The launch of eZ Publish 4.4 was a glimpse into the new structure of the web content management tool; an Enterprise edition and a Community project. If you have never worked with a commercial open sourced content management system, this may help you understand the differences that are happening with eZ Publish.
eZ Publish have opted for a new business model, which was seen on this release of eZ Publish Enterprise 4.4 and the eZ Publish Community project. This is not too dissimilar to the business models seen on mySQL and Redhat. This business model will ensure the continual growth of eZ Publish for many years to come.
Some of the questions we hear are: Why did eZ split off into Enterprise and Community? What are the difference? How does this affect our company's installation of eZ Publish? Which one should I choose as a business - Enterprise or Community?
Why the spilt?
eZ Publish has decided to split this and subsequent releases to provide a better web content management tool to its users. eZ Publish Enterprise 4.4 is based on the eZ Publish Community project.
With the eZ Publish Enterprise 4.4 subscription, you have the additional assurance of a service which fully supports the platform. It has been undergone further quality assurance (QA), by the internal eZ team to ensure that the product you receive is the best it can possibly be and is fully covered within the eZ Publish Premium support package, which is offered alongside eZ Publish Enterprise 4.4.
The eZ Publish Community project is where eZ Publish Communitymemberscancontributeto eZ Publish's kernel along with the engineering team at eZ. It will continually evolve and try new features and extensions, which are available in the Community release. Some may even make it to the next release of eZ Publish Enterprise, only after they have been vetted and certified by eZ's internal QA team.
The biggest difference?
eZ Publish is still essentially an open source web content management tool, however the biggest difference between eZ Publish Enterprise 4.4 and eZ Publish Community project is that to install eZ Publish Enterprise 4.4, a 'pay-as-you-go' subscription model has been implemented. The subscription service includes, not only all the new features but unlimited product support, maintenance, bug fixes, an integrated service portal, as well as guarantees alongside an Intellectual Property agreement.
The eZ Publish Community Project does not have a fee associated with it, however it is not officially supported by eZ and any issues experience with the eZ Publish Community project, would need to be fed back to and will be handled by the eZ Community.
How this affects your company's installation of eZ Publish?
With the splitting of eZ Publish, eZ's support subscription will only support versions of eZ Publish 4.3 and 4.4. Anything prior to these releases will technically not be supported. Before releasing eZ Publish 4.3, eZ had restructured the way their support subscriptions were managed, into eZ Publish Premium and eZ Publish SMB subscriptions. If your website is key to your business, you need to ensure you have a fully supported version of eZ Publish, which will require you to sit within one of the support subscriptions.
TheeZ Publish Premium maintenance subscription is recommended for all Vision with Technology eZ Publish support clients.
Which one should I choose as a business?
If your wesbite is critical to the success of your business, eZ Publish Enterprise would be the best option for you. eZ Publish Enterprise 4.4 is enterprise ready, it has automatic maintenance and an integrated service portal with unlimited bug and security fixes guaranteed alongside all the new features including HTML5 integration. It has been rigorously vetted and be certified by eZ engineers, so if there are any issues, the code can be checked and a patch issued, if required. With the eZ Community project, as all the code is continually updated by members of the eZ Community, it may not have all the stability guarantee required by a business, which is available on the fully certified version of eZ Publish Enterprise.
eZ held a public demo webinar last month where they announced the release of Matterhorn; the next eZ Publish Enterprise release, which is scheduled for April2011. The features and benefits will undoubtedly increase, due to the contributions into the eZ Publish Community project.
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