ECM and Open Source Software: A Disruptive Force in ECM Solutions

ECM and Open Source Software: A Disruptive Force in ECM Solutions Jeff Potts Practice Director, ECM Optaros: http://www.optaros.com Blog: http://ecmarchitect.com

Background 1994 1997 2002 2006 Groupware KM/ECM Open Source ECM 2007 2008 Focus Tech Firm 2007 Alfresco Community Contributor of the Year

Agenda
The Rise of Open Source
Open Source & ECM
Significant Players At-a-Glance
Who's Already Using Open Source ECM?
Getting Started

The Rise of Open Source Photo Credit: SouthernView

Audience Poll How many of you use open source in production systems today?

Answer: All of you do
2005 study by Information Week and Optaros showed 85% of respondents acknowledged their use of open source
Over 50% of enterprises with Oracle users have deployed Linux in production (Burton Group quoting a 2007 survey by the Independent Oracle users group)‏
Photo Credit: YouTube

Open source trends
More than half of all web servers (>91 million) run Apache (Netcraft, September, 2008)‏
~2.0 million total Alfresco downloads (Alfresco, October, 2008)‏
1.4 million Drupal downloads last year (July 2007 – June 2008)‏
2.5 million articles (in English alone) on wikipedia, the world's 8 th busiest web site according to Alexa (October, 2008)‏
4 million blogs hosted on wordpress.com which Alexa ranks as #28 (October, 2008)‏
Drupal and Joomla web sites handle more traffic than 17 of the Fortune 20 corporate sites (Burton Group, 2008)‏
OS Database Web/App Server Developer Tools Applications Cloud/SAAS Open Source

“ Open Source is worth $60 billion”
John Powell, CEO, Alfresco (a commercial Open Source company)‏
Measure of the cost savings by customers who have chosen open source over commercial
ComputerworldUK, May 15, 2008
“ Open source is now the world's largest software industry....You measure it in the savings people are making in licence fees....Licence fees don't add any value to the product and are purely a transfer of wealth from consumers to software vendors.”

Open Source Acquisitions
RedHat acquired JBoss in June, 2006 for $350 million
Citrix acquired XenSource in August of 2007 for $500 million
Yahoo acquired Zimbra in September of 2007 for $350 million
Sun acquired MySQL in January of 2008 for $1 billion
See also “Open Source Gold Rush” blog post by Matt Asay on cnet and “Open Source For Sale” at InformationWeek

Why our clients choose open source
Better fit
Get what's common “for free”, customize for fit
Standards-based
Skills availability/desirability
Interoperability
Transparency
Source code
Issue tracking
Direction
See also “Why Open Source?” on ECM Architect.

Don't Build or Buy...
Building custom applications from scratch
Custom solutions that address requirements
Lengthy time-to-market
Maintenance and support difficulties
Buying large packaged applications from large vendors
Bloated applications
Over-serving the market – only 10% of the functionality in use
Software doesn’t meet specific enterprise needs and must be customized significantly
Vendors are difficult to influence and customers are “locked in”

...Instead, Assemble
Open source facilitates application assembly
Standards based
Widely used, tested, scalable components
Highly modular
Internationalized

Open Source & ECM Photo Credit: flyfshrmn98

Innovation waves - ECM and related Technologies Archiving Document Management Knowledge Mgmt Portal Smart Enterprise Suites Workflow / BPM Open Standards Open Source Innovation 1990 2010 Industry consolidation

Open Source Content Management
There are hundreds of thousands of open source projects available today
Of those, hundreds are open source content management packages
Narrow the list to those “enterprise ready” offerings with commercial support
Segment by language (Java, PHP, Python, Perl)‏
Segment by primary use (Community/Portal vs. Repository)‏
Many open source content management projects focus on WCM

Significant ECM Players Photo Credit: crowt59

Open Source Document Management Players 0 1 2 3 4 5 0 1 2 3 4 5 Application capabilities (Large) enterprise readiness Alfresco sTeam Contineo Plone Nuxeo KnowledgeTree Owl Community Legend

Open Source Enterprise 2.0 Components Content Repository Blogging Wiki Search Collaborative Filtering Social Networking Forums / Real-time COFI Portal/Presentation

