Open Source ECM-A Proven Alternative
Traditional approaches to content management from proprietary vendors are expensive, difficult to deploy and costly to maintain. Commercial enterprises and government agencies that struggle to manage the growing amounts of content generated throughout the normal course of daily operations require flexible, rapidly deployed solutions that transform traditional content repositories and static intranets into dynamic, user-friendly work environments. Today, open source ECM solutions are empowering business end-users with the tools and access they need to increase productivity and innovate, while lowering IT costs.
Debunking the Open Source Misperceptions
Most organizations understand that they will never derive value from poorly managed enterprise content, so the question is not whether to manage this content, but how to manage it. When considering open source ECM, many enterprises continue to cling to some common misperceptions. Despite their interest, many list the following three inhibitors to open source adoption: breadth of features, maturity and licensing confusion.
Often, these organizations are unaware that robust, enterprise-grade open source ECM platforms now cover the gamut—supporting Web content management, document management, records and email management and collaboration—while also offering the ability to rapidly customize platforms to meet a wide range of unique business end-user needs. Contrary to the misperceptions, open source ECM solutions have matured over the past several years and now have been successfully deployed in hundreds of major enterprises, vastly improving productivity in today’s "enterprise 2.0" world. And licensing concerns are addressed by using commercially supported open source platforms.
Today’s typical commercial open source ECM solution features all of the capabilities that proprietary applications offer—from rules-based content repositories to expressive metadata modeling to easy-to-use interfaces and collaboration features (wikis, blogs, forums, etc.)—combined with enterprise-grade scalability, reliability and security. For those acquainted with traditional ECM software solutions, the capabilities mentioned above will be familiar, but the fact that they are now available in open source solutions often comes as a surprise. In many respects, open source has now equaled and even surpassed the capabilities of proprietary, closed source software. Given the limitations of email, shared network drives and traditional software approaches, enterprises can now turn to a new wave of established alternatives—commercially supported, open source ECM applications that solve real business challenges.
Open Source: ECM for the Masses
Over the last decade, open source software has proven itself at the operating system level and in enterprise middleware. Now, viable open source alternatives are available at the application level—including enterprise content management. The advantages of a commercial open source approach are numerous, with flexibility, ease of integration and lower cost leading the list. Agile open source systems, newer and often more extensible than their proprietary counterparts, can be readily adapted to meet business needs. For example, the open source Alfresco content management system has been downloaded more than a million times, representing a vast universe of users and real-world use cases. We find that open source vendors respond quickly to community feedback, which drives further development and innovation in the direction of enterprise needs. And whereas proprietary software relies on licensing fees, forced upgrades and proprietary lock-in, an open source approach results in a lower total cost of ownership of acquiring, implementing and maintaining an ECM solution.
Today, in the face of shrinking IT budgets, many of our enterprise customers demand an ECM solution that both empowers end-users and reduces operating costs. With a full range of features coupled with enterprise-grade reliability and support, open source ECM solutions are providing end-users with the tools they need to support their everyday business needs while increasing productivity. For example, open source portals from Liferay and JBoss have been in production now for more than five years at some major enterprises, with adoption continuing to grow. Simply put, companies that implement open source ECM solutions are better able to redirect IT dollars to revenue-generating business functions.
Our recent open source ECM customers—including Fortune 500 companies in a wide range of verticals, such as media and publishing, pharmaceutical, financial services and consumer markets—are realizing immediate results. For a recent commercial real estate customer that relies heavily on sharing and reviewing property documents across many locations, a flexible open source ECM solution provides the tools to set up new project templates with ease and change workflows without costly configuration. Similarly, an open source ECM solution is enabling a major publishing company to centralize all digital content and rich media across its business units, resulting in streamlined content development, improved search and retrieval, and faster Web content production cycles.
As your enterprise content continues to grow, a commercially supported open source ECM solution will enable you to transform traditional content repositories and static intranets into dynamic, collaborative work environments. Open source ECM solutions are providing business end-users with the tools and access they need to innovate in ways that positively impact productivity and the bottom line. Don’t get left behind.
Rivet Logic is an award-winning consulting and systems integration firm that helps organizations better engage with customers, improve collaboration and streamline business operations. With deep expertise in leading commercial open source software such as the Alfresco Enterprise Content Management platform, the Liferay Portal and JBoss Enterprise Middleware, Rivet Logic crafts content-rich solutions that power next-generation Web properties, enterprise 2.0 applications and collaborative communities. Visit www.rivetlogic.com