How Viable Is Open Source ECM?

Emerging open source ECM (enterprise content management) solutions can save you money, but are they a fit for the structure and culture of your business?

The Internet caters to our self-service mentality as a society, both on a personal and professional level. Web sites like Amazon.com and eBay allow us to shop for just about anything without ever leaving our bedrooms, while Internet search engines, bulletin boards, and blogs allow us to locate or request information about any imaginable subject. The latest craze in content management — open source ECM software — is another product of the Internet era.

Open source software is software whose source code is available under a license or arrangement such as public domain, that permits users to study, try, modify, and improve the software. Open source software generally allows anybody to develop a new version of the software, port it to new operating systems and processor architectures, and share it with others in a public, collaborative manner via the Web. While open source Web content management and document management platforms have been available as far back as 2000, open source solutions that address the multiple facets of ECM (e.g. document management, image management, Web content management, and records management) have only begun to emerge over the last 18 months. What impact can these solutions have on your current and future ECM buying decisions?