The success is strongly correlated with the long-term and globally unique Open Source strategy of MD Systems.
Open Source as business value
On first sight, Open Source and business do not seem to fit. Why should a company rely on an Open Source solution? As an IT service provider that relies on free software very successfully, we have the correct answers to that question, of course.
In today’s world where technologies change faster and faster and the requirements of a web project grow ever bigger, software is getting more complex. Almost no company is able to afford the creation, maintenance and development of an individual solution by itself. Therefore, Open Source is the perfect concept to keep up with the constant changes and is increasingly also the driver of innovation in general. Anyone using Open Source technology intelligently and with foresight will automatically benefit from improvements implemented by others and will therefore not lose connection to new technologies.
Multiple advantages for our clients
Of course, we also develop individual solutions that are not published. To keep the costs down, we limit the complexity of individual solutions to a minimum. If we see that requirements of one project also occur in other projects, we further develop the existing solution with the client. Thus, the client gets a tailor-made Open Source solution.
The clients benefit from:
- low cost development through the usage of standard components. As the base of the feature has already been developed, tested and is now in operation, parts of the cost for architecture, development and testing can be used elsewhere or can be saved.
- secure software, because quality assurance is implemented consequently and security criterias are examined.
- low cost maintenance, because standard components have maintainers and therefore are frequently updated.
- new features, as modules on drupal.org are being developed. Thus, web projects get new features without incurring development cost.
Open Source strategy of MD Systems
The strategy of MD Systems of consequently relying on Open Source has further advantages. Our employees have significantly less repetition in the projects as standard features can be reused and only need adaptations for the clients. The employees can focus on developing individual solutions and therefore improve their skills. This increases their motivation, which has positive effects on client projects, as well.
As maintainer of more than 50 active modules, we are strongly involved in Open Source initiatives (Media, CRM, etc.) in which we are collaborating with other maintainers, i.e. the Drupal community. We also take the lead in the strategy of innovation creation and always move Drupal ahead. The statistics on drupal.org show that we contributed to more than 400 issues within the last 90 days. This is not merely a snapshot as we have delivered over 1600 issue credits within a year.
Unique expert knowledge at MD Systems
Thanks to the steadfast realization of our strategy, we have acquired unique expert knowledge. We know almost all relevant and well maintained modules on drupal.org and can therefore guarantee our clients to only use the best suited modules in their web projects. And incidentally, we now are on the first place of all Drupal service providers of the world.
