Alternative-Fact-Busting: AEM vs Open Source in a TCO Cage Match

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Adobe Experience Manager versus Open Source: simple, right?
An open source solution is free by definition, while a product that regularly leads Gartner Magic Quadrants and Forrester Waves is going to cost you millions more, right?
Right?
Well…no.  Not exactly.
I’ve seen enough platform selection exercises and total cost of ownership (TCO) engagements over the years to have a pretty good idea of where these things typically land, and in that context it continually amazes me that anyone in an enterprise still thinks this way.  Of course, many do, which is why it’s time for a little bit of myth-busting.  Let’s start with our very first false premise.
Fallacy #1: Open Source Software is Free.
This might be technically true when you download a freeware or shareware app on your PC, but in enterprise environments, open source is never free.
Large corporations of every sort—law firms, financial services giants, manufacturers, power and energy, health care, you name it—are subject to massive amounts of industry-specific regulations.  The software platforms they use need to be able to satisfy some fairly rigorous governance and information security concerns, or they’re going to wind up liable to the tune of millions.  Most readers already know this, of course—so why do numerous large websites sit on open source platforms like Drupal?
The answer: Drupal itself is open source, but for use in the enterprise it requires a rigorous helping of regular management and support.  That comes from third-party firms who—surprise—charge a premium that is seldom far off from the cost of licensing enterprise software like Adobe.  And the market will bear it, so they keep on charging it.  You would too, wouldn’t you, if you were in their business?
Fallacy #2: Adobe Experience Manager is Fabulous, But You’ll Pay For That Fabulosity
Let’s be clear: Any enterprise software platform is going to have a pricetag attached, and Adobe is no exception. The functionality you get with AEM is top-notch, never mind the other solutions across the integrated Adobe Marketing Cloud, and as a result they certainly do cost some money. That said, the perception that AEM is orders of magnitude more expensive than the competition is out-and-out incorrect.
As noted above, enterprises won’t do Drupal in its own right. They’ll typically engage with a third party that has extended Drupal to some extent—up to and including its own licensed, productized version—which winds up making an ostensibly “open source” project look an awful lot like a project with an enterprise software vendor.
Breaking It Down
I’ve seen enough competitive bids in the CMS space to tell you that—especially these days—an AEM bid is seldom all that far from a Drupal one. They typically stack up like so:
AEM: Software Licensing + Implementation + Managed Services
Drupal: Third-Party Markup + Implementation + Managed Services
It probably doesn’t take a rocket scientist to guess that the sums of these equations are seldom far apart.  That means when it comes to platform selection, it’s become far more about organizational fit and requirements than about pricetags and bargain shopping… and that should make just about everyone happy.