This document compares Alfresco's open source enterprise content management (ECM) solution to traditional ECM products. It outlines key differences between Alfresco Enterprise and Community editions, including support, scalability, availability, and licensing costs. The document concludes that Alfresco Enterprise offers a lower-cost way for enterprises to deploy ECM due to its commercial open source model and certified partner network.

1. Pervasive ECM
Comparing Alfresco to Traditional ECM Products
Barry Costin
Regional Manager – ANZ
Alfresco Software Ltd.

2. Why Alfresco?
What makes Alfresco different?
Which ECM solution is right for me?
2

3. Alfresco – A lot in 5 Years
● 2M+ downloads
(~40,000/month)‫‏‬
● 2 million downloads
● Over 100,000 community members
● 700k+ developers
● 1,200+ customers
● Primarily Global 2000 +
Government
● Now adding ~100+/quarter
● Ecosystem Used in 182 Countries
● 250+ SI partners
Paying Subscribers in 43
● 50+ OEM partners Countries
● Share solutions with others

4. Traditional ECM
High Cost Complex Slow / Limited
Adoption
4

5. ECM Requirements
Traditional Alfresco Alfresco
ECM Enterprise Community
Stability 
Agreed‫‏‬SLA’s 
Platform Support (Limited)
Scalability / Availability 
Sys Config & Mmgt 
Storage Policies 
Indemnity / Warranty 
Lower Cost (Upfront & High)
Enterprise Adoption (Limited)
Open Process (Closed)
5

6. Alfresco is Different
Lower Cost Simple Faster Adoption
6

7. Commercial Open Source
Lower TCO
● No upfront license fees Annual Cost
● No per seat licensing
● Simple model
o Pay for Alfresco Support, Cumulative Cost
QA and Maintenance
o Price tied to usage
o Per CPU price

8. Simple Content Management
Easy Adoption
Shared Drive Web 2.0 Email
SMTP Listener
Zero Footprint
Drag and Drop
Native UI
8

9. Complete Content Management
Simple Deployment
Document Collaboration Web Content Records Email
Management Management Management Archive
One Repository
Built on Modern
Technology Stack
9

10. ECM Requirements
Traditional Alfresco Alfresco
ECM Enterprise Community
Stability 
Agreed‫‏‬SLA’s 
Platform Support (Limited)
Scalability / Availability 
Sys Config & Mmgt 
Storage Policies 
Indemnity / Warranty 
Lower Cost (Upfront & High)  
Enterprise Adoption (Limited)  
Open Process (Closed)
10

11. Enterprise Principles
● Offer Commercial Service Level Agreements (SLA’s)
● Enterprise customers receive fixes as a priority
● Extensions and integrations to proprietary products are part of
Enterprise
● Extensions to ubuiquitous proprietary systems – windows,
office – are in Community
● Extensions to manage or monitor highly-scalable or highly
available systems are part of Enterprise
● http://newton.typepad.com/content/2009/03/building-a-
stronger-open-source-product.html

12. Stability
Extensive QA Testing
Automated QA
Basic testing against
Alfresco
1 OS Stack Daily Builds
Community
New Code New Code New Code Edition
OS Build Community OS Build Community
Release Candidate Release Release Candidate Release
(Evolving code line = New Features)
(Stable code line = QA & Fixes)
QA Beta 1 Beta 2 Beta x Enterprise Fixes & Fixes & Fixes &
Bug Fixing Release Patches Patches Patches
Extensive QA Testing:
Alfresco
16 Dedicated QA Engineers
Use both automated and manual QA checks to run almost 5000 tests per stack Enterprise
Tested on both Open Source and proprietary technology stacks
Edition
Tested for Stability, Scalability and Security
12

13. Agreed‫‏‬SLA’s
Alfresco Enterprise Alfresco Community
● Support ● No Alfresco SLA
o Contractual‫‏‬SLA’s‫(‏‬Gold,‫‏‬Platinum,‫‏&‏‬Premier) o Community Forums
o Guaranteed availability of resources
o Call tracking and bug prioritisation
● Bug tracking ● No Alfresco SLA
o Bug fixing / Service packs o Self or Community Fix
o Patch distribution (with back porting) o Wait for code role up
● Support Portal ● None Provided
● Enterprise Documentation ● Wiki Documentation
● Indemnity and Warranty ● None Provided
● Access to Enterprise Edition ● Access to Community Edition
13

