Plone powered Website Raises 14 Million Dollars

Enfolds Systems delivers value and enterprise scalability with the Plone Open Source Platform

Original Press Release

Enfold Systems, LLC, the world's premier Plone® Content Management System (CMS) provider, launched a website for Oxfam America powered by Plone®. Oxfam America awarded the bid to Enfold Systems to build their next generation website. Three months of development and two months of acceptance testing resulted in improved functionality, performance and usability of the website -which integrates seamlessly with Oxfam's third-party online donation and advocacy system.

"We were impressed with Enfold's staff as well as their significant contributions to the Plone® project," says Oxfam's Senior Internet Coordinator Joel Bassuk. Existing information was migrated from Oxfam's prior database to Plone® and under went a workflow process to remove out-of-date content. Content was then transformed into XML and imported using Plone's standards-based WebDAV facilities.

Enfold also developed an open source publishing framework that enabled versions of content to be deployed in parallel while other assets were work-flowed through an editing process. "The Page Template system provides an excellent separation of content, presentation, and business logic," says Internet Manager Nicholas Rabinowitz. "I was able to customize the look-and-feel independently of Enfold's backend work on the publishing system." The publishing system as well as enhancements to the indexing service, drag-n-drop user interface, and easy-to-use association engine enabled editors to quickly add extra metadata and structure the website into its final form.

A primary goal of the site was to implement a system that could scale to meet Oxfam's growing organization and donor base for years to come. When the Tsunami crisis occurred, the system was put to the test. "In the course of ten days during the Tsunami crisis, Oxfam had almost half of its typical yearly visits, and almost 1/3 of its yearly bandwidth - the system performed beautifully", said Internet Manager Nicholas Rabinowitz. "Our public website offered timely, critical content to our users, while providing a solid gateway to our online donation system."

"The Oxfam America website demonstrates that open source content management software can be used to deliver enterprise quality systems", said Alan Runyan, President of Enfold Systems and architect of the original version of Plone®. The usability, functionality and sustained throughput the configuration provides can service Oxfam America for years to come. Runyan added, "Enfold Systems is committed to open source projects and has made much of its software developed during client engagements available on the Enfold Systems website".

About Enfold Systems

Enfold Systems LLC, the premier provider of Windows® integrated open source content management solutions, enables organizations to reuse existing infrastructure and manage information using open source software. The consulting practice is built around the Plone® Content Management System (www.plone.org) and delivers services tailored to meet the needs of business, government and non-profit organizations. Enfold Systems also provides products which allow Microsoft Windows® desktop integration, authentication, storage, and web server integration to Plone®. Enfold Systems is headquartered in Houston, Texas, and has offices in Canada, Brazil and Australia. For more information visit www.enfoldsystems.com.

About Oxfam America

Oxfam America is a Boston-based non-profit international development and relief agency and an affiliate of Oxfam International. Oxfam works with partners in more than two dozen countries to combat global poverty and social injustice by promoting development and human rights and assisting in humanitarian emergencies. For more information visit www.oxfamamerica.org.

Toby Gouw | toby@enfoldsystems.com | 713-942-2377

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