Function1
Unrivalled Open Source Web Expertise

People are our biggest asset,” begins Jon Reid, Practice Manager at Function1. Having started its operations in 2007 with deep-rooted knowledge in Oracle WebCenter, Function1 has evolved as a provider of services and products in Web Experience Management (WEM) with Oracle WebCenter Sites and Drupal, as well as data security and operational intelligence. Function1 addresses the four major pain points of the open source landscape - security, scalability, stability, and support. “We leverage our deep enterprise expertise to support the information systems of some of the largest business organizations in the world. When we moved into the open source space, our professional competence in the enterprise space let us draw on an array of best practices to accomplish our client’s goals,” adds Reid.

“In collaboration with Acquia-a top tier Drupal platform-as-a-service provider-we are able to provide a continuous delivery environment, tailored to the specific needs of our clients and quickly respond to new industry developments in a flexible and cost-effective manner” says Reid. “The Acquia Cloud architecture automatically scales resources to handle traffic spikes and has multiple layers of security processes and tools baked into the platform.”

We leverage our deep enterprise expertise to support the information systems of some of the largest business organizations in the world

Reid calls out several trends as important in the future of Open Source. “We will see a lot more server architectures using Docker,” says Reid. “Docker containers are much more portable and efficient than the long used virtual machines, giving us the ability to set up and maintain different environments and configurations with ease while making a more efficient use of the CPU, RAM and disk. If vendor lock-in is a concern, or if onboarding new developers is a chore, then application portability is something you should care about.”

Reid also sees Microservice Architecture as a strong trend. “So called headless, or decoupled, Drupal is a great example of this. By designing much focused APIs with Drupal, you have the ability to consume your content with your tools of choice, across a variety of platforms, independent of your backend CMS. This gives you incredible agility in terms of change requests, new tools coming online and innovation in general,” says Reid, “and Docker gives you the ability to package and deploy these services with ease.”

From the Function1 labs, one ma¬jor innovation is the BACnet module for Drupal. The BACnet module is an energy management tool, allowing clients to monitor their energy related data from within Drupal. “BACnet is just one example of Drupal as a content service hub. With our experience in systems integrations and in creating operational intelligence dashboards, the potential in business intelligence, marketing, and commerce is huge.”

Function1 utilizes industry best practices to provide support and development services to a wide variety of clients. One of Function1’s federal clients in the healthcare industry faced increasing disruption in the market, and required infrastructure support and ad-hoc development for their various online systems. Function1 enabled the client to migrate their content away from a number of proprietary systems, replicating existing features while creating new functionality and channels of user engagement. “We helped them gain agility and improve their resource allocation in terms of licensing and management costs.”

With extensive experience in proprietary systems as well as open source, Function1’s team helps clients achieve their business goals in an agile and transparent manner. Function1’s vision for the future is to continuously improve its practices, services, and support with open source innovation.