I’m always on the lookout for business trends in our industry and I’ve spotted a significant new one in recent months. Increasingly CMS companies are supporting different platforms. The choice for each company is different, but the trend seems real:
Examples of Joomla Companies Supporting Other Platforms
- Rockettheme: Joomla and phpBB3
- Joomlart: Joomla and Magento
- JoomlaJunkie: Working on ProThemer.com and building for Joomla, Drupal and Magento
- JoomlaPraise: Working on CMSMarket.com
- CMSExpo: Started with Joomla and expanded to all kinds of Open Source CMS
Why Support More Platforms
New customers and upselling existing customers … duh! Yes, yes, but beyond that I think the most important reason is diversification. We’ve promoted the importance of this before. WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, phpBB3 and Magento all have large audiences, but each has weaknesses in their business models.
Joomla and phpBB3 both rely on a revolving set of community members to step up and keep things running. What happens if that well runs dry? Can volunteerism survive a crisis in the economy?
Drupal and WordPress have the opposite problem. Both are heavily reliant on the one person who founded and runs the projects. Could either project still thrive in their absence? Magento is in a similar situation. It is owned and operated by a single company. What happens if it runs into trouble?
We’ve seen plenty of projects such as Mambo and OSCommerce lose steam and fade away. Its almost certain that one or more of the current hot five will also fade in years to come.
Limitations to This Strategy
- Extension developers find moving between platforms to be much harder than designers. Almost all the companies I’ve listed above are template companies.
- This strategy is relatively new. It remains to be seen how companies that are successful in one market can adapt to another.
Over To You
Do you think this is a wise strategy for companies to adopt? Are they likely to end up with success on one platform and mediocrity on others? Are multi-platform companies likely to be a growing trend?