[Zope] CRM and Zope

[Bjorn Stabell]

Hi there,

We're currently evaluating customer relationship management (CRM)
solutions for future projects.  The main contenders are BroadVision
and Vignette so far, but it's hard to navigate the forest of CRM
solutions.

Looking at Zope I'm amazed at the flexibility already existing in the
product, and knowing the power of open source and a committed
community of developers often associated with beautiful systems like
Zope (software is like art and so it can be beautiful), it's only
going to get better.

I am, however, concerned with Zope's maturity and comprehensiveness
compared to current state-of-the-art commercial solutions.  I'd like
to hear other people's opinions as well.  In particular I'd like to
know about:

1) Work-flow.  Zope doesn't seem to have any inherent work-flow
capabilities, so I guess that'll have to be developed?  Is anyone
working on tools and toolkits for this?

2) Personalization.  Again, this can undoubtably be developed in Zope,
but is anyone working on toolkits to lift the personalization features
to a higher level?  Something similar to Vignette's self-learning
ability (and collaborative filtering like NetPerceptions), and having
a business layer that allows business types to do targeting is also
useful.

3) Content management.  With big websites you need content management
systems that'll help you keep the content consistent and up-to-date.
Again, this will have to be developed in Zope.

4) Scalability.  How scalable is Zope when it comes to handling many
requests, and how does it perform when the database grows?  Are there
any inherent limitations?

5) Replication, distribution.  Can the Zope database be replicated and
the copies kept synchronized?  If not, does anyone have an idea how
much work it'll be to develop this in Zope (it should be possible to
do this at a pretty low level, transparently, just above the object
database layer).

The good news is that Zope is already so flexible that I think it
won't take much work, relatively speaking, to develop modules that'll
lift Zope up to the same level as commercial solutions.  Any efforts
going on already?

Bye,
-- 
Bjorn Stabell <bjorn.stabell@ogilvy.com>
CTO
OgilvyInteractive, Beijing