Dries Buytaert

A couple of days ago, Acquia announced a technology partnership with WoodWing. WoodWing's Enterprise 6 Content Publishing Platform now ships with Acquia Drupal as the default CMS, as well as a connector module. WoodWing's typical customers are traditional publishers with strong roots in print — and with names like Time Inc, Cisco, Michelin, Citibank and many more, they have an impressive list of customers at that.

For most publishers, print continues to decline, and the web continues to grow. It is no surprise that their online strategy has become increasingly important for them. Many are in the process of optimizing their tools, processes and people for the web, rather than for print. It is a very disruptive change if you're a 100-year old organization that is optimized for print.

As publishers get settled on the web, they learn that it is not about broadcasting a message. On the web, it is about having a dialogue with your readers. As a publisher, you have to figure out how to turn audiences into participants because it opens the doors for better advertising and new monetization opportunities. Clearly, it doesn't suffice to copy-paste the content that you prepared for print into your web content management system.

As the web continues to evolve, readers will have a much richer experience online, and as a result, I believe print media will end up being a lead generation tool for the website, not the other way around as it often is today. Drupal's combination of content management and social software capabilities helps publishers to stay on top of this trend, and provides their writers and journalists the tools needed to be successful on the web.

But just like WoodWing's customers can benefit from Drupal, I think Drupal can learn a lot from WoodWing, and the issues that their customers have to deal with. As I write this blog post, I'm in Greece attending the WoodWing Publisher Conference, not only to educate WoodWing partners and customers about Drupal, but also to learn more about WoodWing's technology and challenges their customers are faced with. Like Drupal, WoodWing has a great community sharing both expertise and ideas. I really believe this partnership is a great match on many different levels.