"Jeff Potts has an update to his cogent post on Alfresco's insularity. According to Jeff, John Newton and Kevin Cochrane promised to create a system that would allow non-Alfresco employees to contribute to the Alfresco code base. The changes are expected when Alfresco releases 3.0 of the Enterprise Edition. At this time, the Community Edition (which Alfresco treats as a "lab" for introducing new, unsupported features) may start to accept contributions from non-Alfrescans. The prospect of committer status is unsure."

Complete Story at Enter Content Here

This is a big thing for Alfresco.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – March 11, 2008 – Alfresco today announced the award of a GSA listing, GS-35F-0131R, providing government customers with the ability to conveniently purchase and deploy Alfresco ECM solutions.

When you want to sell big to the federal government, a GSA listing for your product is a must. Most government agencies are required to first look at the GSA listing before they make purchases. Only if their needs are not met by GSA are they then able to look elsewhere to make their purchases. At least that's how I understand it.

 

Alfresco Software today announced the winners of its 2007 Annual Content Excellence Awards. The debut year for the awards program recognizes its top partners and contributors in the categories of Partner of the Year, Content Management and Collaboration Implementation of the Year, Web Content Management Implementation of the Year, and Contributor of the Year, in Europe and North America.

Complete Story

Alfresco Software released a press release on the results of a survey by them intended to help determine "how companies evaluate and deploy open source and proprietary software stacks in the enterprise". There is some very interesting numbers summarized in the press release that should be of interest to not only using those Alfresco products, but to almost anyone using enterprise software. Some of the more interesting numbers and statistics pulled from the study:

• Operating system: “Users evaluate on a Windows laptop and deploy on Linux” – 41% of evaluations were on Windows, dropping to 26% for deployments, whereas 51% of deployments were on Linux.
• Linux: “Ubuntu and Red Hat pull away, SUSE remains flat by comparison in the US” – Ubuntu 24%, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 21%.
• Windows: “Users stick with XP and 2003, Vista lags at 2%” – XP 63%, Windows 2003 28%.
• Databases: “Sun still shines on MySQL” – MySQL 60%, Oracle 14%, MS SQL Server 13%.

I especially find it interesting that while open source MySQL is the dominate database used on the enterprise, two propriety database systems (Oracle and MS SQL) follow. I wonder where PostGresSQL falls on the list? But wait, there are two points I want to make about this study.

"I'm not sure who Gartner talks to when it puts together its famous "Hype Cycle" reports, but I'm finding it hard to believe that it talks with enterprises. I was recently reading through its "Hype Cycle for Open-Source Software, 2007" report, and was astounded to find out that I've been tricked by paying customers into believing that they were, well, paying."

Complete Story

"Alfresco today announced the first open source Social Computing Platform for the enterprise. The new release integrates Alfresco’s popular ECM software with leading Web 2.0 tools and services such as Facebook, iGoogle, Adobe Flex, MediaWiki, TypePad and WordPress."

Complete Story

"Alfresco integrates a number of open source components to produce a Java-based ECM system that can be used for document and Web content management, records management, and knowledge management.

Both Telstra-owned Sensis in Victoria and Curtin University of Technology in Western Australia have successfully trialed Alfresco and are now using it in production."

Complete Story

I'm still in need to read this InfoWorld article in its entirety, but thought it was worth mentioning now.  InfoWorld's Mike Heck has written an article, Open source CMSes prove well worth the price, which reviews and compares five content management systems.  The five CMS under review are Alfresco, DotNetNuke, Drupal, Joomla, and Plone.

The good news is that all five CMS ranked Very Good or higher. However, Alfresco was the only CMS that ranked Excellent with a score of 9.2.  Plone 3.0 received the second highest ranking with a score of 8.6.  DotNetNuke and Joomla tied for third and fourth place with a score of 8.4 which put Drupal a fraction lower with a score of 8.3.  While none of these CMS ranked poorly, I'm sure the open source communities are bound to scrutinize over how the individual criteria were scored and ranked.

"John Newton: I have been interested in wikis in the enterprise for a while. Do you have any general comments on how they can be used?

Jimmy Wales: Wikis have been used to collaborate on all sorts of documents. They have even been used to manage schedules. I have seen people abandon [Microsoft] Outlook and schedule in a wiki as a better alternative.

The big difference is a design change in process. People don’t necessarily want to use a CMS. You need to drop the a priori assumptions on how you do workflow. The old notions of workflow are too cumbersome. Wikis provide enormous flexibility in how users can work together."

Complete Interview

InfoWorld just announced the thirty-six open source winners of their 2007 Bossie Awards. Open source applications related in the arena of management systems which made the "top 36" list include SugarCRM (CRM), Openbravo (ERP), Liferay Portal (CMS - Portal), and Alfresco (CMS).