ECM at a Crossroads: New AIIM Survey

by Kathleen Reidy on May 22, 2013

Is ECM a mature market?  We often hear that it is, when speaking to analysts, press and others in the industry.  Sure, Enterprise Content Management as a description for document management, capture, workflow and related technologies has been around awhile (AIIM started using it in 2000).  But does saying that ECM is mature mean organizations have all their content issues sorted?

Some new survey data from AIIM shows that is hardly the case.

The new study, ECM at a Crossroads, which Alfresco co-sponsored, surveyed 538 AIIM members about their current and planned use of ECM technologies. Key findings include:

  • Only 3% of surveyed organizations have actually turned off their file-shares, although 12% have “largely replaced it” with ECM. 34% are keen to turn it off, but for 61%, file-shares still play a significant role in their content structure.
  • Only 26% have the classic ECM implementation that includes capture and image workflow. 34% have separate systems, although 16% plan to bring them together.
  • More enterprise content sits outside of ECM than inside: for 61% of organizations, half or more of their content is held in non-ECM/DM systems such as ERP, HR, Finance, etc. This makes it difficult to search and it is not under records management retention rules.
  • Only 11% have a mobile optimized browser interface to their ECM and only 10% have specific apps. Yet 30% need their employees to interact with workflows on mobile devices.
  • More than 1 in 4 organizations face a dilemma with their cloud strategy. 25% are seeing unofficial use of cloud file-sharing sites – most of which are “consumer-grade”.
  • Spend on ECM software licenses is set to increase in the next 12 months.

Doesn’t really sound like a mature market, does it?   Though it does sound like one that is ‘at a crossroads,’ as the title of the new AIIM study suggests.

At Alfresco, we see customers dealing with several trends at the moment and in some cases, with really challenging enterprise content environments.

  • Many deployed ECM systems are old and – as the AIIM data shows – aren’t meeting the needs of users who still rely on file shares, struggle to find content across too many repositories, and can’t participate in content-related processes when they’re mobile.
  • Users are adopting “consumer-grade” services because of the limitations in their ECM systems and models.  This only creates more silos – and in some cases, data privacy or security concerns.
  • Organizations don’t need more content silos, particularly ones that are disconnected from all existing on-prem systems and data.  There is real appetite in the market for rationalization, openness and integration – in the cloud, on-prem and with hybrid models.
  • Business processes are more collaborative and more mobile – yet many organizations haven’t even addressed basic workflow and capture requirements.
  • Yes, there is a lot of SharePoint out there, but it doesn’t seem to solve content chaos problems or lead to much rationalization – the AIIM data shows 50% of organizations surveyed use SharePoint as a content repository and those organizations are nearly twice as likely to have 4 or more ECM systems (34%) than those who don’t use SharePoint in this way (18%).
  • And SharePoint likely leads to more content living outside of the sanctioned “ECM” system, since it isn’t meeting user demands for mobile access. In a recent Forrester survey about SharePoint, 91% of respondents reported not providing mobile access to SharePoint.  Hmmm…wonder what mobile workers in those organizations do when they need to access files from their phones and tablets?  Enter “consumer grade.”

The AIIM survey data backs up what Alfresco is experiencing – there is significant demand in the market for modern, open, mobile and cloud-ready ECM capabilities to ongoing and emerging content chaos and content process challenges.

Yes, spend on ECM software is going to increase in the next 12 months – the market isn’t mature.  Enterprise content problems are not solved.  It’s just that a lot of products and approaches currently on the market are old and not meeting the needs of modern organizations.  There is a difference.

Read the full AIIM study here. And then check out what customers and analysts are saying about Alfresco.

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SharePoint Users at a Crossroads

by Melissa Meinert on May 9, 2013

SharePoint users are at a crossroads. They have put a massive amount of content into SharePoint that isn’t always easily retrieved. They have invested time, resources and money trying to configure SharePoint to solve their content management problems.  Users are found questioning if SharePoint is efficiently managing their business-critical content processes.

