ECM Players - Alfresco

Alfresco

Since 2005, Alfresco has led the drive for open-source ECM to become more widely accepted.
Alfresco supports two business models: (1) a community version in the true sense of open source; (2) an enterprise version that is built on open-source technology but for which Alfresco charges a subscription fee to cover maintenance and support.
Alfresco provides document management, WCM, records management, DAM, collaboration and imaging capabilities both directly and through OEM partnerships.
Website: http://www.alfresco.com/

Strengths

• Alfresco's key OEM relationships with Adobe, Quark and Ricoh, among others, provides some assurance of viability.
• Alfresco's management, partners and industry visibility all contribute to its relevance in a competitive market — as do lower entry and maintenance costs.
• Its focus on the use of social networking, mashups and the standards that support them will keep application developers interested in Alfresco.

Cautions

• Alfresco's suite is still evolving and its WCM capabilities are not as mature as its core document management services.
• Alfresco provides published application programming interfaces (APIs), but does not have packaged, certified integration with ERP or CRM applications such as those of SAP and Oracle (Siebel CRM). This level of integration is typically a prerequisite for transactional content processes, and some Alfresco partners have built these for customers.
• As is not uncommon with open-source software, customers of Alfresco sometimes need a higher degree of technical competency to manage implementation.