A Fresh Approach Toward Document Management With Open Source

By Rivet Logic Corporation

Given the limitations of email, network drives and traditional software approaches, enterprises have looked to a new wave of emerging alternatives: commercially supported, open source enterprise software applications.

Open source software has proven itself at both the operating system level (e.g., Linux) and the middleware level (e.g., application servers, email servers, databases). Just recently, viable open source alternatives have appeared at the application level.

While the benefits of open source development are well documented, there is an important distinction between open source and commercial open source. For an open source technology to be considered commercial open source it must be supported by a financially viable commercial entity. Further, the company should have a track record of successful implementations in missioncritical environments, which can guarantee technical performance and availability, along with global 24x7 support services. In the open source world, this is what distinguishes a commercial open source company from an open source project. Enterprises require commercial open source solutions from companies such as Alfresco, Red Hat and Ingres.

The types of commercially backed open source enterprise applications that support document management include enterprise content management systems and repositories, enterprise portals, and wikis.