AIIM has realized the challenges that SharePoint users are facing and recently addressed them at the seminar in Toronto, “SharePoint at a Crossroads.”

Attendees at the event were from a broad range of organizations with varying successes, difficulties and questions about SharePoint. Some are looking for more value from their ECM, including mobile and secure cloud solutions. Some have just deployed SharePoint and are experiencing success in their first stages of implementation. Many attendees were looking for SharePoint partners to solve their problems related to scalability, accessibility to content and flexibility of the platform to create unique business solutions.

Alfresco participated in the event as the only ECM alternative to SharePoint. Many participants were partners with add-on solutions to SharePoint or imaging solutions that integrate with many different ECMs. Alfresco uniquely represented one of the options that SharePoint users face—replacing it with another ECM.

A recent survey of over 500 professionals was conducted that found 80 percent of those using SharePoint thought it fell short of their expectations. Alfresco offers many valuable features in comparison to SharePoint:

  • Lower cost and higher ROI
  • Faster implementations
  • More advanced workflow capabilities
  • Scalability and stronger search features
  • An open platform that more easily integrates with business-critical tools

While not everyone is looking to migrate to a new ECM, there are tools available to better manage content already in SharePoint. To learn more about managing your SharePoint data in Alfresco, watch our webinar recording.

There are many different options to choose from when considering your current ECM investment and where to invest your resources in the future. Alfresco offers a scalable, flexible and cost efficient solution for managing your content. Is SharePoint providing the same for you?

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Crafter + Alfresco Powers Next Generation Websites

by Joe Tong on May 7, 2013

“Web content management is evolving from website publishing to digital experience support,” according to Forrester’s WCM for Digital Customer Experience Q2 2013.

What does Forrester mean?  You don’t need an explanation if…

  • You’re reading this on a smartphone or tablet
  • You’ve updated a website on your own, without sending files to an IT person
  • You rely on user generated or suggestions from trusted communities

Websites were once about flat content with little interaction.  Today, that sort of nostalgia doesn’t play.  What we expect is…

  • A digital experience that flows from browser to tablet to mobile flawlessly
  • A site to be responsive to our requests with targeted information
  • Communities to suggest and bubble up the best ideas, relevant to our needs

Building these abilities into a website isn’t easy. It takes more than pretty pictures and snappy text.  It takes extensive use of digital assets integrated into the web experience.  It assumes responsive design for viewing on any screen. It requires content targeting for presentation of the right content at the right time. It takes a dedicated tool purpose built for accomplishing the goal of delivering an awesome web experience. Yet many web and content experience management solutions are heavy, hard to learn and expensive.

Alfresco has a solution for WCM that it is built around the open strategy of content services. As a strategy, we decided to be committed to what we do best, manage digital content.  And although the core of WCM is managing digital content, today’s modern web requires a comprehensive solution. Welcome Crafter, you do it very well.

Who says?

  • YouSendIt:  “Crafter enabled our marketing and web development teams to easily deliver dynamic and engaging content, while knowing we have preeminent Crafter experts on hand for support,” said Steve Ceplenski, Senior Director, Web Services at YouSendIt. “Using Crafter’s next generation technology, we are able to quickly develop targeted content for our brand, and easily integrate with a SaaS translation system to manage sites in multiple languages.”
  • Full Sail University:  “We wanted to make use of rich web media, including flash and video in our new website and Alfresco did not limit us in any way.  Combining Crafter with Alfresco allowed us increased flexibility and to scale with relative ease” Mark Gilbert, VP Information and Media Technologies.  Read more here.
  • MasterCard, National Academy of Sciences and Harvard Business Publishing to name a few – check out more references here.

Today we welcome Crafter Software to the Alfresco Partner Program as their own organization with their own team to sell and support the solution. Check out their website to learn more and read more about the great work they are doing!

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Cloud Conversations at Gartner Portals, Content & Collaboration Summit

by Kathleen Reidy on May 3, 2013

Alfresco has been talking about cloud connected content management for awhile now, since we first launched a stand-alone SaaS offering last year. Cloud connected content management is all about using the cloud for applications, user groups and processes where it makes sense, but doing so in a way that doesn’t create additional, disconnected content silos or compromise content security or corporate policies.

