By: Erik Vlietinck
Wed, February 20, 2008 - 7:34:00

http://www.alfresco.com

Open Source software is omnipresent these days. Even Apple is modestly involved in Open Source. Few companies are also using an Open Source business model. Although Adobe and Quark both have software that is open to techniologies such as Tomcat and Java, they keep on selling their software as in the nineties.

Actually, Quark has announced a partnership with a true Open Source company, Alfresco. It’s unclear as yet what the partnership entails exactly, but one thing is certain: Alfresco’s business model is Open Source all the way. That is to say, you can download Alfresco’s crown jewels, and pay nothing. Payment day comes when you have been trying to install and mainatin your Alfresco system and you’re stuck.

At that moment, you’ll be better off shelling out some support money to get that system running again. Alfresco, by the way, is a sophisticated and highly scalable document management system.

Global Top 5000

Alfresco was launched by former Documentum and Interwoven management because they believed available open source technologies could make for a faster and better scalable document management system. Today Alfresco claims to have enjoyed 1 million downloads of their web Content Management system, 30,000 sites running on Alfresco, and some 400 customers paying for their services.

Alfresco is not typical for the sort of software business we’re usually covering here at IT Enquirer. It aims at the Global Top 5000 companies, and doesn’t mind expanding into smaller business segments too much. But that doesn’t mean small businesses can’t use the Alfresco system. In fact, if you can program, you can even contribute to Alfresco’s ongoing development.

But that’s another story entirely. Alfresco is not just highly scalable, it also uses a URL-based interface, and looks to your programs as a shared file drive. Needless to say Alfresco uses whatever open source technology you wouldlike to throw at it, including Java, Tomcat, MySQL Community server, PHP, XML, etc.

It is all about content anywhere, as their CMO Ian Howells told me in an interview. Content anywhere is also Adobe’s motto, although design forms a large part of what Adobe believes to be the core value of content. Strangely enough Alfresco is often used where you would least expect it. Howells told me the system is often used by game site owners who create large communities with it.

No Contribute Server In the Technology Mix

No Dreamweaver and Contribute, not even Contribute Server technology, but a relatively simple content management system that is highly scalable --as highly as 100 million documents. And all that with technologies you can find and often download for free anywhere on the Internet.

So, Open Source seems to have conquered the world --not so much for individual users with limited budgets, but for businesses with huge wallets. Sometimes open source trickles down, though, like when an editorial workflow system such as QPS 7 or Smart Connection Enterprise 5 supports Java and AJAX, or when you download simple-looking applications like LightZone to convert and edit Camera RAW images. LightZone is entirely written in Java.

Despite the business success of companies like Alfresco, I for one don’t believe open source is a sensible route to go for all types of applications. I do believe that the sophistication we have come to like and admire with applications such as Adobe’s Creative Suite and Apple’s Final Cut Pro, is impossible to achieve with open source technologies. The GUI libraries, APIs, and all the other basic building blocks developers need to make something look good and perform well, are simply not there. That is one of the reasons why systems such as Alfresco work from within a browser. The browser takes over the design work, and you don’t need much sophistication when managing documents anyway.