For the Georgia Technology Authority (GTA), the decision to dump its aging content management system (CMS) was easy. Running 65 state government websites on two different versions of proprietary software — Vignette 6 and 7, one of which is no longer supported — had become cumbersome and costly. And moving all sites to Vignette 8 was too much of a “force fit,” said state CTO Steve Nichols.
Instead of buying another proprietary package, Georgia chose an open solution that’s quickly gaining favor among state and federal agencies. “As we dug in, all the obvious best choices were open source,” said Nichols. The strongest of those contenders turned out to be Drupal, which powers Whitehouse.gov and other key federal government sites.