusing on Drupal-specific companies, they want to help the entire web industry.

Does this mean Drupal is independent?

Acquia's change says a lot about the opensource community and the growing trend I want to talk about.

Is Drupal stable?

While the drupal community was young, Acquia has definitely played an important role. Now, Drupal is growing and flourishing on its own so Acquia isn't solely responsible for its growth anymore.

Now it's up the the Drupal community to push for continued growth, both through education of developers and contributing to Drupal's knowledge and code base.

Acquia can now expand and use their knowledge and experience elsewhere. They are helping similar industries, like digital marketing. Their new tool, ContextDB will help marketers aggregate and manage large amounts of data.

It's up the the Drupal community to push for continued growth.

Is this an Industry Trend?

From what I've seen, this expansion is not just a single event. A few years ago, people were choosy when it came to the technology they wanted in their business. Opensource was not as big of a deal as it is now. It was still met with anxiety by businesses for security and support reasons.

The attitude towards opensource and new technologies has changed drastically since then. 

Now companies like Acquia can offer more services and support to a bigger community. People aren't as choosy or particular about the technology they use, at least from what we've seen. The business community seems more open to newer ideas, making it easy for opensource companies to help more people.

What does this mean for you?

If you are a business who needs more flexible technology, you might want to reconsider opensource. Technologies like Drupal are improving every day and are definitely a viable option

As Acquia expands to provide more services and support for the web industry, you have the chance to benefit from that. Their knowledge and expertise has helped make Drupal successful.