Boris Kraft is chief technology officer and co-founder of Magnolia. Since 2002, he has been focusing on the development of Magnolia CMS from a strategic and marketing perspective. We asked him what it's like trying to run a small open source content management company and how he addresses the challenges he faces in a crowded market.

FCM: You bill yourself as simple open source CMS. How do you walk the line between simplicity and sophistication?

BK: Simplicity can be the highest form of sophistication. If you look at the iPhone's impact and ask yourself, "What did Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) do right that Nokia did wrong?" you'll find that Nokia's smartphones were ahead in every regard except one: They were hard to use. Instead of matching the competition on features, Apple focused on ease-of-use, and redefined an entire generation of mobile phones.

For Magnolia, simplicity encompasses ease-of-use (for content editors), ease-of-development and -integration (for developers), ease-of-deployment (for IT), and a better experience for various other CMS stakeholders. That doesn't preclude sophistication, it just means we think hard about how our features can be easy to use, easy to extend and easy to understand.

This was especially true in creating Magnolia 5, our next generation of content management, for which we revisited usability and did extensive research on the user experience. The release is tangible evidence of our passion for enterprise-class web content management that authors and developers love.

FCM: How closely do you work with the developer community to upgrade and enhance the product?

BK: We have an active Magnolia community that reports issues, sends patches, and extends the product with new modules. We have very open communication, host an annual Magnolia Conference, and schedule periodic workshops on specific topics to gather feedback and define next steps. These activities allow Magnolia (the company) to gather feedback for Magnolia's product development road map.

Sometimes, as with Magnolia 4.4, a lot of community input goes into the product. The community provided nearly all of the features for 4.4, which we then rewrote and productized.

Customers benefit from this vendor-driven development model as it enhances the long-run quality of the product. Community members can easily build modules to extend the core product, which customers can then choose to deploy.

FCM: What advantages do you derive from the fact you are an open source product?

BK: Open source encourages us to be open in our communication, since the community scrutinizes everything we do. This challenges us to grow and deliver a better product. It's not for everyone, but once openness becomes embedded in your company's DNA, good things start to happen.

FCM: What's your business model?

BK: Our business model is simple. We build outstanding, easy-to-use web content management software for enterprises, and then sell subscriptions for use and support.

To elaborate a bit, Magnolia CMS is an open source project maintained by Magnolia International and a community of users, partners, and developers. Magnolia sells an Enterprise Edition with support and added features for those that need a vendor-supported enterprise-class product, such as the U.S. Navy, Sony Playstation, efax.com, or Texas State University. Magnolia also enables an international network of partners to implement Magnolia CMS projects. Partners handle all projects--we do not compete with them.

FCM: As a smaller open source player, how do you get attention in all of the noise and competition?

BK: Not by trying to out-shout our competitors. Our business model allows us to focus long-term on our users' needs. Astonishingly enough, this works. We recently signed what I believe is the biggest open source CMS license deal on the planet--$1 million for the subscription alone, before any project work. This was after an exhaustive evaluation of about 80 vendors conducted by renowned external analysts that spanned the better part of a year. Magnolia CMS was the only open source product among those on the remaining short list, and finally, the only vendor to survive the load tests. Quality, in other words, sells well to those who look for it.

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