I too got inspired by apoorv and decided to make my home page happening.
After a long time i have less work and more time - how better to utlize it ;-)
I recentrly read a few posts from CMS List comparing Out of Box vs Ground up approach for CMS and since the complaints were on usability, I adapted it to compare a pure backend solution with custom built interface with a Out of the box solution

Customized Solution

• The product is completely open and provides greater flexibility allowing any kind of user interface to access the provided features.


• The solution brings learnings in document management and only the user interface and application interfaces are being customized. Hence its much better than a ground up solution where a new party has to relearn what the other products have already learnt and implemented


• Complete flexibility. These solutions provide all features as components and services which can be exploited by any interface


• A customized solution can offer plug-ins within Microsoft word for creating document linkages.


• Open system with plug in architecture


• Portable


• Faster fixes and bug resolution


• Use industry standard IDE for customization


• Better performance as applications are not loaded with features which are not needed
  Tailor functionality release based on business needs/desires.


• User acceptance and buy-in. If the project is managed w/ plenty of user input (or, maybe I should say, plenty of the RIGHT users input) then the custom product will have a much easier acceptance because theusers had a big part in defining what they want as well as had constant input in the building of the product to make sure that it met their needs. Often, even with good use casing/functional requirements, the needs of the users will evolve over time as the application takes shape. This allows for a more sophisticated application that is even more matched to the solution set the users really need.


• Greater effort and time

Out of box

• It might be difficult to estimate the amount of customization required to offer as fully functional a product as an out of the box one


• Incorporates learning over time


• The UI will tend to be more suited towards a specific problemThe available UI will work well only with pre-defined document structures. In case there is a need to heavily customize the document structures – these solutions will also require huge customization.
  Customizations can tend to take large effort if the needed UI cannot be implemented with out of the box configurations


• Version upgrades will come with enhanced UI but the customizations will need to be re-migrated and the new UI might require re-learning


• Typically use vendor provided tools for customization using a proprietary language which may not be as powerful as the generic language IDE



# posted by Pranshu @ 6:58 PM