Lower Social Business TCO with Commons

Getting more for your money with social business software

The proprietary enterprise software licensing model is under a clear threat from open source alternatives, which o er advantages in:
Flexibility to brand and change the end-user experience; Innovation in implementing new functionality; Interoperability with other enterprise systems; Scalability and security, as tested in thousands of real-world installations; Lower total cost of ownership (TCO). On the matter of cost, we considered all associated with social business software and found that customers are defecting from proprietary solutions because theyre no longer willing to su er large, upfront fees, hefty annual maintenance charges, and developmental inertia that slows progress and vexes users. Our full report (at acquia.com/resources/library/tco-open-source-socialpublishing) examines costs for licensing, maintenance, support, and human resources to deploy, customize, and manage these solutions.

READ THE FULL REPORT

Get the complete 18-page report at acquia.com/resources/library/tco-opensource-social-publishing

SOCIAL BUSINESS USE CASES

Customer Support symantec.com/connect Open Government interact.gsa.gov Developer Community developer.nvidia.com Social Market Research stars-insight.com Social Intranet welcom.org Social Marketing seventhgeneration.com

The skinny.
We quantied cost deltas by comparing Acquias solution to proprietary software-and-support packages of similar size including Jive, Telligent, Crown Peak, Vignette, Percussion, Fatwire, SDL Tridion, Mzinga, and LiveWorld. Heres how we ensured standardization between Acquia and the competition: Pricing refers either to a vendors own sizing of a typical engagement, or a tripling of the single-CPU price (as was the vendor-recommended model for the OS/middleware/database). Where user-based pricing is the vendors model, we use 1,000 users as our basis. We didnt consider enterprise-wide licensing, which could multiply the pricing for proprietary software by multiples of 10 or more. We factored out hardware costs (the metal), as we found that these costs dont di er signicantly enough to warrant inclusion. re ad mo re ...

SKU 0058-110603

acquia.com | 888.922.7842 | 1.978.296.5250 | 150 Presidential Way, Woburn, MA 01801

TCO for Social Business with Commons

Social Business Software to engage customers and employees
We factored in the di ering costs of deploying on an open-source OS/ middleware/database stack (typical for Drupal) vs. those from Microsoft and Oracle/BEA. Some proprietary software will run on open-source stacks, however; for details, see the full report. Where maintenance and support pricing wasnt available, we used 20% of original license cost as our ballpark rate. Get the complete 18-page report at acquia.com/resources/library/tcoopen-source-social-publishing Learn about Commons at acquia.com Call Acquia at 888.9ACQUIA to speak with a social business expert

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The payo .
In short, ve-year costs of alternative approaches (proprietary or white label) are 200% to 700% higher. These costs came primarily from reductions in license fees, but there were also signicant cost reductions in the areas of infrastructure and support. Open-source equivalents like Commons have: A far more attractive total cost prole Higher service levels for the same money The ability to implement functionality more quickly These cost di erences are apparent in products related to social software. One obvious example is in Commons, Acquias open alternative, social business software solution for extensible community websites. We invite you to examine the full methodology in our paper, and to call Acquia to nd out how to start cutting your costs today.

Summary Cost Comparison: License, Support

Web Content Management Social/Community Software White Label

Acquia

1st Year License/Support 2nd Year and beyond (maintenance) 5-year Cost

$177,000 $46,000 $360,000

$160,000 $48,000 $350,000

$390,000 see report $1,950,000

$0 / $8,000 see report $40,000

acquia.com | 888.922.7842 | 1.978.296.5250 | 150 Presidential Way, Woburn, MA 01801