Alfresco Enterprise 3.0 Delivers Collaboration At Dramatically Lower Cost Than Proprietary Alternatives

Alfresco Software, Inc. recently announced the release of Alfresco Enterprise Edition 3.0. The latest certified build adds Alfresco Share, a new collaborative content solution, a draft implementation of CMIS specification, and Microsoft Office SharePoint Protocol support to Alfresco's innovative Enterprise Content Management (ECM) platform.

Alfresco Enterprise Edition 3.0 enables organizations to control costs and boost productivity in the following ways:

• Rapid deployment delivers immediate business value: Alfresco's Web 2.0 functionality enables organizations to simply and rapidly rollout collaborative content solutions;
• Supports initiatives for knowledge retention, best practice and virtual teams: Organizations can support virtual team collaboration for home and distributed working, as well as support initiatives for employee knowledge retention and more effectively access best practice information;
• Cost reduced to operating expense rather than capital expense: Alfresco's open source subscription model allows customers to implement an enterprise wide collaboration tool at a low cost without incurring capital expenses (cap ex) associated with traditional licensing models;
• Re-use of existing investments in hardware and software: Alfresco's open standards architecture enables organizations to leverage existing investments in hardware and software;
• Use existing skills: Utilize internal developers, DBA and systems administrators skills sets; and
• Quickly create new applications to support departmental requirements: Alfresco supports rapid application development with components produced using lightweight, standards-based scripting as opposed to a proprietary stack tying customers into a single vendor and the related maintenance costs.

"In the current economic climate organizations are seeking to do more with less. Alfresco's mission is to offer a low cost, open source, subscription model with minimal upfront investment which ensures dramatically lower TCO than comparable proprietary solutions," said John Newton, CTO and Chairman, Alfresco Software. "Alfresco Enterprise Edition 3.0 delivers an alternative from proprietary software lock-in and escalating implementation, freedom from per user license pricing and maintenance fees."

Alfresco Enterprise Edition 3.0 includes Alfresco Share, which is built on Alfresco's ECM repository and delivers out-of-the-box, collaborative content management. Alfresco Share simplifies capturing, sharing and retrieval of information across virtual teams, boosts productivity and reduces network bandwidth requirements and email volumes between project team members. Alfresco Share functionality includes:

• Document Library features including bulk content upload capability, thumbnails, flash document viewer, meta-data, tags, multi-select and RSS feed make it easier for people to use content management tools;
• Search functionality allows user to look for people and experts, as easily as searching for content;
• Create virtual teams for projects and communities, with both internal and external members;
• Activity feeds provide users with updates on what is new or changing in a project – essentially providing the "who, what, when and where" for content that is added or edited, commented on as well as new team members and critical calendar dates;
• Personalized dashboard uses a rich interactive interface enabling users to configure a customizable dashboard and sites based on what is most important to a role or project
• Create content using tool of choice – wikis, blogs, Microsoft Office;
• Rapid application development environment that uses lightweight scripting and reusable components avoiding .Net and Java;
• N-tier architecture delivers scalability without massive hardware or software investment and accommodates more users on existing hardware resources; and
• Draft CMIS (Content Management Interoperability Services) specification implementation provides users with a platform for developing and testing applications.

"Increasingly organizations are looking for solutions that can deliver both rapid deployment and rapid savings. Designed to enable simple administration and configuration, Alfresco Share empowers virtual teams to collaborate and share content," commented John Newton. "Going forward Alfresco Share will become the most productive way for our users to access and develop content for the Alfresco repository."

Alfresco Enterprise is the certified build of Alfresco, designed for production environments in corporations and government organizations that are looking for a stable, supported application. It is certified against commercial as well as open source stacks and offers commercial Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

Alfresco Enterprise Edition 3.0 will be made available to Alfresco enterprise subscription customers on October 31.

A download trial of Alfresco Enterprise Edition 3.0 is available at: http://www.alfresco.com/products/ecm/enttrial/

Screen shots of Alfresco Share and Alfresco Enterprise Edition 3.0 are available at: http://www.alfresco.com/products/collaboration/

About Alfresco Software, Inc.
Alfresco Software, Inc. is the first and leading open source alternative for enterprise content management. It is the first company to bring the power of open source to the enterprise content management market, enabling unprecedented scale and a much lower total cost of ownership than proprietary systems. Founded by a team of content management veterans that includes the co-founder of Documentum, John Newton, and former COO of Business Objects, John Powell, Alfresco is based in London. For more information, go to www.alfresco.com.

SOURCE: Alfresco Software, Inc.