Drupal has become a serious player in the enterprise market, encountering a new set of competitors along the way. Free software alone isn't enough for most larger organizations to choose Drupal. The technical selection process is more intensive, with many more stakeholders influencing the decision process. Additionally, enterprises rely on guidance from industry analysts and their peers to create their short list of potential options to consider. Raising the visibility of Drupal's strengths and success stories is critical to competing effectively in the enterprise market. At Acquia, we spend a great deal of time helping organizations understand the power of both Drupal and the community, and why this combination is what makes Drupal the best choice for high performance organizations serious about the social web. In this session, we'll share our experiences discussing Drupal with the analyst community and with senior executives. We'll share lessons we've learned when Drupal has lost during the technical selection process, and how we, as a community, can work together to improve our chances in the future.

Questions answered by this session:
How to position Drupal's unique strengths vs proprietary competitors
Where competitors beat up on Drupal and how to diffuse these situations
How to combat FUD from proprietary vendors and put them on the defensive in the selling process
How to make enterprise buyers understand why open source makes Drupal a better technical option
Why the analyst community is important and how to help raise Drupal's profile to these important influencers