CMS Weekly

Posts Tagged ‘Alfresco’

Alfresco Open Source CMS one of a number of Open Source products used to assemble a solution for AQA
Transcript From Episode CMSW2009-09-28

An interview with Peter Morris, program manager and Justin Codd, systems architect on open source products used in a solution for the largest British college exam board Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA). The project requirements were a secure extranet capable of delivering materials to 35,000 examiners and moderators at low cost. Also, meet an insanely tight schedule of 6 weeks to deploy, test and get it into production. Optaros consultants were hired to work with existing team members on integrating open source technology with their existing architecture.

Cost savings are believed to be in the range of £100,000, mostly just in printing and shipping costs for the required materials. Lessons learned – could be applied to most any project. Morris and Codd’s Dos and Don’ts for taking the open source path:

Do…

Apply the same levels of due diligence and assessment applied to open-source-based products to any other proprietary solutions that may also be in the running.

Carefully research the reputation and operational models of any organizations whose open-source products and services you are investigating for eventual deployment.

Clearly communicate with management the aims and goals of assessing and implementing open-source products and regularly brief them with progress.

Evaluate and assess any candidate open-source products and services against a common benchmark incorporating any key business specific requirements in the assessment.

Examine subscription (licensing) and support models of open-source solutions, and understand how they contrast with proprietary commercial software vendors models.

Understand how open-source software and services compare and contrast with proprietary commercial products.

Don’t….

Skimp on conducting comparative evaluations and assessments.

Assume that open-source technologies can necessarily be implemented to a quicker timescale or a lower manpower overhead than proprietary ones.

Assume that you will always be able to find a viable open-source product to service your particular set of organizational or technical requirements: so be realistic and pragmatic when presenting the case for open-source to management.

Skimp on support or rely on community support alone for important systems and services.

Make your organization’s first venture to open source higher-risk than it needs to be. Explore running open-source alongside existing proprietary software.

Overlook or ignore the gap that may exist between the current skills of staff and those that may be required to use/operate any new open-source products or services that are introduced into an organization.

This Week’s Episode

Alfresco is offering “master classes” on CMIS, Share customization, RM & Impl best practices at our fall #Alfresco meetups
Transcript From Episode CMSW2009-09-28

6 Alfresco meetups have been scheduled for the US and Europe. Washington, DC and Madrid on Oct 20; Atlanta GA and Milan Italy on the 27th or 28th of October. Frankfurt, Germany on Nov 3; Los Angeles, CA on Nov 10.

A day or two left to get the early bird fee (end of Sept deadline). This event is designed for Alfresco Enterprise Customers, Certified Partners, Active Community Members and Developers. Sessions are suitable for both business and technical users of Alfresco.

These are informal one day events for updating and educating Alfresco Enterprise Customers, Certified Partners, Active Community Members and Developers on the latest developments at Alfresco Software. They also provide the usual networking opportunities as well as Alfresco Master Classes.

Specific topics include

• Getting Started with CMIS
• Records Management Trends & Usage Best Practices
• Customizing Alfresco Share
• Implementation & Migration Project Management
• Rollout and Adoption Best Practices

This Week’s Episode

Alfresco vs Sharepoint vs Nuxeo
Transcript From Episode CMSW2009-08-10

After an opening caveat that all product comparisons are flawed, Sirius Corp blogger tcallway proceeds to compare open source ECM products Alfresco and Nuxeo with the deeply entrenched Microsoft SharePoint.

SharePoint claims a broad range of functionality including BI, records and document management, web content management and eForms. But it comes with a hefty price tag, and you never stop paying – it’s a lease program with license fees on a host of products – in fact, everything in the Microsoft Stack that is also required to make the package complete.

By comparison, Alfresco is free and runs on Linux, Unix and Mac, in addition to Windows, and supports any LDAP server. Use MySQL or PostgreSQL with Alfresco, and don’t fret purchasing an environment to extend Alfresco – it’s all included. And you don’t need licenses to provide your services to your clients.

However, it’s only the Labs Edition that’s free. The code for the Enterprise version is not available, and this version does have an annual subscription, but is worth it.

The reviewer went on to compare Nuxeo, another open source solution, with Alfresco. He claims both are beautiful, fast and feature-rich, but liked the Nuxeo UI with it’s drag and drop file management better than Alfresco. Nuxeo runs on all mainstream OS’s and is very extensible, and the code is available for its enterprise version. Close, but not close enough. But when the reviewer tried to reach a live person, in the main UK office, or the French office they were forwarded to, the Nuxeo offering came up lacking.

This Week’s Episode

Next #Alfresco Tech Talk Live: Rich McKnight on Alfresco/Drupal Integration, 12PM EST Aug 21, 2009.
Transcript From Episode CMSW2009-08-24

For our Alfresco and Drupal aficionados, the topic at last Friday’s a bi-weekly Alfresco Tech Talk was an interesting demo of how to use Alfresco and Drupal together. The guest speaker was Rich McKnight, an Alfresco Senior Consultant. Rich’s 25 year career has included work in a number of different areas including enterprise content management, web site development, telecommunications, and CAD.

In this demo, he showed how to leverage the strengths of both Alfresco and Drupal by taking the content from Alfresco web forms and presenting it as Drupal nodes. This is accomplished by using an Alfresco callback to post the content to Drupal using XMLRPC. Drupal can even keep track of the version history by using the unique identifiers from both systems.

Members of both communities were able to learn about the other system by attending this presentation.

The next session will be Friday Sept 4th. All sessions are recorded. To attend live, or hear past recordings, go to wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Live.

This Week’s Episode

Alfresco Meetups planned for Oct/Nov’09 US cities: DC, L.A., Atl.
Transcript From Episode CMSW2009-08-24

Alfresco Community Manager Nancy Garrity reports Alfresco Meetups are in the works for Oct and Nov in LA, Atlanta and Washington DC, as well as the European cities of Frankfurt, Madrid, and Milan. To submit a speaker proposal for the US and Europe Meetups, go to bit.ly/vGN7i. Anyone interested in sponsoring these events should email events@alfresco.com. Specific dates for each event are now posted on alfresco.com.

This Week’s Episode