Alfresco at-a-glance
Founded in 2005 by John Newton
First production release was at the end of June, 2005
Management
John Newton (Co-founder & CTO) – Founder of Documentum; founding developer of Ingres; 25 years in enterprise software
John Powell (Co-founder & CEO) – COO of Business Objects; President, Oracle UK; 25 years selling enterprise software
Kevin Cochrane (VP, Engineering) - Employee #4 at Interwoven, then VP of Product Management (built TeamSite)‏
Matt Asay (VP, Business Development) - Founder, Open Source Business Conference; co-founder, Novell’s Linux Business Office; board member, OSI
Engineering
All 11 original engineers came from Documentum

Alfresco at-a-glance: Functionality
Solid ECM platform
Core content services (Search, Metadata, Security, CIAO)‏
Advanced workflow engine (JBoss jBPM)‏
Ability to access repository as a file share through CIFS (as well as FTP, WebDAV, SMTP)‏
LDAP authentication
Many API options (Java, JavaScript, FreeMarker, REST, SOAP)‏
Maturing WCM platform
Technology agnostic
Snapshots, rollback, sandboxes/virtualization
Web forms, multiple renditions
Deployment to test servers, production servers, other instances
Emerging collaboration platform
Supports the Sharepoint Protocol for Office integration
Embedded wiki
Blogs
“ Share” client is aimed at team collaboration

Alfresco Share Screenshot

Alfresco as SharePoint Killer?
Alfresco's ability to support the SharePoint Protocol is huge
Alfresco Share currently lacks a couple of features popular with SharePoint users
Custom lists/views
User-defined web forms
Alfresco offers:
Much better scalability (No hard limits in number of documents or search index, unlike SharePoint)‏
Choice at all points in the stack

Acquia at-a-glance
Founded in 2008 by Dries Buytaert and Jay Batson
Commercial company behind Drupal
Dries started Drupal in 1999 while in college as a “Message Board”
Acquia Drupal is a certified, commercially supported Drupal distribution
Acquia provides commercial support for Acquia Drupal

Acquia at-a-glance: Functionality
Primarily a “Community” platform
Social networking
Collaborative sites
Intranet applications
Runs best on LAMP
Thousands of modules available
Five star ratings, Content Construction Kit (CCK), Podcast, Blogs, Forums, etc.
Acquia Network automatically checks for software updates

Drupal Screenshot

Liferay at-a-glance
Created in 2000 for the non-profit sector by Brian Chan
Liferay, Inc. is the commercial company behind Liferay
Commercial support
Professional services
Sun recently made a major investment in Liferay

Liferay at-a-glance: Functionality
Java-based portal server
JSR-168, JSR-286 compliance
Runs in an application server
Includes basic content management repository
Drag-and-drop portlet arrangement
60+ portlets available OOTB
RSS, Forums, Blogs, Wikis, Polls, Content Management, Social Networking, etc.
User profiles, SSO, LDAP integration
Infinite number of sub-sites

Liferay Screenshot

Who's Using Open Source ECM Today? Photo Credit: tribalicious

Who's Already There? (Selected Optaros ECM Clients)‏
McKesson
Procter & Gamble
Activision
Electronic Arts
Sony Pictures
Endeca
EMD Serono
Rodale
Fox Broadcasting
Neiman Marcus
Travelocity
Ackerman & McQueen
Swisscom Mobile
NXP Semiconductor
Lifetime
Cisco
New York Times

What are they doing?
A lot of:
Intranet 2.0
Document management
Business Process Management
Portals
Team Collaboration
WCM
Community/Web 2.0 sites
Vignette/Stellent/etc. replacements
Some:
Digital Asset Management
Records Management
Not Much:
Imaging
Fixed storage

Client Case Study: Endeca The Company: Building a partner community for innovation The Challenge: Assembly Highlights:
180 users the first day, 360 the first week, more than 1000 the first month
Site integrates portal, content, and blog servers with a seamless user interface
Content is personalized to match user preferences
Content approval rules can be adjusted for each department
Reusable assembly for internal Endeca community (e.g. blogging, Wiki)‏
Endeca Technologies, a next-generation information access company
Information access platform is used by many leading companies and government agencies
Headquarters in Cambridge, MA, USA and operations worldwide
Create an online knowledge-sharing and collaboration community for employees, customers, and partners
Provide controlled access to thousands of technical documents, best practices, code samples, case studies, and other content
Address department-specific requirements for metadata and content approval
Support future initiatives for interaction and participation
Meet a 13-week deadline
“ The solution that Optaros assembled for us lets us interact with our audiences with speed, flexibility and differentiation.”
Colby Dyess
Product Manager
Endeca

