Content Platform

A Content Platform for the 21st Century

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is traditionally thought of as very expensive to license, extremely costly to roll-out and scale, and often with the requirement of expensive hardware and supporting software in the underlying stack. However, there is now an alternative; the most scalable collaboration and web sites in the world now run on open source software. These Web 2.0 sites have commoditized the scaling process and changed the way content is both accessed and mashed-up.

Most commercial ECM systems were built in the early 1990s and have added layer upon layer over the last 20 years to update their systems. Alfresco is different. It offers a modern content platform, built on a modern architecture using modern tools that power the most scalable collaboration and web sites in the world today.

The Most Scalable Java Content Repository

Alfresco is the most scalable Java content repository that runs on commodity hardware and software.
This allows you to:

• Support more users with less hardware
• Lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) by reusing the hardware, software and skills you already have and have already paid for
• Simply cluster, federate and replicate for Web 2.0 performance

An independently certified benchmark test conducted by Unisys Corporation demonstrated linear scalability up to 100m objects.

Lightweight REST Mash-up Architecture for Rapid Application Development

The old world of web applications was the complex, heavyweight world of C# or Java. The new world of web applications is one of lightweight scripting using, for example, languages such as JavaScript, PHP or Ruby. These are what power the most dynamic, most accessed web applications today, often with a Rich Internet Application (RIA) interface written in AJAX or Flex. This allows developers to:

• Quickly create new applications to support both corporate and, more increasingly, departmental requirements
• Rapidly configure applications from pre-built components
• Use lightweight scripting to develop new reusable components
• Simply mash-up components accessing both internal and external content through a REST driven URL
• Today the agenda is rapid rollout and time to value. This is what Alfresco delivers.

Standards — Escape the Proprietary ECM Tie-In and ECM Stack Tie-In

Most ECM application developers will know that you cannot develop an application for one ECM repository and deploy it on another. This has major implications for Independent Software Vendors (ISV’s) and corporate application developers. You either limit the market you can address or redevelop the same application many times. This proprietary approach is made worse when an ECM system forces you to use one sort of operating system, database, .NET, portal, language or browser. Alfresco is built on standards to allow customers to:

• Choose the most appropriate, cost effective development environment
• Reuse existing development skills
• Regain control and when a vendor changes their maintenance and pricing policy allow you to change your vendor

Alfresco is one of the contributing members of the draft Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) specification that is supported by all of the leading ECM vendors and has been submitted to OASIS for review and adoption as an industry standard. Alfresco is built on standards such as REST, RSS, Atom publishing, JSON, OpenSearch, OpenSocial, OpenID, Web Services, JSR 168, JSR 170 Level 2, MyFaces, CIFS, FTP, WebDAV, DeltaV, SQL and ODF. This compliance with standards makes integration into your architecture much simpler and available at a lower cost.