ECM and Open Source Software: A Disruptive Force in ECM Solutions

ECM and Open Source Software: A Disruptive Force in ECM Solutions

Jeff Potts

Practice Director, ECM

Optaros: http://www.optaros.com

Blog: http://ecmarchitect.com

10/15/08 © Optaros 2008. All rights reserved. 2

Background

1994 1997 2002 2006

GroupwareKM/ECM

Open Source ECM

2007 2008

Focu

sTech

Fir

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2007 Alfresco Community Contributor of the Year


Agenda

The Rise of Open Source

Open Source & ECM

Significant Players At-a-Glance

Who's Already Using Open Source ECM?

Getting Started


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The Rise of Open Source


Audience Poll

How many of you use open source in production systems today?


Answer: All of you do

• 2005 study by Information Week and Optaros showed 85% of respondents acknowledged their use of open source

• Over 50% of enterprises with Oracle users have deployed Linux in production (Burton Group quoting a 2007 survey by the Independent Oracle users group)

Photo Credit: YouTube


Open source trends

More than half of all web servers (>91 million) run Apache (Netcraft, September, 2008)

~2.0 million total Alfresco downloads (Alfresco, October, 2008)

1.4 million Drupal downloads last year (July 2007 – June 2008)

2.5 million articles (in English alone) on wikipedia, the world's 8th busiest web site according to Alexa (October, 2008)

4 million blogs hosted on wordpress.com which Alexa ranks as #28 (October, 2008)

Drupal and Joomla web sites handle more traffic than 17 of the Fortune 20 corporate sites (Burton Group, 2008)

OS

Database

Web/App Server

Developer Tools

Applications

Cloud/SAAS

Op

en

Sou

rce


“Open Source is worth $60 billion”

John Powell, CEO, Alfresco (a commercial Open Source company)

Measure of the cost savings by customers who have chosen open source over commercial

ComputerworldUK, May 15, 2008

“Open source is now the world's largest software industry....You measure it in the savings people are making in licence fees....Licence fees don't add any value to the product and are purely a transfer of wealth from consumers to software vendors.”


Open Source Acquisitions

RedHat acquired JBoss in June, 2006 for $350 million

Citrix acquired XenSource in August of 2007 for $500 million

Yahoo acquired Zimbra in September of 2007 for $350 million

Sun acquired MySQL in January of 2008 for $1 billion

See also “Open Source Gold Rush” blog post by Matt Asay on cnet and “Open Source For Sale” at InformationWeek


Why our clients choose open source

Better fit• Get what's common “for free”, customize for fit

Standards-based• Skills availability/desirability• Interoperability

Transparency• Source code• Issue tracking• Direction

See also “Why Open Source?” on ECM Architect.


Don't Build or Buy...

Building custom applications from scratch• Custom solutions that address requirements• Lengthy time-to-market• Maintenance and support difficulties

Buying large packaged applications from large vendors

• Bloated applications• Over-serving the market – only 10% of the

functionality in use• Software doesn’t meet specific enterprise

needs and must be customized significantly• Vendors are difficult to influence and

customers are “locked in”


...Instead, Assemble

Open source facilitates application assembly• Standards based• Widely used, tested, scalable components• Highly modular• Internationalized


Open Source & ECM

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Innovation waves - ECM and related Technologies

ArchivingDocumentManagement

KnowledgeMgmt Portal

SmartEnterpriseSuites

Workflow / BPM

Open StandardsOpen Source

Inn

ovati

on

1990 2010

Industry consolidation


Open Source Content Management

There are hundreds of thousands of open source projects available today

Of those, hundreds are open source content management packages

• Narrow the list to those “enterprise ready” offerings with commercial support

• Segment by language (Java, PHP, Python, Perl)

• Segment by primary use (Community/Portal vs. Repository)

Many open source content management projects focus on WCM

Java P-language

Repository

Community/ Portal

Nuxeo CPS, Magnolia, OpenCMS

Drupal, Joomla, Typo3, Plone

Alfresco, Apache Lenya, Apache Jackrabbit, Jahia

Bricolage, eZ Publish, Zope CMF


Significant ECM Players

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Application capabilities

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Alfresco

sTeam

Contineo

Plone

Nuxeo

KnowledgeTree

Owl

Community

Legend

Open Source Document Management Players


Open Source Enterprise 2.0 Components

Content Repository

Blogging

Wiki

Search

Collaborative Filtering

Social Networking

Forums / Real-time

COFI

Portal/Presentation


Alfresco at-a-glance

Founded in 2005 by John Newton• First production release was at the end of June, 2005

