Plone Plans Global Event to Tout a New Way of Creating for the Web

Plone, one of the open source software communities, is staging World Plone Day 2009 – a series of events around the globe on April 22nd to spread awareness of their product. Plone is a free and open source Internet publishing system that combines web content management, social software, collaboration, and enterprise portal features.

This “follow the sun” event is a global initiative involving at least 29 countries around the world.  Plone integration companies, user groups and developers will hold seminars, training sessions, and meet-ups to show potential users the power of Plone technology and the many markets who are currently using it.

Plone allows non-technical end-users to manage content, and has replaced products like SharePoint, Red Dot and Vignette for department intranets, document management systems, and public websites. Organizations as diverse as NASA, Oxfam, Amnesty International, Nokia, eBay, Novell, the State Universities of Pennsylvania and Utah, as well as the Brazilian and New Zealand governments — all use Plone.  Plone is particularly strong in government, not-for-profit, and educational sectors.

Thousands of websites across large and small businesses, education, government, non-profits, sciences, media and publishing are using Plone to solve their content management needs. Plone is supported by a global network of over 300 solution providers in more than 50 countries. You can find a list of providers and consultants - as well as more about these installations and case studies of their experiences on plone.net.

With no licensing fees, Plone lets users spend their funds on customizing the software to meet their specific needs creating content, site branding and maintenance. Plone is less expensive to
deploy than many other web publishing systems such as Vignette, Ektron, or TeamSpace. Plone also has the best security track record of any major CMS. In fact, security is a major reason why many CMS users are switching to Plone.

Plone is easy to understand and use — allowing users to be productive in just half an hour — yet offers a wealth of community-developed add-ons and extensibility to keep meeting your needs for years to come.  Need a CMS that integrates with Active Directory, Salesforce, LDAP, SQL, Web Services. LDAP or Oracle? Plone does. Need to be sure your website is accessible? Plone meets or exceeds US Government 508 and W3C’s WAI-AA standards.

Plone’s intellectual property and trademarks are protected by the non-profit Plone Foundation. This means that Plone’s future is not in the hands of any one person or company.

More information on World Plone Day 2009 can be found at http://worldploneday.org