14. World Wide Support
Follow the Sun
Atlanta Maidenhead Sydney
14

15. Support Portal
● Licences
● Systems Heartbeat
● Proactive Notification
● Documentation
o Support Handbook
o Enterprise Documentation
● Knowledgebase
● Search
15

16. Platform Support
Enterprise Edition Community Edition
● OS - Linux, Windows, Solaris ● OS - Linux
● Data Base - MySQL, Oracle, ● Data Base - MySQL
PostgreSQL, MSSQL Server,
DB2
● Application Server - Tomcat, ● Application Server – Tomcat
JBoss, Oracle, Weblogic,
Websphere
● Authentication - Alfresco, ● Authentication - Alfresco,
OpenLDAP, NTLM, Sun One OpenLDAP
Directory Server, Active Directory,
Kerberos, JASS
● Browser - Firefox, IE, Safari ● Browser - Firefox
16

17. Scalability and Availability
Clustering
● Easy to configure
clustering
● Configure system for:
o Horizontal = Lower cost
o High availability
o Scalability
17

18. System Management
JMX Monitoring
● Administration and Monitoring for
production systems
● Supports JMX standard. Supports
most JMX clients
o Jconsole (ships with JDK), Hyperic,
HP OpenView
● Monitor
o Database connections
o Memory usage
o Alfresco Subsystems
18

19. System Configuration
Runtime Administration
● Alfresco Subsystems
o Authentication
o Synchronisation
o File Servers (i.e. CIFS, FTP and NFS)
o Third Party (i.e. OpenOffice, Swftools,
ImageMagick)
o IMAP
o WCM Deployment Receivers
● Start, Stop and Configure
subsystems – without shutting
down Alfresco
● Cluster aware
19

20. Storage Policies
● AKA Information Lifecycle
Management (ILM)
Policy
Rules
SSD
$$$
● Dynamic storage based on
business policies / lifecycle
rules Policy FC
Rules
Drives
o i.e. Current versions on fast
(expensive) drive. Superseded $$
versions on slower (cheaper)
drives.
o Define business rules
SATA
Drive
● Reduced cost without $
impacting performance
21

21. Indemnity and Warranty
Enterprise Community
● Commercial License ● GPL
● Full indemnity ● No Indemnification
● Full warranty ● Distributed‫‏‬on‫‏‬an‫“‏‬as‫‏‬is”‫‏‬
basis without warranty
22

22. Open Process
Production Scanning
● Kofax Release Script
● Capture paper documents
● Supports both adhoc and
bulk scanning
● Full document profiling
o Metadata tagging and validation
o Integration to pull meta data from
external databases
23

23. ECM Requirements
Traditional Alfresco Alfresco
ECM Enterprise Community
Stability   Daily Build
Agreed‫‏‬SLA’s   Forums
Platform Support (Limited)  Open Source
Scalability / Availability  
Sys Config & Mmgt  
Storage Policies  
Indemnity / Warranty  
Lower Cost (Upfront & High)  
Enterprise Adoption (Limited)  
24
Open Process (Closed)  

24. Alfresco Enterprise
● Designed to be the lowest cost way to rollout to the
Enterprise
● Alfresco is in a unique position to offer this service
o Skills – We developed 95% of the product
o Customer Base – We can offer this level of service at the
lowest cost due to the size of our customer base
● Certified Partner Network
25

25. Health Warning
Uncertified Systems
Integrator
+
Community
=
High Risk & High Cost
26

26. Which ECM Solution?
Tradition Enterprise Community
ECM Edition Edition
Enterprise Licenses Supported Solution Free Solution
Per User Pricing Mission Critical Non-Mission Critical
Pay High Maintenance Patches and Updates Have Time/Skill to Fix
Fees Issues
Production
Stitch Disparate Deployment Review Next
Solutions Enterprise Version
Certified Partners
Complex
Closed Source Open Source Open Source
27

27. Questions?
barry.costin@alfresco.com
● Try Alfresco:
o Cloud Trial
o Download Enterprise
http://www.alfresco.com/try
● TCO White Paper: