Understanding Alfresco's editions
Alfresco has three editions of its ECM products: Alfresco One, Alfresco in the Cloud, and Alfresco Community Edition. We won't describe the other BPM products offered by Alfresco, because they are not in the scope of this book.
Alfresco One is the package installable on premise supported by Alfresco. It provides hybrid capabilities with selective content-sync to the included SaaS Alfresco in the Cloud. Alfresco One provides as well different modules including content encryption, records management, analytics, and media management.
Alfresco in the cloud offers almost all out-of-the-box features provided by Alfresco Share without on-premises installation. It provides full mobile access and workflow for document review and approval. This product is well suited for smaller teams with multiple offices or branches that don't want to manage servers and don't require the full customization, extra modules or integrations offered by Alfresco One. This product can be used as well in a hybrid mode. Only documents that need to be shared with the outside world can be published into Alfresco Cloud. Content can be configured to synchronize between Alfresco Cloud and on premise Alfresco installations.
Alfresco community is intended for developers and technical enthusiasts who want the power of Alfresco in non-critical environments. However, some big organizations use Alfresco community in production. Be aware that Alfresco won't provide any support for this product. In terms of features, Alfresco community is usually the first product to receive the new features to allow the community to test. However, some features are provided only by Alfresco One including the administration console, the content encryption or the Activiti console.
Significant feature differences
At the time of this writing, the latest supported release from Alfresco is Alfresco One 5.1. The latest community release is Alfresco Community 201605 (for May 2016).
What's used in this book
The vast majority of examples used in this book will work on both the Enterprise and Community editions (5.1 and 201605, respectively). Where a specific release is required, it will be noted wherever possible.
