Five Reasons Enterprise Marketers Will Love Drupal 8

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1 Five Reasons Enterprise Marketers Will Love Drupal 8 Drupal 8 s Power, Ease of Use, and Enterprise Level Technology Make It the Go-To Platform for Enterprise Marketers

2 Five Reasons Enterprise Marketers Will Love Drupal 8 Table of Contents What to Expect in Drupal Five Reasons Marketers Will Love Drupal The Roadmap to Drupal Five Reasons Enterprise Marketers Will Love Drupal 8

3 What to Expect from Drupal 8 Drupal 8 is more than a new software iteration, it s a dramatic change for both code and user experience. Here s what you can expect Say Hello to Symfony: Enterprise Level Stability and Performance For the first time in its history, Drupal will borrow portions of its code from outside sources by incorporating the best elements of the open source framework, Symfony. For those not familiar with the technology, frameworks are code libraries that extend the functionality of software projects. They attempt to create standard methods for very specific jobs for example, sending mail or handling communication between servers. While the Drupal community has traditionally managed these tasks with its own code, the Symfony libraries deliver a standardized set of job-specific tools that can be used across many different projects, not just Drupal. The net result makes Drupal 8 a future-ready web platform that plays nicely with a range of other systems. It s perfect for marketers who need a content management system (CMS) that integrates with their existing customer relationship management (CRM) systems, while IT managers can be confident in security and performance. It s All About the Users One of Drupal s most attractive features has always been its flexibility. No matter how complex the task, content managers could configure the system to do just about anything. But this power comes with complexity. With Drupal 8, the most common administrative features are redesigned with a high priority placed on ease of use and simplifying how site administrators make changes and additions to websites. Meanwhile, Drupal 8 developers have paid close attention to trends in how users are viewing sites. Drupal 8 is better ready for mobile deployment than ever before. In fact, Drupal 8 will install as a mobile-ready system out of the box. The Future of Content: Drupal as a Web Experience Manager (WEM) While Drupal is primarily known as a CMS, it has grown into something much larger. It is now a central platform for managing information across many different systems while being viewed on many different devices. These changes challenge the notion of what makes a CMS. If a CMS shares user profiles with an outside CRM while also serving as a commerce platform, is it really a still just a CMS? The answer is that as Drupal is tasked with more operations, it s now more of a Web Experience Management system, whose purpose is to deliver content intelligently to a wide range of devices and cooperating systems. 3 Five Reasons Enterprise Marketers Will Love Drupal 8

4 Five Reasons Marketers Will Love Drupal 8 Drupal 8 is based on five key premises marketers will love: Software for the real world use the best tools for the job at hand Mobile and beyond embrace mobile technologies Intuitive site administration make managing your website easy for everyone The right content at the right time deliver more relevant content Performance is everything emphasize performance Software for the Real World While many software providers attempt to provide a single suite of tools for web management, it s difficult to make one product that s all things to all people. In fact, as web marketing becomes increasingly sophisticated, few enterprises look to one set of tools for all their marketing tasks. Typically, marketers use separate software for marketing, analytics, customer relationship management, and content distribution. With this in mind, Drupal 8 s emphasis is on integration with as many different web platforms as possible. At this year s Drupalcon keynote address, Drupal founder Dries Buytaert discussed the significance of this philosophy. Rather than competing against these products, Drupal 8 is specifically outfitted for making third-party integration easier. Typically these tools include applications such as CRMs, marketing automation, ecommerce, enterprise resource planning (ERP), and other data platforms. Drupal 8 makes it much, much easier to connect your other software platforms to your CMS, creating a more connected technology ecosystem. 4 Five Reasons Enterprise Marketers Will Love Drupal 8

5 Mobile and Beyond As mobile phones and tablets surpass the sale of desktop PCs, some pundits have suggested the death of desktop computing. While these predictions may be premature, it s clear that having a mobile-ready strategy is more important than ever. In Drupal 8, the mobile-ready philosophy is woven into the system s core. Out of the box, Drupal 8 has responsive theming and administration as part of its core functionality. It s not only ready for responsive display, but the entire back-end system can be administered from a mobile device. Meanwhile, Drupal s architecture makes it easy to create content tailored to different use cases. Intuitive Site Administration In addition to mobile-friendly content management, Drupal 8 s administrative features have been re-engineered to be easier to use. In its base installation, Drupal 8 offers: Edit-in-place capabilities, letting editors change content directly on page Drag-and-drop image uploads, providing an easy way for administrators to work with images Improved content preview that more accurately displays content exactly as it will appear on the site A standardized built-in WYSIWYG The Right Content at the Right Time As traffic from smartphones and tablets increases, it s clear that visitors are interacting with websites on devices that hadn t even been imagined a few years ago. Since this trend isn t slowing, having a content strategy ready for mobile, Google Glass, smart watches, and beyond is now more important than ever. Speaking at Drupalcon 2013, user experience (UX) expert, Karen McGrane, explained the significance of this trend. To keep users engaged with your brand, information must be relevant for any device. In fact, information delivered to a smart phone might be entirely different than information displayed on your website. As an online marketer, your ability to deliver targeted content based on factors like audience segment, geographic location, device use, and gender are critical to your successes. Drupal 8 s architecture makes it the ideal platform for creating and delivering segmented content. 5 Five Reasons Enterprise Marketers Will Love Drupal 8

6 Performance Is Everything The inclusion of Symfony in Drupal core brings a new level of performance and scalability to enterprise systems. Symfony makes Drupal a qualified enterprise-grade CMS. In the end, this is probably one of the most comprehensive and significant overhauls the Drupal community has seen. It has solidified Drupal s future as a long-standing bastion of content management. The Roadmap to Drupal 8 Today Drupal 7 carries the banner and performs reliably. Two and a half years into its release, Drupal 7 is a stable platform supported by a comprehensive set of function-expanding modules. If there is a web project in your near future, you will not go wrong by developing your site with the current release of Drupal. Call us and let s talk about how we can get your first site up and running today! Learn more acquia.com LETS TALK The anticipated release of Drupal 8 promises some great opportunities and advantages for new marketers and new applications. Drupal 8 delivers all the power, capability and ease of use to make it a true enterprise-ready tool, with features rivaling any CMS on the market. It delivers on where the market is trending and the technologies of the Internet. Reinforced stability and reliability increase Drupal s suitability for the enterprise business more than ever. 6 Five Reasons Enterprise Marketers Will Love Drupal 8 SKU EBOOK