This week at the Gartner Portals, Content & Collaboration Summit held in San Diego, analysts presented a vision for content management that reinforces what we’ve been seeing and speaking about at Alfresco.

In a session called The New Enterprise Content Management Scenario, Gartner ECM analyst Mark Gilbert presented his view on what he called ‘multi-verse cloud content.’  This was a spot-on analysis of the different ways in which enterprise content is moving to the cloud.  Mark distinguished between consumer-oriented file-sharing services, departmental line-of-business apps and traditional enterprise content management systems.

The reality is that most organizations have all three of these types of content systems, but the degree to which they are going to the cloud depends a lot on the type of organization.

Some organizations are way out in front of this opportunity, moving their content and apps to the cloud aggressively and encouraging users to innovate.  Others, particularly in highly regulated industries, are sticking to more traditional, IT-led approaches to content management and using the cloud only in very limited scenarios, if at all.

But most companies are somewhere in the middle of these two extremes, adopting cloud services for extranet-type apps or to enable easy access to content from mobile devices, but mostly still experimenting.  Most also know that the traditional ECM systems – which are fifteen years old or more in some cases – are in need of a refresh.  But will that refresh happen in the cloud?

Alfresco’s vision of cloud connected content is a forward looking one, but also one that can work for customers today despite being at different stages in this multi-verse world of cloud content.

To this end, we’ve created some scalable options depending on your content needs now and in the future as those needs change and evolve depending on your cloud comfort level -

Ready to put significant portions of content-centric apps in the cloud?  Check out Alfresco in the cloud, our own SaaS offering or how we’re working with AWS for private-cloud deployments.

Want to use the cloud for some apps or specific audiences without creating more content silos or worrying about loss of control?  Check out Alfresco’s hybrid model that enables content in the cloud, content on-prem and synchronization between the two environments.

Not interested in the cloud right now, but still need to think about an ECM refresh and how you’re going to meet demands for mobile access?  Alfresco Enterprise is a modern and open ECM platform for on-prem deployments with great support for mobile, business processes and collaboration.

We had some great conversations this week at PCC with customers and analysts that confirmed Alfresco’s approach truly resonates with solve real business needs.  There is no one-size-fits all solution in content management – there never really has been and the cloud, for all the benefits it offers, doesn’t change that.

Check out Gartner’s analysis of Alfresco and the ECM market in the Magic Quadrant. How are you enabling cloud connected content to do great work?

 

 

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Future of Cloud is Now with AWS + Alfresco

by Michael McCarthy on April 30, 2013

Tribloom is an Alfresco Gold Partner and has been implementing Alfresco on AWS since 2010. 

Imagine the future… I have been imagining the not too distant future a lot recently. It all started when I attended AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas last November. Werner Vogels, Andy Jassy and Jeff Bezos painted a picture of their services: reducing costs, leading to more users, leading to economies of scale to further reducing costs. Reduced costs, to the point where you don’t think about the cost (like you don’t think about turning on a light switch), leading to massive innovation. Democratizing infrastructure, why spend time and money on things that don’t differentiate you in the marketplace?

My vision? In the future all of our computing will be done in the cloud. There will be no more desktop or laptop computers instead we will use devices like tablets and terminals (remember the days when terminals were commonplace)? A day at work for the average knowledge worker might start off by selecting one of many EC2 instances or even entire application stacks. When infrastructure is a service and can be started and stopped with an API call, an entire new paradigm opens up. You don’t have to “fix” failing servers, you can just replace them with new healthy ones. You can version your entire server stack by keeping your provisioning code in version control. You can duplicate a production stack of hundreds of servers in minutes instead of months.

The work day could involve many of these throughout the day – developing new code on the latest product, a customer demo for the latest production release and one for crunching data about customer usage, just to name a few examples. There is a corporate policy in place, automatically enforced, to shut down servers at the end of the day so any instances left running are shut down to save money. All access to the corporate AWS account is controlled by IAM roles so each individual can only access the AWS resources that are relevant to them. For example the test group only has access to the test servers.

