Alfresco Enterprise Edition runs on a range of software stacks, offers granular management, dashboard-like user interface, and is simple to install and put to work.
A well-organized filing cabinet may meet the definition of an analog
content management system, but in the 21st century, that reliable standby of
office furniture is no longer cutting the mustard. Part of the problem is that
the "paperless office" we were promised-along with our jetpacks and robot
housekeepers-is in actuality drowning in documents. Alfresco Software's
namesake CMS does a good job of providing an easily adapted environment that's
simple to set up and put to work, without skimping on controls or management
features.
The Enterprise Edition of Alfresco's CMS is available either as a cloud-based service hosted on the Amazon EC2
cloud or as a local installation for Linux, Solaris and Windows servers. The
company also offers the Alfresco Community Edition, which is suitable for
smaller deployments and organizations that are willing to trade off the support
available in the Enterprise Edition for more advanced features or a wide range
of software stacks.
The two editions essentially share the same code, and the forking takes
place during the testing of each release. In short, after an Alfresco release
passes its basic usability testing, it is released as a Community Edition and
goes on to more rigorous testing against a range of software stacks before it
is designated as an Enterprise Edition.
And the term "range" isn't used lightly: The 3.x series of Alfresco
Enterprise Edition is supported on various releases of the MySQL, Microsoft SQL
Server, Oracle and PostgreSQL database servers; JBoss, Oracle WebLogic and
Tomcat are the supported application servers; and authentication can be
provided by the Active Directory service in Windows Server, Kerberos,
Microsoft's NTLM service, OpenLDAP and Sun Directory Server. Although the
matrix of what the company calls "fully tested" stacks is slightly smaller,
customers still have a great deal of flexibility in how they deploy Alfresco.
Despite the snags I experienced in my test drive of
Alfresco, it is a remarkably good toolset for collaboration and content
management that runs on a variety of software stacks. It's easy to install and
configure for initial use, and offers a granular set of user roles that, when
paired with the version tracking features, are going to provide an organization
with a firm grip on its digital documents.
Although Alfresco's documentation is spotty in
places, you really have to work hard to foul up the CMS. When management functions are delegated as designed, it requires
minimal care and feeding from an IT perspective. That characteristic alone
makes Alfresco Enterprise Edition more than just praiseworthy.
P. J. Connolly began writing for IT publications in 1997 and has a lengthy track record in both news and reviews. Since then, he's built two test labs from scratch and earned a reputation as the nicest skeptic you'll ever meet. Before taking up journalism, P. J. was an IT manager and consultant in San Francisco with a knack for networking the Apple Macintosh, and his love for technology is exceeded only by his contempt for the flavor of the month. Speaking of which, you can follow P. J. on Twitter at pjc415, or drop him an email at pjc@eweek.com.
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