Alfresco News & Articles

Welcome to the February installment of our what's coming from the open source CMS projects in the next month.

If you're looking through here and feel that your project was left out, we invite you to send us an email at pr@cmswire.com with a pointer to who we should contact at your project for updates.

Everyone has an opinion on who we all should be paying close attention to this year. IDC has their lists, Gartner and Forrester point our theirs in research reports. Even CIO Magazine has their top 20 and there are more than a few you might find interesting.

Oh to have been a fly on the wall at Lotusphere 2010 this past week. With what seemed like a never-ending ode to enterprise social computing, IBM (news, site) announced a number of updates and new projects that must have generated lots of excited whispers in the corners.

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 (news, site) has released version 3.2 of its enterprise content management system. The release allows for cloud-based deployments, streamlines email management and archiving and enhances team-based content collaboration, as well as providing the only supported open source records management tool certified to the 5015.02 standard. Let's take a closer look.

Normally in this space we look back over the current month and forward into the next month at what the various open source CMS projects are up to. But rather than blindly putting out an update for January, we thought we'd look farther ahead into what everyone wants to accomplish throughout next year. Call it our open source 2010 predictions with less guesswork and high hopes.

Here's a quickie for you: John Newton, Alfresco (news, site) Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, was recently named to the AIIM Board of Directors.

The board is comprised of what the company is calling "the 'who's who' of the Enterprise Content Management industry elite" and, after reviewing Newton's background, we'd say he's certainly paid his dues for the title. His achievements include co-founding Documentum (acquired by EMC), and as a member of the OASIS Technical Committee he has helped to spread the Content Management Interoperability Standard (CMIS). 

His CMIS efforts can be seen within Alfresco Community 3.2, which implemented CMIS 1.0 in November of this year. 

"John brings years of experience in all facets of the document and content management history," said AIIM President John Mancini. "His extensive knowledge of this industry is second to none and he will be a welcome addition to our board. I look forward to John's participation and counsel." 

Alfresco (news, site) is expanding its cloud horizons by offering complex configuration deployment options in the cloud for its Enterprise CMS via a partnership with RightScale.

The joint solution is aimed to provide faster full-blown deployments and better management of the cloud infrastructure. RightScale is a cloud computing management company that has a SaaS cloud management platform and supports Amazon EC2 among other clouds.

The RightScale Cloud Management Platform has several features that many organizations may find appealing, including prepackaged cloud-ready ServerTemplates, ability to manage entire deployments centrally, automation throughout the deployment lifecycle, and visibility and control of all levels of a cloud app.

For Alfresco customers it means that they have a way of deploying fully-configured, fault-tolerant and load-balanced Alfresco cloud instances that can automatically scale to meet various infrastructure needs as they arise. As often it is with the cloud, one of the benefits is reduced costs, when customers only pay for what they use, when they use it.

In addition to the recently released Alfresco EC2 image and the Cloud Content Application Developer Program aimed at developers wanting to try out the Enterprise CMS in the cloud, the vendor now also offers a hosted Amazon cloud-based trial of a full implementation of Alfresco Share, using Alfresco Enterprise Edition 3.1, for you to explore.

With the Public Review Process for CMIS officially started, Alfresco (news, site) has come to the table to help organization and developers participate by testing it in Alfresco Community 3.2.

We always look to the analysts to help us narrow down our selection of vendors for things like enterprise content management. We recently had a look at Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management. Now we look to Forrester (news, site), who has released their Q4 Wave for Enterprise Content Management Suites.

First announced early October at Adobe MAX 2009, Adobe (news, site) has officially launched the second version of Adobe LiveCycle ES and prepares to support enterprises as they move their applicatins and servies to the cloud.

Back in September, Alfresco (news, site) released an Amazon EC2 image for those wanting to use Alfresco Server in the cloud. This image has recently received some significant updates that might interest those who've been following recent developments with Alfresco products.

Welcome to the November 2009 installment of our what's coming from the open source CMS projects in the next 30 days.

If you're looking through here and feel that your project was left out, we invite you to send us an email at pr@cmswire.com with a pointer to who we should contact for your project updates.

The web content management space is not homogeneous. And while the recently released Open Source CMS Market Share Report clearly highlighted the ongoing dominance of LAMP-based content management systems -- these systems are not the only game in town.

In this article I look at brand leaders who have chosen to build their content management software on the Java or .NET technology stacks. Systems with strong brand awareness and adoption rates include Alfresco, Jahia, Liferay and OpenCMS on the Java side, and DotNetNuke and Umbraco from the .NET camp.

What’s the government’s excuse now? That’s the question that will be on the minds of many at Alfresco, now that it’s official. Alfresco has achieved DoD 5015.2 certification -- the first open source Enterprise CMS to do so.

The fanfare isn’t so much that Alfresco is the first, (although congrats, anyway!) but rather that after delivering what the G-Men said they wanted, it's time for the government types to start buying in.

Open Source is in Favor

The open source movement has gained considerable momentum in recent years and especially since the Obama Administration came to power. But Alfresco’s Chairman and CTO, John Newton, assures us that’s not what drove their ambition, and further that they've been working on this for quite some time (there are, one might note, Alfresco Records Management tutorials on YouTube dating from April 2008).

But are there any G-Men lined up at their door now since the certification was posted publicly? While no  one on the Alfresco team would say for sure, it is understood that three of the government’s largest agencies have shown interest. And let’s not forget about the non-government workers -- rumor has it that they were slobbering over it at the recent ARMA conference.

On First Blush They Are Looking Good

The beauty of the DoD certification is that everyone is covered, and gets to share in the fun. For many, the DoD certification is standard checkbox when evaluating candidate records management solutions.

Thanks to Carlos Miguens, Alfresco's global training director, (and all around project manager guru for the DoD certification initiative), CMSWire was treated to a demo of the certified solution. And we can confidently say that it’s going to be hard to resist the temptation to go open source.

Alfresco Records Management - The File Plan

Bundled with Community and Enterprise Versions

Their Records Management Module was introduced with Alfresco Community 3.2 -- so it's available both in the free community product and in the non-free enterprise version -- and is built on the Alfresco Share/Surf platform. It sports the following components:

• a Forms system
• metadata management
• lifecycle management
• open import/export capabilities
• enhanced auditing
• improved workflow controls

With its simple but sophisticated UI and automated controls that let administrators set permissions, disposition and access across a single scalable repository, we reckon users will be able to effectively save time and cut costs.

Alfresco Records Management -- Record (Document) Preview with Metadata

By enhancing the already sleek tools offered in Alfresco Community 3.2, the government-certified version is simple enough for novice records managers, yet powerful enough for the most savvy (hint, hint US Archives).

But will this be incentive enough to entice the government to address what some have called the massive hemorrhaging of the US government's electronic history? Here's three cheers to the records managers who say, "Yes we can!"

Note: If you want to learn more about Aflresco Records Management, you can tune into the company's upcoming webinar on Alfresco Records Management, running on October 29th at 11am Eastern time.