Acquia Named a Leader in Social Depth Platforms Industry Research Report

Drupal Commons Touted for Flexibility, Ease of Use, Best Integration Options


BURLINGTON, MA--(Marketwired - Jul 9, 2013) - Acquia, where great digital experiences begin, today announced that it has been named a leader in the Forrester Research, Inc. report: "The Forrester Wave™: Social Depth Platforms, Q3 2013." Specifically, Forrester remarked on the flexibility and ease of use of Drupal Commons. Open source software from Acquia, Drupal Commons allows marketers to build social communities and digital applications that are tightly integrated with targeted, relevant content and commerce offerings. Only Drupal Commons taps into the power of the 22,000-strong Drupal developer community to continuously build innovative features for its social platform, making it easy for companies to create a branded solution that has "plug-in" integration with best-of-breed digital marketing software.

"Today's digital business is driving the convergence of content, community and commerce. We're finding that the standalone social business market is no longer viable, as social becomes inextricably linked to a larger digital marketing strategy," said Acquia CEO Tom Erickson. "Social fuels a new world of integrated digital experiences that are engaging, dynamic and customer-centric. The interactions happening through Drupal Commons convert leads into sales, build passionate advocates, and drive the type of innovation every 21st century brand demands."

For Acquia, social is part of a larger portfolio of technologies and services that businesses use to build great digital experiences. This portfolio also includes a fail-safe cloud infrastructure, as well as tools to create and support a dynamic content and commerce ecosystem online. As such, Acquia is the only vendor to appear in both the Forrester Wave for Social Depth Platforms and the Forrester Wave: Web Content Management for Digital Customer Experience, Q2 2013.

The Forrester Wave for Social Depth Platforms evaluated the nine most significant vendors as rated by Forrester, as marketing professionals are investing to "make their websites content-rich destinations that effectively tell stories about their brands, products, and offerings.1"

Most consumers' first impressions of a company are made online in the initial exploring phases, often by reading reviews or participating in social conversations with others about the company. Digital conversations are equally important internally, as more and more companies collaborate via social intranet sites.

Drupal Commons helps companies make strong digital impressions with consumers and employees alike through a variety of capabilities, including the ability to build branded social communities, deploy custom social apps, support mobile and connect to third-party platforms, such as Marketo, Facebook, Salesforce.com or Google Analytics. Drupal Commons received the highest score in the Forrester Wave for Social Depth Platforms in the integration category, with the report citing, "Acquia provides the best integration options of all the vendors we evaluated. Customers touted Acquia Drupal Commons for its flexibility, ease of use and high return on investment.2"

The report also cited the work of the Drupal community. It stated, "One of Acquia's primary strengths is a large and active developer ecosystem, which includes comprehensive sets of software development kits (SDKs), APIs, and about 2,000 Drupal modules that allow a marketer to easily customize a community or the social elements of a site3."

The full Forrester Wave for Social Depth Platforms is available for download at Acquia.com.

To start building great social digital experiences, download Drupal Commons, or for more information, request a demonstration or listen to a webinar on the social platform's capabilities.

About Acquia
Acquia is where great digital experiences begin. Acquia is helping some of the world's leading brands succeed, including Twitter, Mercedes Benz, Warner Music Group, and Stanford University. Join the more than 3,800 organizations that are moving at the speed of the web with Acquia's solutions for content, community and commerce. Acquia offers developer tools, cloud solutions and global expertise to drive success the open source way.

Dream It. Drupal It. Acquia.

See who's using Drupal at http://www.drupalshowcase.com, and for more information visit www.acquia.com or call +1 781 238 8600.

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1 "The Forrester Wave™: Social Depth Platforms, Q3 2013", Forrester Research, Inc., July 2013

2 "The Forrester Wave™: Social Depth Platforms, Q3 2013" Forrester Research, Inc., July 2013

3 "The Forrester Wave™: Social Depth Platforms, Q3 2013" Forrester Research, Inc., July 2013