This was a DrupalCon SF Session looking at Drupal shops building products via Drupal. Several of these folks have completely left their Drupal services behind and are now running product businesses (ex: MapBox & Pantheon, from Development Seed & Chapter Three).

1. Note: this was a more Drupal-shop-specific session given 7 years ago. Several of these companies have either completely moved to
products (Develeopment Seed  Mapbox) or split their product company off and left with it (Chapter Three Pantheon).
The State of Drupal as a
Web Application & Product Platform
Presented by:
Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg, Zivtech (has since started Probo.CI)
Zack Rosen, Chapter Three (has since started Pantheon.IO)
Irakli Nadareishvili, Phase2 Technology
Eric Gunderson, Development Seed (has since started MapBox)
Chris Brookins, Acquia

2. The State of
Drupal Web Applications & Products
• What is a product?
• Why use Drupal as a product development platform?
• Why do service oriented development shops turn to
products?

3. Types of Products
• Software as a Service (SaaS)
• Specialized Drupal
• Integrated Stacks
• Hosting Solutions
• Other Web Based Applications

4. What is Drupal's role in the product?
• It is the product
• A brick in the wall of a larger product

5. Other Parts of the Product
• Are all components of the project Open Source?
• How much do you / can you give back?
• Who decides how much to give back?
• How do decide when to contribute back?

6. Key Considerations
• Talent: Do contractors or staff build it? How will you
support it?
• Code: What are weaknesses of Drupal that effect the
product?
• Cash: Who pays for it and how does it make money?

7. Who pays for it?
• Investors / Loans
• Bootstrapped
• Grants from Foundations/Non-Profits
• Clients via Development Engagements
• Clients via “Work for Hire"

8. Monetization
How can shops make money from products?
• Increased consulting gigs (marketing tool)
• Support
• Fees
• “Freemium” services
• Partner Programs

9. Products as Platform Drivers
• Does the product influence Drupal?
• Drupal Core
• Contributed Modules
• "Small Core"

10. What did you think?
Step 1)
Locate this session on the DCSF site
http://sf2010.drupal.org/conference/schedule
Step 2)
Click the “Take Survey” link