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The Pros and Cons of using proprietary software when developing your website.
By Dale Justice, Partner, Justice & Young

Dale Justice There are two kinds of web development software in use today: open source and proprietary. Open source is free to anyone, the most commonly used (probably 99% of the market), requires no long term contract to remain functional, and integrates seamlessly with just about anything in use today. The only downside is, you must be a trained professional to use it to build your website.

The second kind of web development software is proprietary. It's essentially "pay to use" software. The idea was to create pre-designed templates of applications that folks could just buy off the shelf rather than creating a site from scratch. They then just add their content to the existing template. There are all kinds of proprietary software on the market. Some is home grown, ala a one person web developer who creates an application software program he likes better than open source products, and convinces his clients to use his. The reason he wants the client to commit to his software is retention. The site will only work with his software, and no other. Therefore, the client can never leave him. If they do, their site stops working. This kind of web developer usually has a hosting contract with his clients. His whole business model is designed to preserve a revenue stream even after the site is completed.

The other end of the spectrum is proprietary software developed by the big boys. IBM's proprietary software is called WebSphere, Microsoft's is called .Net Software. They are much more robust than the single home grown application designed by an individual web developer, but essentially are designed to do the same thing: provide off the shelf, template-like applications for businesses who don't want to reinvent the wheel, and provide a continuing revenue stream for IBM and Microsoft.

Last year I was asked to write an article in the Business Courier on the top five mistakes companies make when designing their website. Most sites we design are marketing sites. At the top of the list was using proprietary software without understanding the long term ramifications. Using proprietary software like .Net or WebSphere means your site will only work so long as you continue to pay to use the run-time components and hosting fees, and that any future additions or applications to your site must also use the WebSphere development tools and the WebSphere Application Server (WAS). You become totally dependent upon WebSphere for your website from now until eternity. If at some future date you wish to add an application WebSphere does not support, too bad. Websites have a tendency to grow over time, as new features or content gets added. Only those features and functionality that WebSphere supports can be added to your site. If at some future date you wish to go in a different direction with your website, you will be forced to build a new website from scratch.

That having been said, there are situations where a .Net or WebSphere application makes the most sense, especially for back-end enterprise applications. You can be up and running in a fraction of the time it takes to develop an open source site, the cost may be though not always less, and you have a product that is tried and true. The burden is still upon you to create content, key messages that resonate with clients and prospects and a marketing strategy that gets the site traffic required to achieve a return on your investment. This is where partnering with a professional marketing firm to develop your marketing site becomes important.

If you require back-end enterprise applications, our recommendation is to use open source, non-proprietary software to create the front end marketing site, which we can seamlessly tie to your back-end WebSphere or .Net software. That way, you retain total independent control over your marketing portion of your site with no limitations upon use of rich media, etc., while deriving the benefit of template, back-end enterprise applications.

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