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Alfresco WCM at The National Academy of
SciencesAlfresco WebinarMarch 8, 2011
Paras Jain, Senior Software EngineerMike Vertal, President and CEO
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Rivet Logic Overview
• Award-winning professional services focused on:o Enterprise Content Managemento Web Content Managemento Collaboration and Social Communities
• Using Leading Open Source Software
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Rivet Logic-Awards and Honors
Innovator of the Year
Partner of the Year - North America Overall Innovator Award
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Overview
• The National Academy of Sciences, along with three other organizations, collectively form the National Academies
• The Division on Earth & Life Studies (DELS) is one of six subject area divisions
• DELS has 12 program units, or Boards, that produce scientific reports
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Presentation Outline
• Challenge• Solution• Results• Q&A
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Challenge
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Challenge
• Legacy system…
o Homegrown CMS
o Comprised of static HTML and some PHP
o Lacked any Web publishing tools necessary for staff members to produce content themselves
o IT support was necessary for any content updates or creating new pages - resulting in lost productivity & outdated content
o Organically grown system made maintenance increasingly difficult
o No authentication or user permissioning in place – no accountability
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Goals
• Faster publishing cycles
• Richer, more engaging site visitor experience
• Secure, enterprise-wide access
• Better accountability
• Reduce maintenance and operational costs
• More editorial control by business users
• Open source flexibility in code customization
• Scalability for future growth
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Why An Open Source Approach?
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Reason #1: Pay for Value
• Proprietary software todayo Long sales cycleso Expensiveo Inaccessibleo 76% of new license revenue goes to sales and marketing expense
• Open source software can return 5x more value on investment
Source: “The Value of Open Source in the Content Management Landscape”, The Wharton School and Rivet Logic, 2009
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Reason #2: Transparency
DeveloperDevelopment(Bugs)
ProductMgmt
Support
Sales
MarketingAccounts
Reception
QA
CustomerCustomerCustomer
PartnerPartner
Partner
Media
Shipping Customer
Developer
PartnerMarketer
Tester
Mgmt
SupportEngineer
Internet
BloggerCode
Open Closed
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Reason #3: Flexibility
Customization is natural. Vendor inflexibility should not be.
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Solution
Alfresco WCM at DELS/NAS
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Alfresco Platform Overview
Web Applications Knowledge Portals Web Services
High AvailabilityVirtual File System
App Server
Portal Server
CRM
BusinessProcessEngine
FTP
CIFS
WebDAV
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Basic Alfresco WCM
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Alfresco WCM Flexibility
• Decoupled Content Delivery Approach
o Content management and delivery are separate
o Offers flexibility to use a presentation-tier framework of choice
o Advantages:
• Strong support for multi-user content production
• Rich and flexible content modeling
• Multi-site and multi-channel publishing
• Better scalability and performance
• Produces standards compliant XHTML/CSS
• Built-in support for SEO and Web analytics
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DELS Web Content Architecture
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Solution Highlights
• Two applications were developed:o Aetos – Manage enterprise content o DELS – Public facing website application
• Alfresco WCM for managing the entire website presentation tier, and all non-Aetos content
• Crafter rivet for Web content delivery seamlessly integrated with Alfresco
• Real-time In Context Preview
• Google Search Appliance (GSA) for search
• Mule ESB for content integration
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Solution Detail
• Aetos
o Database-driven Grails application internal to NAS
o Houses core information about Academy Reports, Studies, Events and Projects
o Data fed from a variety of enterprise content sources
• DELS
o Public facing Grails Web application
o Aggregates and renders content from Aetos and Alfresco
o Feature-rich visitor experience
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dels.nas.edu
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dels.nas.edu
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Solution Detail
• Alfresco WCMo Web content and all digital media assets
o Page templates, scripts (Groovy)
o Key content management services• Advanced versioning• Private user sandboxes• Robust metadata modeling• Role-based permissions
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Solution Detail
o Open source content delivery frameworko Provides seamless integration with content published from Alfresco
o Enabled integration with third party systems like ExactTarget and GSA
o Additional functionality including caching, searching, SEO, and real-time in-context preview
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In Context Preview
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Solution detail
• Search Integration
o Hybrid solution utilizing GSA and database search
o Federated search allows different types of data to be searched thru single interface
o Dynamic UI components driven by search provided relevant contextual information throughout the site
o GSA indexes updated upon Alfresco content publishing
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dels.nas.edu
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Content Integration
• Mule ESB enabled integration between Aetos and various enterprise content sources
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Content Migration Process
• Aetos content migrationo Reports - Automatic migration via scriptso Events, Studies, Projects - Manual migration for fresh update
• Web content migrationo Business users authored content on QA system
o Provided user training and acceptance testing (UAT)
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Development Methodology
• Agile & iterative approach in collaboration with customer
• Maintain transparency through open communication and constant knowledge transfer
• Web conferencing, Skype, daily SCRUM calls, Confluence, and JIRA
• Multiple, iterative success milestones
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DELS (Before)
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DELS (today)
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Project Results
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Results
• Enterprise-wide access• Flexibility and
scalability for future growth
• Successful go-live (April ‘10)
• Richer site experience• Better user
accountability
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Results
• Dramatically reduced IT involvement
• Business users now have total control
• Faster publishing cycles
• Timelier, fresher and richer content
• Increased productivity
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
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Q&A
Download Full Case Study:
http://rivetlogic.com/resources/case-studies