Leaving work doesn’t mean leaving the cloud behind. At home, the kids are watching a movie on Netflix and listening to Spotify, both streamed from AWS. Dad wants to relax with the latest shooter style computer game. He goes to the AWS Marketplace, finds the game he is looking for, starts up an instance and starts playing from his tablet. He doesn’t have to buy the game, the cost is built into the usage charges for AWS. His buddy wants to join in the game so connects his tablet to Dad’s server and both play on the cloud. Mom is uploading the photos and videos that she took of the kids’ school play earlier in the day. The photos will all be available, safe and forever secure because behind the scenes they are stored in S3.

Do you think this is a distant reality?

I don’t think so. We are already seeing corporate IT fall by the wayside. Departments are asking for AWS now as a means to circumvent the slow and tedious process of asking IT for a server for their new software installation. We see this all the time with our Alfresco clients. Like AWS management says, why spend the effort on hardware and networking when it doesn’t bring you a competitive advantage? Hardware and networking are commodities.

Spend 5 minutes provisioning an AWS EC2 instance, one with Alfresco already installed on it from the AWS Marketplace perhaps, instead of 5 weeks ordering hardware and setting it up. I personally already do this for development and customer demos. This past weekend, I needed a Drupal server. Rather than installing Apache, Drupal, and PHP, I just found an AMI and started up an instance, saving me valuable time.

The fact is that almost everything described here is already possible. The only thing that needs to change for this to be a reality is how we think about and use our computing resources. I am excited for that change to occur!

I will be attending the AWS Summit today in San Francisco. Every time I attend an AWS event, my vision becomes closer to reality. AWS is increasing their product and service offerings rapidly and usually have a few new announcements at each event.

Please stop by to say hi and if you would like to learn more about AWS and Alfresco you can check out our webinar or Alfresco’s new CloudFormation template!

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Single Sign-On Now Available in the Cloud

by David Gildeh on April 29, 2013

Organizations can now integrate their existing user directories to our cloud service, allowing your users to login with their existing company credentials. This feature is available to all Standard and Enterprise Network subscribers and we welcome any organizations to upgrade for a free 30 day trial if they wish to test the functionality today.

For Users

If you already have a central login/password for your organization, you probably don’t want to remember a new username and password for all the different cloud services you use. With this feature enabled by your administrators, you will now be able to use a single login with your existing credientials seamlessly. In order to get started, here are some user best practices:

  1. Your administrators will give you a specific URL for your organization to bookmark when you want to login to Alfresco in the cloud.
  2. When you access that URL, you will automatically be redirected to your organization’s login page to login using your existing credentials.
  3. On successful login, you will automatically be redirected back to Alfresco and logged into the application
Even better, if you’re a first time user to Alfresco and your organization already has Alfresco with this feature enabled, you don’t need to sign up, you can simply login straight away and you will get a new account on Alfresco automatically. This feature really makes it easy for users to access Alfresco without requiring new usernames and passwords or having to sign-up when enabled for your Network.

For Administrators

For the more technical, this new feature uses the SAML Single Sign-On (SSO) 2.0 protocol to integrate your existing Active Directory/LDAP server with our cloud service. Using some simple configuration on your Account Settings page, any of your Network Members will be able to go to a unique URL for your Network, which will redirect them to your own login page where they can sign in. On a successful login, they will be automatically redirected back to Alfresco and logged into use the service.

This means a couple of things:

  • Your users only need to manage one password for your organization and no longer need to create a separate login to use the Alfresco in the cloud service.
  • Since you control the login process and policies, you have complete authority over how users are provisioned and managed using your existing security infrastructure.
  • You can onboard users easily by just letting them login to the cloud service, automatically creating a new account for them if its their first time accessing the service
SAML SSO Overview

You can find our full documentation on how to get setup using SAML SSO with Alfresco in the cloud here.

