Acquia is the leading Drupal commercial support provider, and we're glad to announce we are now official members of the Acquia Partners Program. The Acquia company was established by the original creator of the Drupal system himself, Dries Buytaert, and Jay Batson, founder of Pingtel. More info about Acquia can be found on Acquia.com So what exactly does Acquia do, and why is it important? Some background. As you may know, the Drupal system is an Open Source project, which is developed and maintained by an enormous global community of developers. For support, the developers return to the community, searching for assistance. Mostly, and nearly always, developers are able to find the support they need, and are able to continue with their project. That's (basically) how the Drupal system evolves. When purchasing a commercial (closed source) system, the client receives the system along with the phone numbers of the customers support and technical departments of the vendor and/or the manufacturer. Client who (wisely!) choose to use Drupal, or any other open source system for the matter, are dependent on the developer or development company for support. They lack the sense of security a corporate customers service departments provides. True – professional and quick response doesn't always to hand in hand with a corporate customers service departments – but that's another issue. Large organization, such as corporations and government agencies, cannot afford to take the risk that in the moment of truth they won't have anyone to turn to help to. They have Response Time Requirements, and must know that if something goes wrong they can pick up the phone and speak with an expert, who knows the system inside out. And that's where Acquia enters. The company provides subscription based commercial support for Drupal sites, based on a fixed monthly payment. The fee is derived from the level of support and the size (in servers) of the website being supported. The basic plan includes support in the companies forums, Site health monitoring, Code modification detection and other great surprises. The enterprise plan including 24x7 phone support for emergencies, Personal assistance in developing and operating the system and even code audits for custom developed code (conducted by the experts at Acquia). The plans range from $200 to $20,000 a year. We are glad and proud to join the Acquia Partners Program, and are determined to use this new relationship as a fertile base for future cooperation and mutual expansion. To the services we provide join today the services of Acquia, and more details about them will come soon. Acquia? They have new friends. And you? You can now feel even safer with us.
