SharePoint vs Alfresco: A Platform Perspective

I work as IT engineer with an international company with many subs world-wide.

We first selected Microsoft SharePoint until we realized that:
- It forced us to be 100% Microsoft compliant (and many subs already chose Linux and Open Office)
- It was VERY expensive (Each client must pay a CAL (Client Access License)
- We had to maintain 2 sets of documents:
the ones on Shared disks to be accessed by standard tools
The ones in SharePoint and NOT accessible by standard tools as SharePoints store them in an MS SQL Database
- One of our subsidiary stores VERY LONG technical files which cannot be entered in Sharepoint. We suspect due to a limit of size of BLOBs.
- We have to keep international versions (at least 7 languages) of the documents. SharePoint does not offer any tool for that
- We found that changing the structure of meta-data AFTER installation if a REAL MESS and this is a topic where changes count …

We then tested Alfresco.
It solved all the previous points and as we did it without informing our test users, none of them even noticed the change !
The only thing that misses compared to Sharepoint is the SharePoint Lists which is a sort of local database on the desktop but Alfresco say they will implement this feature too… Wait and see.

We are now close to the end of our tests and I would not bet a dime on Sharepoint….

Peter

isnt the above a little too complex from the point of a small to medium sized business? wasnt the new wave supposed to shift focus away from IT and towards business? isnt services exactly what we want and not platforms. platforms may make sense for solution developers, or large enterprises which need highly customized solutions.

if we're talking about “sharepoint for enterprises”, talking about sharepoint as a platform makes sense. if were talking sharepoint for SMBs, we must talk in terms of services and features, and ease of use, and it is on those counts it must be compared with “sharepoint alternatives”

The article above makes it sound like Microsoft “opened the doors to interoperability” in a fit of generosity, magnanimously allowing Alfresco to achieve some compatibility… Nothing could be further from the truth.

Microsoft was *forced* by the EU anti-trust case to release documentation for some of its fiercely protected interoperability formats. (see, for example, http://pcworld.about.com/od/microsoftantitrustcase/Microsoft-loses-appeal-against.htm)

It's only thanks to the EU (unlike the US) sticking to its guns and punishing Microsoft for ongoing flagrant anti-competitive practices that consumers actually have a choice… And look at how well Alfresco have done. It's great to see them eating Microsoft's lunch.

What an interesting article! Equally, it was no surprise to read Peter Morel's comments.

We have been an Alfresco implementation partner for over 2 years now, and to date have implemented the solution in over 20 organisations and companies. The point is this, Alfresco is a bricks and mortar software company that happens to have an open source commercial model. Therefore there is an established eco system of system integration partners that are able to provide consultancy, implementation services and operational support.

In every scenario, we have found that our clients have selected Alfresco based on a functional assessment of its capability, and its fit to requirements. This tends to confirm the content of this article, in that Alfresco is a mature, extensive product that is worthy of evaluation for a given project, if Sharepoint is currently being considered.

We have been using Alfresco for about a year now. Our technology landscape is incredibly complex with a rich mix of different technologies including Microsoft and IBM. If your company is already locked in to a Microsoft stack and can afford the cost, Sharepoint does make sense. My experience is that such companies are hard to find these days (especially the part about being able to afford the cost). All these CMS systems have the same necessary capabilities. With IT costs becoming harder and harder to justify and CMS systems becoming commodities, Alfresco has the wind at their backs.

We are currently evaluating Alfresco for CMS duty. My organization recently implemented a system based mostly on Microsoft Sharepoint and custom-made components, but we ran way over budget. As a result, the system is slow, inflexible and doesn't have the necessary capabilities that we need. We can't afford to expand until, hopefully, next year. Not only that, there are people in our organization that use Apple computers, OpenOffice and Mozilla Firefox, etc but our CMS plug-ins don't work properly with anything but Windows and Internet Explorer. That minority was never consulted when the current system was being put in place. That is why my group is pushing for something like Alfresco (We are doing this against the wishes of some influential IT folks in our organization). Not only is it cheaper, but it is a more open and accommodating platform—that's very important these days.

We have been searching for replacement components to our increasingly expensive and partially broken Vignette stack. Alfresco vs SharePoint. The cost structure for both vendors is similar as freely stated by Alfresco reps. So, MS gets their $ on initial license purchase, CALs and upgrade costs, while Alfresco gets their $ by charging hefty support fees which continue year in and year out. So, it is not obvious which one is more expensive, because they both are quite costly, but in different ways.

We are a development firm, working different enterprise application implementations. In our last project, we were specifically asked to work with Alfresco and I must say, it is no where near the capabilties of Sharepoint. So I simply do not understand the comparison and the comments made. If you are going to use Sharepoint as simply a CMS, then you can also go with e.g. dot net nuke, however, if you are planning to implement it as a back bone to any network application that is going to run in your enterprise, I say go with WSS cause it is FREE. Here the real comparison has to be made between Alfresco and WSS not Sharepoint Server which is just an implementation over WSS.

We first selected Microsoft SharePoint until we realized that:
- It forced us to be 100% Microsoft compliant (and many subs already chose Linux and Open Office)

Answer: “100000000 many end user using windows & Office”

- It was VERY expensive (Each client must pay a CAL (Client Access License)

Answer: “80 $ per CAL is a buck to many companys”

- We had to maintain 2 sets of documents:
the ones on Shared disks to be accessed by standard tools
The ones in SharePoint and NOT accessible by standard tools as SharePoints store them in an MS SQL Database

Answer: “It is FALSE, you can access shared document via file system to sharepoint Library”

- One of our subsidiary stores VERY LONG technical files which cannot be entered in Sharepoint. We suspect due to a limit of size of BLOBs.

Answer: “It is FALSE, you can modify the size files stores by default is 50MB per document”

- We have to keep international versions (at least 7 languages) of the documents. SharePoint does not offer any tool for that

Answer: “JAJAJAJA, It is FALSE, dowload the free languajes pack, to many lanaguages to exits in Office”

- We found that changing the structure of meta-data AFTER installation if a REAL MESS and this is a topic where changes count …

Answer: “It is FALSE, make a good definition to content types metadata”

Really MOSS?

- The fact that “100,000,000 many end user using windows & Office” does not mean that each and every company is a 100% Microsoft shop. It makes sense for some companies to branch out and use other solutions such as a Linux distribution and/or just OO.org.

- In my opinion (and I'm sure many other people's as well) “80 $ per CAL…” is not quite as cheap as $0 per CAL. Just because “many companies” can spend $80+ per CAL for a solution, doesn't mean that every company can. I know as a solution engineer, my manager and other business leaders like to spend as little as possible and still receive the same functionality.

- While it is true “you can access shared documents via file file system to sharepoint Library” maybe Peter was meaning other tools that his corporation has implemented cannot access the sharepoint directories. You know, he did mention that they weren't a 100% Microsoft shop. Maybe they were using some *nix based toolsets that couldn't access the shares…

- Yes, you can modify the default sizes of documents.

- Language packs are a pain.. Language packs typically don't localize all functionality (I don't know about Sharepoint as I've not utilized the language pack functions of it).

- Metadata structure should be well-defined from the beginning.. however, if completely messing up your document structure by changing minor parts of the metadata structure is a really big issue.

Your comment reeks of fanboy-ism. I'm not a fan of either Alfresco (never really used it) nor of Sharepoint. Each system has it's pros and cons; however, when you're trying to refute someone else's argument points in a comment, not speaking like a 15 yr old will go a long way in reinforcing your own argument.

Well, with SharePoint Online - http://www.microsoft.com/online/sharepoint-online.mspx , it has never been cheaper especially since you do not have to break out your wallet for any equipment, installation, and administration. At just $3.99 per user/month. Even cheaper when you go with the complete productivity suite http://www.microsoft.com/online/business-productivity.mspx , at just $10/user/month.

Content aside, the article's purpose is to sell advertising..scroll down….thanks

Sharepoint is a good tool, for many things. What it is not good for is worging as a CRM / CMS / Document Management / Project Managment tool!!

How come? Well first off:

- (technical) -> Painfully slow outside the organizations LAN (over the Itnernet). Uses postback (click, enter, click, save etc.). Yes, AJAX can resolve some, but how big is your development budget?

- Easy to install, easy to backup; A MESS to administrate, integrate, maintain, and restore (yes I know it has a recyckle bin..). If your company has more than 10 employees, and you want to put “all your stuff” into Sharepoint and customize it, just hire a Sharepoint guru (50 000 $ a year for a good one)

- Saving your data in a database???? Who thought of this? The development department must have had an insane momemt! Put files on disk, that gives you all the options you want for backup, restore, indexing (yes I know of the options even with Search Server 2008 Express), syncronize files to integrated systems (yes SQL Server Integrated Services can do it for you, but has anyone tried it and looked at the time spent for a solution you can trust??)

So.. If your organization is less than 20 people, data loss and data mess is not an issue, and you want to move your Excel “databases” to a web interface, go with Sharepoint.

Everyone else go with Alfresco or Sosius for smaller companies. Alfresco simply worsk so much better.

Don't believe me? Then do this:

- Have your most skilled IT person set up Sharepoint WSS (free version). Create a site, a couple changes and publish it. Ask users to insert data into the lists. Then have them play with it. Then start creating your reports. Then see how you can deploy changes in one site to another server (using VM Ware or Citrix XenApp virtual server for this test would be great). When you figure out the test has given you little and cost a lot (mhrs wize), stop!

- Do the same test with Alfresco, and see the difference!

Personally I have spent 2 years with Sharepoint and 3 months with Alfresco. Moving from Sharepoint to Alfresco feels like crawling out of a mud hole, onto a sunny beach where everything is just sunny and bright!

But why is Sharepoint selling, and so many companies using it? Well, Microsoft has a good plan, and the best sales persons in the world (well, many of them). It is also safer for a manger to say “We went with the know technology”. That is why. Ask all those companies that went with Sharepoint, how much they spent. And also ask them what they have gained.. They will never tell you, to many mangers will loose their jobs..

It's up to you, I am glad we moved away from Sharepoint.