Client Case Study: Endeca Building a partner community for innovation (Cont’d)‏ Key Components:
Liferay Portal [JSR-168]
Forums: Liferay Forums
Alfresco: Content Presentation [JSR- 170]
Additional AJAX integration with script.aculo.us, prototype
DWR (Direct Web Remoting) toolkit for javascript
Blogs: Apache Roller
Open Source Software Web Presentation:
Used to integrate Liferay with Alfresco
Web Services:
Alfresco content repository
JBoss Application Server
Red Hat Directory Server (LDAP) for user and group management
Back-end Components: Differentiators:
Enterprise 2.0 open source assembly designed for Endeca’s needs and preferences
Content approval rules are adjustable for individual departments using Alfresco's embedded JBPM workflow engine
Enterprise 2.0 stack can be leveraged and reused for Endeca’s internal community site
Loose assembly architecture allows easy replacement of pluggable modules and the ability to experiment
“ By offering our customers and partners a seamless way to educate themselves and interact with peers we are creating loyalty to the site and to Endeca.” - Colby Dyess Product Manager Endeca
Colby Dyess
Product Manager
Endeca
“ Endeca customers and partners have been the driving force behind our initiatives to encourage relationship building and the open exchange of ideas and best practices. EDeN is the culmination of these efforts…”
Vibrant online community builds stronger relationships with customers and partners
Users can access thousands of technical documents, tools and utilities, code samples, case studies and other content
Metadata tags identify relevant search content to match user profile
Social networking and knowledge-sharing for e-business (blogs for executives and technical staff, feedback, forums)‏
New participation and collaboration features coming soon
Endeca Search Engine
Client Preferred Component Flexibility: Differentiation:

Endeca EDeN Architecture Batch Job SOAP WS JDBC JDBC
User Profiles
Preferences
Presentation Services
RSS Portlet
Forums Portlet
Custom Search Portlets
Custom Alfresco Portlets
Site-wide Search
Guided Navigation
Content Spotlighting
SOAP WS LDAP
Custom Content Model
Advanced Workflow
Custom Actions
Minor Web Client Cust.
All File-based Content
CTO Blog
Engineer Blogs

Early wireframe

Screen Shots

Getting Started Photo Credit: jdtornow

Open Source Challenges
Support
Look for strong communities
Prefer projects with commercial support
Bright side: Choice
Documentation
Nebulous road map
Tends to be much more democratic
Need-driven, developer-driven, not vendor-driven
Non-traditional sales cycle
Usually minimal marketing and sales budgets
Bright side: Zero acquisition cost means cost of failure is low

Evaluating Open Source
Evaluate like you would a commercial vendor
Features
Architectural fit
Support
References
Proof-of-concept/Bake-off
Don't just check boxes: Most of the time, Open source ECM is on par with commercial offerings
Cost savings should not be your number one driver
Up-front license outlay will likely be redirected to services

Measuring “community” strength
Activity
Releases, minor & major
Downloads
Bug/issue log
Posts, responses
Helpfulness
Breadth (code commits, forum activity, wiki/documentation edits)‏
Project leadership
Visible, vocal leadership
Committed partners

Open Source Resources
Blogs
Matt Asay cnet
451 Group CAOS
Redmonk
ECM Architect
Open Parenthesis
Enter Content Here
John Newton
EOS Directory
Ostatic
Ohloh
JumpBox
RedHat Exchange
Don't write these down. Instead, go to: http://delicious.com/jpotts/opensource_ecm_talk

Parting Thoughts
“ Selectively seed development with RIA, dynamic language, and open source expertise...If you don’t have a strategy that takes advantage of external services and open source frameworks, then it may be hard to compete with nimbler competitors.” (Forrester, July 26, 2007)‏

About Optaros We design, assemble & support next-generation Internet solutions for ecommerce and media & publishing clients We help our clients become more agile and deliver better user experiences to their customers, employees, and suppliers We do great work 100% reference-able 98% on-time/on-budget We‘re growing $0  $21 million since 2005 Over 200 employees across offices in North America, Bucharest, Geneva, London, Munich, Zurich We have a rich history Leadership since 1990 through the client-server, web browser, and “assembly” eras We’re well capitalized $20 million capitalization

ECM and Open Source Software: A Disruptive Force in ECM Solutions

by Jeff Potts on Oct 15, 2008

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