Alfresco is a world’s leading open source alternative to Enterprise Content Management (ECM) developed and supported by large open source community. Alfresco is cost effective and provides best state of the art features as compare to other commercial vendor for ECM solution. Alfresco is low cost ECM software with many features and benefits.
Alfresco is available in two versions community and Enterprise.
1. Alfresco Community Edition (Free)
Community Version is free to download and has GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) with support of open standard model. Provides all the features as of Enterprise and purely support by community and its members, the current released version of community edition is 4.0 in DEC 2011.
2. Alfresco Enterprise Edition (Paid for Subscription)
Enterprise edition is open source ECM solution provider with annual enterprise subscription charges, Alfresco doesn’t charge any enterprise license fee. The Subscription services include Technical Support, Alfresco Network access, Maintenance releases , Extended QA Process and more. The current released version of enterprise edition is Alfresco Enterprise 3.4.
Features
- Document Management
- Record Management
- Web Content Management
- Enterprise Collaboration
- Content Platform
- Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS)
- Activity BPM (New)
- Enterprise Content Management
- Social Content Management
- Portal Integration
- Knowledge Management
- Imaging
- Common Internet File System(CIFS)
- Compatible with windows and Linux
- Microsoft Office and Open office integration
- Raid Development
- High Availability, Clustering and Security
- Internationalization
- Version Controlling
- Light weight scripts
Benefits
- Lower Total cost of ownership than other ECM systems with low cost subscription model.
- Built by team of leading members form reputed ECM products like FileNet, Documentum, OpenText, Interwoven and more.
- Flexible and open standard architecture.
- Built using open source components like Spring, Hibernate, Lucene and MyFaces.
- Based on Aspect Oriented Programming
- Avoids vendor lock-in
- Integration with SAP, IBM Lotus, Microsoft Office, SharePoint and Google docs.
- Provides strong competence to the commercial equivalents.
SharePoint and Alfresco are bound together by a ommcon factor both are ECMs Enterprise Content Management systems. Emphasis on Enterprise. But another market SharePoint has been positioning itself strongly for is the SMB market. This creates room for content management systems for SMBs which position themselves as an alternative to SharePoint. The emphasis on this market is not on backend robustness, but solutions that offer feature robustness and ease of setup, while cloaking the backend all SMB needs. You will notice that this niche is getting hotter by the day. Google is positioning itself in its niche with (as part of its overall strategy to give MS a run for tis money), and smaller players Like have also found a firm foothold by virtue of having robust solutions and being an early mover.
For content management in the enterprise, Thru has a unique and valuable solution.
My company uses it and it’s great.
http://www.thruinc.com/enterprise-content-management/