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Have you used/worked with Alfresco? #content-management
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Gian Jagai
Hi,
I was curious if anyone in the SIKM group has used or knows of someone who has used the Alfresco Open Source Content Mgmt platform (http://www.alfresco.com/). Appreciate your thoughts and insights. And if you compared it with any other platforms. Thanks Gian... HDS Global Services Knowledge Management Program
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Cornejo Castro, Miguel <miguel.cornejo@...>
Hi Gian,
I've done several concepts on it (practical trials mostly),
no full roll-outs. It's a very solid document management platform, very friendly
for developers, with nice touches that will or will not be relevant to you
depending on goals. Integrates very well with other tools, and supports both MS
and open standards. The coming version 3.0 showcased in Barcelona adds a further
layer of collaboration tools and tricks, plus better tools for building
interfaces, that make it a great KM tool.
Sticking to current features and comparisons with tools
I've worked with and implemented, IMHO... :
- It's nimbler than FileNet but (on a document management
level) at least as good, without some of the worst gaffes of IBM's acquisition.
Alfresco is much more friendly for customization. Good support (on both
Community and Enterprise versions) beats my experience of FileNet. No per-user
(or other) license costs makes it cost-effective on both large and
cash-strapped organizations. You can get quality integrators for both. On the
process automatization level (BPM) they are not on the same league: while
Alfresco supports administrative routing and can be proficient for most uses
(indeed I've used it to teach practical BPR), FileNet's processes can be
exponentially more complex, leading to powerful integrations with other
tools.
- It's far more serious than Sharepoint. While MS's tool
does a decent job of supporting team collaboration, Sharepoint is very
bad at the document management angle (lack of serious searching, for one, makes
it a bad KM solution), a poor integrated web solution, and not though for use as
a serious development platform. It's like a house without the foundations.
Alfresco has very good foundations and currently a nice collaboration feature
set (conversation support stands out), but as of today, the MS solution
incorporates some tricks that Alfresco does not have (wiki, blog). Still,
Sharepoint's integrated tricks are substandard: neither the bulletin boards nor
the blog nor the wiki are especially good nor stand well against the
competition. And Sharepoint locks you into a Microsoft environment while you can
use Alfresco in a mixed house of Linux, Mac and Windows (and Open Office and MS
Office and...).
Re the "open source vs corporate support" question,
Alfresco has hit a sweet spot because it has both:
That's about it for current features. If you're looking for
the collaboration toolset, though, you would do well to browse the new
Community feature set... full integration of wiki and blog stalwarts such as
Mediawiki and Wordpress are just half the fun. I especially like the way they
manage collaboration with people outside the organization.
Hope it helps a bit. Of course, the relevance of all this
depends on the goals you want to attain with the tool... there's better tools
for many uses.
Best regards,
Miguel De: sikmleaders@... [mailto:sikmleaders@...] En nombre de gjagai Enviado el: lunes, 30 de junio de 2008 22:45 Para: sikmleaders@... Asunto: [sikmleaders] Have you used/worked with Alfresco? Hi,
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Gian Jagai
Hi Miguel,
Thanks very much for the detailed feedback! Seems that you have done some trials with it. Did you try to see how it might integrate with Sharepoint? I only ask because we have sharepoint and users are getting the hang of it. But I can see other groups wanting to by pass it and use Alfresco. Thus linking the two at some level would be useful. Peace, Gian... --- In sikmleaders@..., "Cornejo Castro, Miguel" <miguel.cornejo@...> wrote: roll-outs. It's a very solid document management platform, very friendly for developers, with nice touches that will or will not be relevant to you depending on goals. Integrates very well with other tools, and supports both MS and open standards. The coming version 3.0 showcased in Barcelona adds a further layer of collaboration tools and tricks, plus better tools for building interfaces, that make it a great KM tool. with and implemented, IMHO... : least as good, without some of the worst gaffes of IBM's acquisition. Alfresco is much more friendly for customization. Good support (on both Community and Enterprise versions) beats my experience of FileNet. No per-user (or other) license costs makes it cost-effective on both large and cash-strapped organizations. You can get quality integrators for both. On the process automatization level (BPM) they are not on the same league: while Alfresco supports administrative routing and can be proficient for most uses (indeed I've used it to teach practical BPR), FileNet's processes can be exponentially more complex, leading to powerful integrations with other tools. decent job of supporting team collaboration, Sharepoint is very bad at the document management angle (lack of serious searching, for one, makes it a bad KM solution), a poor integrated web solution, and not though for use as a serious development platform. It's like a house without the foundations. Alfresco has very good foundations and currently a nice collaboration feature set (conversation support stands out), but as of today, the MS solution incorporates some tricks that Alfresco does not have (wiki, blog). Still, Sharepoint's integrated tricks are substandard: neither the bulletin boards nor the blog nor the wiki are especially good nor stand well against the competition. And Sharepoint locks you into a Microsoft environment while you can use Alfresco in a mixed house of Linux, Mac and Windows (and Open Office and MS Office and...). a sweet spot because it has both: http://emekaeme.wordpress.com/2008/04/25/talking-open-source-with-john-newton-alfresco-ceo/ collaboration toolset, though, you would do well to browse the new Community feature set... full integration of wiki and blog stalwarts such as Mediawiki and Wordpress are just half the fun. I especially like the way they manage collaboration with people outside the organization. the goals you want to attain with the tool... there's better tools for many uses. En nombre de gjagai Enviado el: lunes, 30 de junio de 2008 22:45
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Cornejo Castro, Miguel <miguel.cornejo@...>
Hi Gian,
I think you can get Sharepoint to actually save documents
in Alfresco, but I don't really know how it's done (I had an analogous
modification done, so it would save in an EverSuite implementation, and it was a
quirky project indeed).