Supported Identity Providers (IDPs)

We have built this to conform with the SAML standard so this feature should work out of the box with any SAML SSO enabled IDPs. However; in practice many IDPs have their own quirks, which means we have to certify each provider to ensure they work and are fully supported by our service on every release. At this time our official support is limited to PingFederate, but we will be looking to expand this list to other IDPs such as Centrify over time based on customer demand.

Get started today and let me know if you have any feedback or questions by leaving a comment here!

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DevCon Passion is Coming to Alfresco Summit

by Linsey McNew on April 26, 2013

Last year was my first time to Alfresco DevCon. I was six months in to working here and had heard of DevCon before having been one of Alfresco’s partners in a previous life. But for some reason I was always under the assumption it was this strange geek thing lead by the mysterious Jeff Potts. I was only half right. With no expectations, I showed up in Berlin for Day 0 with Trainings and the Hackaton.

The one thing that immediately stood out was passion. I mean, what else explains 17 grown men sitting around a table working in teams to build the best applications that will actually help make every day work easier and more productive?

The trainings were packed with a smart audience asking great questions around how they can get the most out of our powerful platform. Having eight hours to focus on understanding how to put content to work and get the most from employees really sets you on a good path to a more calm content existence. If I would have gotten one of these crash courses when I first started in PR, it would have saved me literally years of version control press release nightmares.

The next couple of days were a complete whirlwind, each one building on the other and opening my eyes to the heart of Alfresco. I have never had the chance to be in a room with a smarter, more passionate and innovative group of people looking to solve real work problems and enhance the flow of global content.

At the same time, I also sort of felt that DevCon was the best secret conference I had ever been to, which is saying a lot considering I’ve worked SXSW Interactive for the past eight years in some capacity. More people would come if they were aware and we opened it up to industry heavy weights and customers who can share unique perspectives that others can learn from to empower great teamwork.

This year we are doing just that with Alfresco Summit!

I’m so excited that Jeff along with an internal team of event ninjas is taking the best of what makes Alfresco’s entrepreneurial community unique and letting more businesses take advantage of learning how to put our critical content to work.

We also put out the Call for Presenters due June 15,2013 so get submissions in early! We will stop accepting ideas once all the speaking slots are filled. We couldn’t be more excited for what 2013 will bring and can’t wait for our November reunion in two really vibrant cities – Boston and Barcelona…won’t you join us?

Be sure to follow us on Twitter and use #SummitNow to let us know you are coming!

 

 

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Alfresco Empowers Educators to Do Great Work

by Joe Tong on April 17, 2013

United Cerebral Palsy (UCP) of Greater Chicago was looking for a way to deliver digital content to their students and schools, but had growing challenges managing their large repository of books. So they talked with our Platinum partner TSG about their content needs. TSG introduced Alfresco as the content platform to convert over 11,000 books in 500 schools with over 2000 downloads per month. The solution that TSG built provided a flexible platform on Amazon Web Services so that their users could control the flow of information rather than IT.

If you’re interested in hearing more about how Alfresco is helping organizations manage their content securely in a flexible cloud environment, meet us at one of the AWS Summit events this month either in New York this week (April 18) or San Francisco (April 30).

We’d love to show you how easy it is to launch Alfresco on AWS and talk more with you about how Alfresco on AWS can deliver power and agility your organization can use today!

 

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New Mobile Security Features in 1.5

by Jack Rogers on April 16, 2013

There is a notably recurring theme in much of the feedback that we receive from our customers . . . when it comes to mobilizing the enterprise, security is paramount.

So as we prepared our first Alfresco Mobile app update of 2013 we wanted to make sure it improved upon our existing enterprise grade security features to add extra layers of content protection and increase peace of mind for the ever-expanding mobile workforce.

Alfresco Mobile for iOS version 1.5 answers further mobile security questions with optional features such as file-based security, certificate authentication, limited sharing with other apps and the ability to apply a “shelf-life” to content that has been downloaded or synced to an iPad or iPhone.

