Alfresco Enterprise CMS Cozies Up With IBM Lotus

By Irina Guseva (@irina_guseva) Jan 13, 2010

Alfresco (news, site) got friendly with IBM Lotus today via a (soon to be available) integration of the Alfresco Enterprise CMS with IBM Lotus Quickr, Lotus Notes, Lotus Connections and WebSphere Portal.

Alfresco Content Services for Lotus — bridging the Lotus email, portal and social collaboration with Alfresco’s open source enterprise content management capabilities — is scheduled for a technical preview at Lotusphere, taking place on January 17-21 in Orlando, FL.

Aiming at Devs and End-Users Alike

Alfresco Content Services (ACS) for Lotus aims to charm away the programmers, who should be able to extend the integration from Lotus Notes, Domino, WebSphere Portal applications using a plethora of languages, APIs, protocols and services (like Java, JavaScript, JSP, PHP, CMIS, JSR 168, CIFS, IMAP, JCR, WebDAV, FTP, NFS, SMTP, XForms, SOAP, and .NET).

ibm quickr and alfresco integration.jpg
End-users might like such capabilities as publishing content from Lotus QuickR to Alfresco ECM

Without failing to mention yet another advantage of this integration over Microsoft SharePoint, Alfresco points out its DoD 5015.2-certified records management capabilities and content services in the cloud (while also including an implementation of the SharePoint protocol that allows for Microsoft Office documents to be accessed with Alfresco “as if it was SharePoint”).

alfresco ibm office.jpg
QuickR connector for MS Office

The SharePoint protocol is part of the ACS package, and has been implemented in Alfresco starting with Labs 3a release.

Match Made in Heaven?

Alfresco Content Services for Lotus is touted as “economical, scalable and open.” We all know by now that open source doesn’t mean free, nor does it necessarily mean it’s cheap. Nevertheless, those of you who have already invested into the Lotus suite can probably run an economical comparison.

A match made in CMS heaven? Well, one could potentially get the best of both worlds with this product — if it all matches out. Some organizations using Lotus technologies and selecting/changing a CMS, may find this integration valuable, when it becomes available in the spring of 2010.