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My colleague, Sebastian Wohlrapp, and I just published a new white paper on Open Source Document Management Systems. Last year, it seemed that most of what open source content management had to offer was in the WCM and personal publishing space. A lot has changed and there are now several viable DMS options. This paper focuses on basic document management functionality needed by the typical knowledge worker as an alternative to what most companies resort to today: shared file systems and email. There is great potential for open source to answer the need for open/affordable/simple solutions that deliver this functionality. Several projects are well on their way.
The following projects were evaluated:
We evaluated the projects along the following dimensions:
- Creating and storing content
- Organizing content and collaboration
- Search and accessing content
- Usability
As usual, feedback is welcome.
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This is a very good white paper for CIOs who are looking for open source alternatives to commercial document management systems.
Good to see that Alfresco is the magic quadrant. With an exciting roadmap ahead, Alfresco is going to be an alternative to commercial closed source products such as Microsoft Sharepoint, Hummingbird etc.
The “magic quadrant” reference makes me feel uncomfortable. Regardless of whether you think of yourself as an “Enterprise” or a small company, the right tool depends largely on your users and what they will feel comfortable using.
Sebastian and I went back and forth on the inclusion of this chart for this reason. It looks nice to summarize the field graphically. But I hope that people don’t use this chart to make a selection. The criteria for placement are somewhat arbitrary and very unscientific. We tended to weight factors such as standards support and the use of entrenched technologies (read “Java”) in the Large Enterprise Readiness axis. But not all companies would assign priorities in this way.
So, if you are shopping around for a DMS, look deeper than the chart. Try out the technologies. Do the architecture work. Or just call me
I knew this would happen.
The graphic representation is to be seen as a high level overview from a Java oriented large enterprise focus. But even if this is your current situation: please follow Seth’ advice above. Even for commercial products it is not the best advice to follow the product in the magic quadrant. And in open source you don’t have to. You are free to explore and try them all.
I would like to read the whitepaper but the link is broken, could you please ask your friend to re-post the document?
Thanks,
Chris Fazekas