This last feature for Alfresco Mobile 1.5 eradicates the worry caused by employees downloading, saving or syncing content to their devices beyond the boundaries of the enterprise server or cloud account. IT and regulatory personnel amongst our enterprise customers can now rest easy, secure in the knowledge that their confidential content can be time-stamped to become inaccessible on a device that has not been connected to the repository for a pre-configured period of time. If you don’t want your content going walkabouts, keep it on a leash by restricting sharing rights on your documents and make it entirely inaccessible on that mobile device if the device is not connected to your enterprise account for a certain amount of time – 24 hours or 8 hours or even one hour.


Set an offline expiry time for individual documents within your Alfresco repository.

In addition to these ground-breaking security features we have also included some further improvements, including:

- Compatibility with the Google apps version of Quickoffice

- Version numbering consistency with the Alfresco web client

- Previews for iWorks documents

The mobility and flexibility trends are doing great things for the efficiency of enterprises, but we are also well aware that the security of your content is perhaps even more important than mobile access. Now you don’t need to compromise between security and mobility, nor do you need to run the risks associated with using an insecure personal file sharing service to get your content to your mobile workforce.

Download Alfresco Mobile for iOS 1.5 free from the App Store today to securely access your business critical content on your iPads and iPhones!

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Americas Partner Award Winners!

by Joe Tong on April 12, 2013

This week we held our annual Americas Partner Kickoff with our growing community of system integrators, software vendors, infrastructure providers and resellers who build their solutions with Alfresco. As part of the great work our partner community does to deliver strategic and flexible innovative solutions to meet today’s demanding customer needs, below are the winners of our Americas Partner Awards!

Partner of the Year 

We are excited to announce that Zia Consulting (pictured) is Alfresco’s Partner of the Year with the highest overall performance on new accounts, customer service and innovative content solution development. This is the second consecutive year that Zia has been recognized as Partner of the Year and adds to their awards for other open source recognitions including the Ephesoft Partner of the Year. Zia continues to create and implement valuable business solutions to their customers around the world and we look forward to seeing what 2013 brings as they continue to grow their solutions and new business.

Partner Solution of the Year

For their achievements with Alfresco’s WorkDesk solution, Zia Consulting also takes home the Alfresco Business Solution of the Year.  This award recognizes their excellence in not only delivering the solution but also contributing to the overall development of the platform.

New Partner of the Year

Since becoming an Alfresco partner in Fall of 2012, Sigmatrix helped lead the sales and integration efforts at Baldwin & Lyons leading to their first enterprise sale. Coming in full force as a new partner, their diligent work to close deals and promote the Alfresco platform have been a great addition to the partner program.

Top Growth Partner

Technology Services Group’s has grown year-over-year new Alfresco bookings exceeding all other Americas Partners and also achieved Platinum partner status making them the winner in the Top Growth Partner award category. Their commitment to providing exceptional services and solutions to their clients has helped them grow and continues to reinforce their leadership in the market.

Federal Partner of the Year

Armedia has not only created opportunities within the government sector, they have also stepped up as a valuable asset to helping some complex projects that implement and strengthen the Alfresco platform making them the Federal Partner of the Year award winner.  Armedia has been key in expanding Alfresco’s presence within the Federal government and submitted back code that further solidified our positioning within the public sector.

Implementation of the Year

With the help of Reva Solutions, PhenoPath implemented Alfresco as the central document repository for all its SOPs including customized workflows for document approval at different steps in the process. Reva built a custom mobile application to integrate competency assessments within Alfresco that replaced the paper assessments performed by PhenoPath supervisors. This provided a faster, easier and more secure way for doctors to access the information they need, all while staying within the strict HIPPA compliancy guidelines. Assessments developed as templates are now stored in the Alfresco repository where they can be accessed at any time via an iPad application. With future development already being discussed at PhenoPath, we are excited to see the true scale of this implementation.

Please join us in a BIG Alfresco congratulations to the winners of this year’s Americas Partner Awards! Interested in joining the Alfresco partner community? Check out how you can here.

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