Management• John Newton (Co-founder & CTO) – Founder of

Documentum; founding developer of Ingres; 25 years in enterprise software

• John Powell (Co-founder & CEO) – COO of Business Objects; President, Oracle UK; 25 years selling enterprise software

• Kevin Cochrane (VP, Engineering) - Employee #4 at Interwoven, then VP of Product Management (built TeamSite)

• Matt Asay (VP, Business Development) - Founder, Open Source Business Conference; co-founder, Novell’s Linux Business Office; board member, OSI

Engineering• All 11 original engineers came from Documentum


Alfresco at-a-glance: Functionality

Solid ECM platform• Core content services (Search, Metadata, Security, CIAO)

• Advanced workflow engine (JBoss jBPM)

• Ability to access repository as a file share through CIFS (as well as FTP, WebDAV, SMTP)

• LDAP authentication

• Many API options (Java, JavaScript, FreeMarker, REST, SOAP)

Maturing WCM platform• Technology agnostic• Snapshots, rollback, sandboxes/virtualization• Web forms, multiple renditions• Deployment to test servers, production servers, other instances

Emerging collaboration platform• Supports the Sharepoint Protocol for Office integration• Embedded wiki• Blogs• “Share” client is aimed at team collaboration


Alfresco Share Screenshot


Alfresco as SharePoint Killer?

Alfresco's ability to support the SharePoint Protocol is huge

Alfresco Share currently lacks a couple of features popular with SharePoint users

• Custom lists/views• User-defined web forms

Alfresco offers:• Much better scalability (No hard limits in

number of documents or search index, unlike SharePoint)

• Choice at all points in the stack


Acquia at-a-glance

Founded in 2008 by Dries Buytaert and Jay Batson

Commercial company behind Drupal

Dries started Drupal in 1999 while in college as a “Message Board”

Acquia Drupal is a certified, commercially supported Drupal distribution

Acquia provides commercial support for Acquia Drupal


Acquia at-a-glance: Functionality

Primarily a “Community” platform• Social networking• Collaborative sites• Intranet applications

Runs best on LAMP

Thousands of modules available• Five star ratings, Content Construction Kit

(CCK), Podcast, Blogs, Forums, etc.

Acquia Network automatically checks for software updates


Drupal Screenshot


Liferay at-a-glance

Created in 2000 for the non-profit sector by Brian Chan

Liferay, Inc. is the commercial company behind Liferay

• Commercial support• Professional services

Sun recently made a major investment in Liferay


Liferay at-a-glance: Functionality

Java-based portal server• JSR-168, JSR-286 compliance• Runs in an application server

Includes basic content management repository

Drag-and-drop portlet arrangement

60+ portlets available OOTB• RSS, Forums, Blogs, Wikis, Polls, Content

Management, Social Networking, etc.

User profiles, SSO, LDAP integration

Infinite number of sub-sites


Liferay Screenshot


Who's Using Open Source ECM Today?

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Who's Already There? (Selected Optaros ECM Clients)

McKesson

Procter & Gamble

Activision

Electronic Arts

Sony Pictures

Endeca

EMD Serono

Rodale

Fox Broadcasting

Neiman Marcus

Travelocity

Ackerman & McQueen

Swisscom Mobile

NXP Semiconductor

Lifetime

Cisco

New York Times


What are they doing?

A lot of:• Intranet 2.0• Document

management• Business Process

Management• Portals• Team Collaboration• WCM

– Community/Web 2.0 sites

– Vignette/Stellent/etc. replacements

Some:• Digital Asset

Management• Records

Management

Not Much:• Imaging• Fixed storage


Client Case Study: Endeca

The Company:

Building a partner community for innovation

The Challenge:

Assembly Highlights:

180 users the first day, 360 the first week, more than 1000 the first month

Site integrates portal, content, and blog servers with a seamless user interface

Content is personalized to match user preferences

Content approval rules can be adjusted for each department

Reusable assembly for internal Endeca community (e.g. blogging, Wiki)

•Endeca Technologies, a next-generation information access company

• Information access platform is used by many leading companies and government agencies

•Headquarters in Cambridge, MA, USA and operations worldwide

• Create an online knowledge-sharing and collaboration community for employees, customers, and partners

• Provide controlled access to thousands of technical documents, best practices, code samples, case studies, and other content

• Address department-specific requirements for metadata and content approval

• Support future initiatives for interaction and participation

•Meet a 13-week deadline

“The solution that Optaros

assembled for us lets us interact

with our audiences with

speed, flexibility and

differentiation.”

