How does the future look like with Alfresco?

This book is based on Alfresco Enterprise 3.0. This book is an update to a previous book, which was on the Alfresco 1.4 release. The Alfresco system has evolved towards a state-of-the-art, one-point solution to the ECM needs.

In 2009, Alfresco aimed to focus on five key areas:

• New and enhanced team and enterprise collaboration services

• Publishing and management services for dynamic, Web 2.0-enabled web sites

• Web client usability

• Scalability, performance, and enterprise-readiness

• Standards

There has been so much interest from international organizations, governments, and multinational corporations that translation seems a natural extension of the Alfresco model.

Alfresco has weaved itself into a number of other products. Products such as Quark, Acrobat.com, CAStor and Adobe LiveCycle are just a few to mention who have incorporated the Alfresco ECM into their products in some way.

Enterprise versus Community Labs

Alfresco spent the summer of 2008 releasing Alfresco Labs 3, which includes a version of their new collaboration solution, