Content Management Matters ™

Adobe Systems seems primed to take the Enterprise Content Management business by storm. Their Adobe LiveCycle ES (Enterprise Suite) has just been updated with the content management capabilities of enterprise content management provider Alfresco, helping them deliver to their customers an integrated solution that encompasses data capture, document output, content services and more.

According to Alfresco, this new technology partnership represents a shared vision "for a new class of applications that utilize flexible, open source and Web 2.0 standards that deliver rich and engaging enterprise experiences".

Piggybacking on news from a few weeks ago, Alfresco has officially launched Alfresco Enterprise 2.2. Featured enhancements seek to support the creation, deployment and update of scalable Web 2.0 sites and are targeted toward the company's "most advanced, interactive sites in the entertainment, online gaming, sports, telecommunications and publishing industries."

Curious to know what's changed and see the new look? Read on.

There were no fireworks, no fanfare or screams of "It's Here!, come and get it!". Last week, Alfresco very quietly released the newest version of their enterprise content management system. We here at CMSWire thought that was strange for such a well-known popular ECM.

So we contacted the folks over there. They told us that in a few weeks, Alfresco will officially, formally launch the release of Alfresco Enterprise Edition 2.2. Then they allowed us to grace the presence of their Chief Marketing Officer, Ian Howells, who taught us a few things about the impetus behind the release.

At the same as Enterprise Content Management Provider Vignette is reporting lower expected earnings partially from a decrease in spending in the North American market, open source enterprise content management provider Alfresco is announcing a financial rock solid end to 2007. And 2008 is looking even brighter.

Virtual appliance wizard, JumpBox, Inc., has announced the launch of JumpBox Open, a service that will give users subscription access to their collection of easy-to-deploy virtual appliances for Open Source applications.

The announcement was made at the Under the Radar: The Business of Web Apps conference. JumpBox Open represents a departure for the firm who previously sold their applications and services individually.

Courtesy of our pal, Seth Gottlieb, we learned that Alfresco will soon be releasing Alfresco Dynamic Website (ADW). A part of the Alfresco Community Project, the Dynamic Website combines the expertise and best practices learned from employees and community members to provide "a robust, enterprise-class web site assembly framework that aims to go above and beyond the solutions offered by proprietary companies".

Translation: ADW offers up a much better user interface for managing web projects. A much needed improvement, as Alfresco's WCM "user interface while simple, has been faulted being over-simplified in some cases."

Ladies and gentlemen, the results are in for the first annual Alfresco Content Excellence Awards, where Alfresco's top partners and contributors are recognized in the categories of Partner of the Year, Content Management and Collaboration Implementation of the Year, and Web Content Management Implementation of the Year in Europe and North America.

So without further ado, here are the results:

KnowledgeTree and CorraTech have partnered to go out into the big wide world and promote open source document management software.

KnowledgeTree provides an open source document management product for small to medium sized businesses. CorraTech provides open source system integration, consulting and outsourcing services. They will work together to sell KnowledgeTree's software throughout North America and Europe.

Alfresco Software announced the availability of its second global survey of trends in the use of open source software in the enterprise. The survey, touted as the largest-ever study of open source enterprise stack, revealed that deployments of Ubuntu and Red Hat Enterprise Linux have a market share of 24% and 21% respectively.

Automattic gets a US $29.5M round of Series B funding.

Alfresco secures a US $9M round of Series C funding.

Sun Microsystems pays a cool US $1 Billion for MySQL.

What's the common thread?

What's the best way to insure viability while the threat of global economic recession looms?

Take on more venture funding, and Alfresco did just that to the tune of US $9 million.

Where did the money come from? It was a group effort led by SAP Ventures and including long-time Alfresco backers Accel Partners and Mayfield Fund.

According to Alfresco, the funds will be used to support "continued growth into the enterprise content management market, including product development and acceleration of global expansion plans, particularly in the German, U.S. and Asian markets".

This news could not come at a better time for Alfresco. With recession fears on everyone's mind, this influx of cash should calm the concerns of both employees and customers.

Kudos to Alfresco on their good fortune and to SAP Ventures for what appears to be a wise investment.

Congratulations to Alfresco Software. Thanks to their acclaimed Open Source ECM Solution and social networking capabilities, they have just been named one of Linux Magazine’s Top 20 Companies to Watch in 2008.

Okay, so Alfresco did not "bench" as in "bench-press" 100 million objects (that feat is coming soon), but they did reach and exceed the 100 million document mark in an independently certified benchmark test of Alfresco Enterprise 2.1, conducted by Unisys Corporation. This is pretty darn impressive nonetheless.

It used to be that you weren't a designer if you didn't use QuarkXPress - the product that revolutionized the field of desktop publishing. That was before In Design and other Adobe products came to dominate the field and rallied the next generation of designers.

But Quark has been gaining ground during the past year. They launched QuarkXPress7 with incorporated XML capabilities and released Quark Publishing System 7 which helped to streamline the editorial and creative workflow processes while improving production.

Now, they're partnering with Alfresco Software, Inc. to "develop integrated enterprise-class publishing and content management solutions for professional and corporate publishers."

Every week, it seems, there's a big announcement from Alfresco. Last week 2.9 came out, offering integration with iGoogle and Adobe Flex.

A little bit before that, the company released a cheeky Facebook hookup that turned heads. And in between announcements, Alfresco has been boasting to anyone who'll listen about how great the product is, ragging mercilessly on Sharepoint, and generally acting like drunken cowboys in a frontier saloon.