Acquia, the enterprise guide to the Drupal Social Publishing System, today announced it has achieved significant momentum during the first half of 2009. Fueled by a committed Drupal community and the changing perception of open source within enterprise markets, Acquia maintains its leadership position in Drupal social publishing with record quarters in corporate and customer growth.

Unprecedented Corporate and Customer Success

Following a successful Series B funding round which grew Acquia’s venture capital investment to $15 million, the company has quadrupled its customer base since March 2009 and now delivers services and support to over 250 enterprise customers across a wide variety of markets embracing open source. Recent additions to Acquia’s roster includes a range of enterprise, non-profit and higher-education organizations such as The Economist, Intuit, WEEI, Sony Music, University of Colorado, and George Mason University, among others. To support the rapidly growing client roster, Acquia has expanded its partner coalition to over 100 Drupal design, developer, and technology providers and increased its employee base to 40.

“The ability to generate content from our conservationists in the field is extremely important to us at The National Audubon Society. Drupal offers us the platform needed; Acquia enables us to feasibly deploy it,” said Michael Callari, lead web developer at the National Audubon Society. “With any open source technology we need commercial support to give us the layer of assurance we need. Acquia makes the rollout of Drupal sites that much easier knowing there is someone we can call when we have questions or need assistance.”

Drupal Adoption Surges

Cited by analyst Dion Hinchcliffe as one of the leading disruptive platforms within Enterprise 2.0, Drupal has caught fire within enterprise markets and is actively changing attitudes toward open source social publishing’s place within organizations. Over the first half of 2009, the impact of Drupal is evident with downloads and project contributions continuing to spike:

• Over 400,000 active Drupal sites
• Over 4,000 contributed modules backed by thousands of active developers
• Nearly 60,000 downloads of Acquia Drupal, Acquia’s distribution of Drupal

“The fact is, most businesses’ sites are static and don’t allow them to preserve their message or a meaningful connection with customers. We’ve been able to convince them that Drupal, with Acquia support, is the way to change that,” said Tom Erickson, CEO of Acquia. “Our growth in the last six months is a testament to the fact that Acquia is giving businesses the confidence and assistance in Drupal that they need.”

Commitment to Technology Expansion

Acquia’s customer growth has also been driven by the company’s focus on further building its network of subscription support services to foster greater enterprise adoption of Drupal. Acquia’s latest technology accomplishments include enhancements to Acquia Hosting, Acquia Search, and Acquia Drupal, the packaged distribution of Drupal which allows a simple installation and on-ramp to Drupal for enterprise users.

Additionally, the company continues to focus substantial efforts on the upcoming launch of a Software as a Service (SaaS) version of Drupal, code-named Acquia Gardens. This new product is designed to bring the power of Drupal including social/community networking to small and medium sized businesses looking to build a social publishing site quickly and easily.

Community Contributions

Acquia has continued to work as part of the Drupal community to develop the platform for widespread use within enterprises. Acquia developers actively contribute code and play an active role on the Drupal security team. Acquia is also helping to fund the Drupal 7 usability efforts.

“Acquia’s success to date speaks to the value of Acquia’s offerings to both Drupal site owners and Drupal developers,” said Dries Buytaert, CTO and founder of Acquia. “From Acquia Search to our upcoming release of the Acquia Gardens project, the development of the Drupal platform proves that corporate technology needs can be served by the open source community in an effective and relevant way.”

About Acquia

Acquia helps organizations of all sizes build social publishing websites quickly, easily and with a lower total cost of ownership by leveraging Drupal, the open source social publishing platform that blends content and community. Our products, services and support enable companies to leverage the power, technical innovation and economic value of Drupal while simplifying the experience, removing the complexity and minimizing the risk. Please visit: http://acquia.com. Download Acquia Drupal, the completely free Drupal distribution, at http://acquia.com/downloads.

About Drupal

The Drupal social publishing system has been downloaded over two million times since its inception and powers more than 400,000 web sites globally. Drupal includes an enterprise class content management system and is used to deliver a wide variety of web applications including single or multi-user blogs, wikis, community networks, digital media portals, e-commerce, and many more. Assisted by a thriving ecosystem of consultants and developers, a diverse set of organizations use Drupal, including SonyBMG, Warner Brothers Records, the New York Observer, Forbes, Disney, Intel, Harvard University, and Amnesty International. A huge community has grown up around Drupal, with thousands of active contributors to the open source technology. For more information, visit http://drupal.org.