- Colby DyessProduct Manager

Endeca


Client Case Study: EndecaBuilding a partner community for innovation (Cont’d)

Flexibility:Key Components:

Liferay Portal [JSR-168]

Forums: Liferay Forums

Alfresco: Content Presentation [JSR- 170]

Additional AJAX integration with script.aculo.us, prototype

DWR (Direct Web Remoting) toolkit for javascript

Blogs: Apache Roller

Open Source SoftwareWeb Presentation:

Used to integrate Liferay with Alfresco

Web Services:

Alfresco content repository

JBoss Application Server

Red Hat Directory Server (LDAP) for user and group management

Back-end Components:

Differentiators:

Enterprise 2.0 open source assembly designed for Endeca’s needs and preferences

Content approval rules are adjustable for individual departments using Alfresco's embedded JBPM workflow engine

Enterprise 2.0 stack can be leveraged and reused for Endeca’s internal community site

Loose assembly architecture allows easy replacement of pluggable modules and the ability to experiment

“By offering our customers and

partners a seamless way to

educate themselves and

interact with peers we are creating

loyalty to the site and to Endeca.”

- Colby DyessProduct Manager

Endeca

- Colby DyessProduct

ManagerEndeca

“Endeca customers and partners have been the driving force behind our

initiatives to encourage

relationship building and the

open exchange of ideas and best

practices. EDeN is the culmination of these efforts…”

Differentiation:

Vibrant online community builds stronger relationships with customers and partners

Users can access thousands of technical documents, tools and utilities, code samples, case studies and other content

Metadata tags identify relevant search content to match user profile

Social networking and knowledge-sharing for e-business (blogs for executives and technical staff, feedback, forums)

New participation and collaboration features coming soon

Endeca Search EngineClient Preferred Component


Endeca EDeN Architecture

Batch Job

SOAP WS

JDBC JDBC

User ProfilesPreferences

Presentation ServicesRSS PortletForums PortletCustom Search PortletsCustom Alfresco Portlets

Site-wide SearchGuided NavigationContent Spotlighting

SOAP WS

LDAP

Custom Content ModelAdvanced WorkflowCustom ActionsMinor Web Client Cust.All File-based Content

CTO BlogEngineer

Blogs


Early wireframe




Screen Shots




Getting Started

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Open Source Challenges

Support• Look for strong communities• Prefer projects with commercial support• Bright side: Choice

Documentation

Nebulous road map• Tends to be much more democratic• Need-driven, developer-driven, not vendor-

driven

Non-traditional sales cycle• Usually minimal marketing and sales budgets• Bright side: Zero acquisition cost means cost of

failure is low


Evaluating Open Source

Evaluate like you would a commercial vendor• Features• Architectural fit• Support• References• Proof-of-concept/Bake-off• Don't just check boxes: Most of the time, Open

source ECM is on par with commercial offerings

Cost savings should not be your number one driver

• Up-front license outlay will likely be redirected to services


Measuring “community” strength

Activity• Releases, minor & major• Downloads• Bug/issue log• Posts, responses• Helpfulness• Breadth (code commits, forum activity,

wiki/documentation edits)

Project leadership• Visible, vocal leadership

Committed partners


Open Source Resources

Blogs• Matt Asay cnet• 451 Group CAOS• Redmonk• ECM Architect• Open Parenthesis• Enter Content Here• John Newton

EOS Directory

Ostatic

Ohloh

JumpBox

RedHat Exchange

Don't write these down. Instead, go to: http://delicious.com/jpotts/opensource_ecm_talk


Parting Thoughts

“Selectively seed development with RIA, dynamic language, and open source expertise...If you

don’t have a strategy that takes advantage of external services and open source frameworks, then it may be hard to compete with nimbler

competitors.” (Forrester, July 26, 2007)


About Optaros

We design, assemble & support next-generation Internet solutions for ecommerce and media & publishing clients

We help our clients become more agile and deliver better user experiences to their customers, employees, and suppliers

We do great work100% reference-able98% on-time/on-budgetWe‘re growing$0 $21 million since 2005

Over 200 employees across offices in North America, Bucharest, Geneva, London, Munich, ZurichWe have a rich historyLeadership since 1990 through the client-server, web browser, and “assembly” eras

We’re well capitalized$20 million capitalization