Building a professional services practice in open source

As open source projects increase in size and complexity, open source-adopting professional services companies become their champions as partners in their clients projects. Drawing on their experience with Drupal, Jenn Sramek and Mark Sakurada share technical and management observations from 10 years in growing professional services companies in an open source community.

Drupal is an open source web content management system (WCMS) that began as a one-person effort in a college dormitory. In the 15 years since, it has grown to compete with the most popular proprietary tools on the market and power some of the largest sites on the web. Drupal’s initial adoption was organic, often chosen as a free alternative to expensive CMS tools to build nonprofit or low-budget websites. Eventually, some professional services companies formed around the CMS, deciding to use it in a dedicated fashion for all of their solutions. Around 2005, as Drupal gained momentum, ideas began to percolate about creating a different kind of company around Drupal, giving it greater legitimacy and providing the growing Drupal market with a large service provider with external funding. In 2007, Acquia was born. Early on, well-funded marketing efforts allowed Acquia to serve as a funnel for anyone interested in using Drupal to get information and expertise, as well as referrals to smaller companies that could do project implementation. Now, nearly 10 years on, Drupal has a substantial share of the WEM/WCMS market, powering more than a million websites and involving more than 30 thousand contributors and millions of users. That shift came about largely due to the positioning and work of professional services teams. Drawing on their real-world experience, Jenn Sramek and Mark Sakurada explain how professional services teams can support the expansion and adoption of open source projects at the enterprise level, around the world. Topics include: