Open Source ECM—Entering the Mainstream
The proliferation of information has made enterprise content management a necessity for most organizations. However, 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 Open Source Misperceptions
While most organizations understand the necessity of content management, there are still questions surrounding the proper steps necessary in order to derive business value from the content. 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. Contrary to the misperceptions, open source ECM solutions have matured over the past several years, equaling and even surpassing the capabilities of proprietary software, and have been successfully deployed in major enterprises worldwide. Today’s leading commercial open source ECM solutions feature all of the capabilities that proprietary applications offer—from rules-based content repositories to collaboration features to standards-based features such as DoD 5015.2 certification and CMIS compliance—combined with enterprise-grade scalability, reliability and security. And licensing concerns are addressed by using commercially supported open source platforms. Given the limitations of email, shared network drives and proprietary software, enterprises can now turn to a new wave of established alternatives—commercially supported, open source ECM applications that solve real business challenges.
Open Source Advantage: 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. Today, in the face of shrinking IT budgets, many of our enterprise customers demand a full-featured ECM solution with enterprise-grade reliability and support that both empowers end-users and reduces operating costs. Industry-leading open source software includes the Alfresco and Apache Jackrabbit content management platforms, and the Liferay and JBoss/eXo portal platforms. Alfresco has been downloaded nearly two million times, representing a vast universe of users and real-world usage. Liferay has been in production now for more than eight years at some major enterprises, with adoption continuing to grow. With an open source ECM implementation, companies can benefit from the stability and reliability of an enterprise-class system, while being able to redirect IT dollars to revenue-generating business functions.
As organizations strive to achieve Enterprise 2.0, they’ve realized that content management isn’t just a necessity within the enterprise, but also when communicating with the outside world, whether it’s with customers or external stakeholders. For many organizations, leveraging Web 2.0 technologies is becoming an integral part of marketing initiatives to maintain important relationships. Multi-channel publishing allows delivery of the right content to the right audience in the right format, while social media engages in and harnesses the user community. Together, these solutions can help organizations increase top-line revenue growth, enhance customer loyalty, and improve internal operations and employee productivity. For example, an Alfresco 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. The same customer is also leveraging Alfresco WCM to enhance the visitor experience, resulting in expanded revenue opportunities by increasing site traffic by offering fresher and more dynamic content.
Our open source ECM customers include Fortune 500 companies in a wide range of verticals—media and publishing, pharmaceutical, financial services and consumer markets—all of whom are realizing dramatic benefits. For a major online education customer where delivering the latest course information to students and enabling idea sharing are crucial, an open source solution facilitates collaboration between the student community. A leading vendor of fitness and weight loss programs chose Liferay to create a revenue-generating social network due to its flexibility in catering to evolving business requirements and future growth. For a collaborative consortium of major pharmaceutical firms, Alfresco was used in conjunction with JBoss to create a next generation collaboration platform, which reduced time and costs associated with the clinical drug testing process, allowing funds to be redirected back into research and application development.
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 including Alfresco, Liferay, Spring and JBoss, Rivet Logic crafts content-rich solutions that power next-generation Web properties, Enterprise 2.0 applications and collaborative communities. Visit
rivetlogic.com.