On the other hand, integrating "portlets" of Alfresco
document management in a Sharepoint collaboration site should not be too
difficult (to use instead of the default Sharepoint document repositories).
Again, I have not done it, but I've seen some examples.
At this point, integrating both worlds may be useful if
possibly clunky and expensive (or maybe not: a good integrator works wonders).
But as I was commenting, looking forward Sharepoint should have a hard time
keeping up feature-per-feature. So I'd probably go the second way, if any,
depending on the costs. That would let your users keep most of their Sharepoint
collaboration features (until they can be upgraded, possibly) while building on
solid document management.
Hope
it helps. Best regards,
Miguel
De: sikmleaders@... [mailto:sikmleaders@...] En nombre de gjagai Enviado el: miércoles, 02 de julio de 2008 23:17 Para: sikmleaders@... Asunto: [sikmleaders] Re: Have you used/worked with Alfresco? Hi Miguel,
--- In sikmleaders@ ...> wrote: > > Hi Gian, > > I've done several concepts on it (practical trials mostly), no full roll-outs. It's a very solid document management platform, very friendly for developers, with nice touches that will or will not be relevant to you depending on goals. Integrates very well with other tools, and supports both MS and open standards. The coming version 3.0 showcased in Barcelona adds a further layer of collaboration tools and tricks, plus better tools for building interfaces, that make it a great KM tool. > > Sticking to current features and comparisons with tools I've worked with and implemented, IMHO... : > > - It's nimbler than FileNet but (on a document management level) at least as good, without some of the worst gaffes of IBM's acquisition. Alfresco is much more friendly for customization. Good support (on both Community and Enterprise versions) beats my experience of FileNet. No per-user (or other) license costs makes it cost-effective on both large and cash-strapped organizations. You can get quality integrators for both. On the process automatization level (BPM) they are not on the same league: while Alfresco supports administrative routing and can be proficient for most uses (indeed I've used it to teach practical BPR), FileNet's processes can be exponentially more complex, leading to powerful integrations with other tools. > > - It's far more serious than Sharepoint. While MS's tool does a decent job of supporting team collaboration, Sharepoint is very bad at the document management angle (lack of serious searching, for one, makes it a bad KM solution), a poor integrated web solution, and not though for use as a serious development platform. It's like a house without the foundations. Alfresco has very good foundations and currently a nice collaboration feature set (conversation support stands out), but as of today, the MS solution incorporates some tricks that Alfresco does not have (wiki, blog). Still, Sharepoint's integrated tricks are substandard: neither the bulletin boards nor the blog nor the wiki are especially good nor stand well against the competition. And Sharepoint locks you into a Microsoft environment while you can use Alfresco in a mixed house of Linux, Mac and Windows (and Open Office and MS Office and...). > > Re the "open source vs corporate support" question, Alfresco has hit a sweet spot because it has both: > http://emekaeme. > > That's about it for current features. If you're looking for the collaboration toolset, though, you would do well to browse the new Community feature set... full integration of wiki and blog stalwarts such as Mediawiki and Wordpress are just half the fun. I especially like the way they manage collaboration with people outside the organization. > > Hope it helps a bit. Of course, the relevance of all this depends on the goals you want to attain with the tool... there's better tools for many uses. > > Best regards, > > Miguel > > ____________ > De: sikmleaders@ En nombre de gjagai > Enviado el: lunes, 30 de junio de 2008 22:45 > Para: sikmleaders@ > Asunto: [sikmleaders] Have you used/worked with Alfresco? > > > Hi, > > I was curious if anyone in the SIKM group has used or knows of someone > who has used the Alfresco Open Source Content Mgmt platform > (http://www.alfresco > > Appreciate your thoughts and insights. And if you compared it with any > other platforms. > > Thanks > Gian... > HDS Global Services Knowledge Management Program >
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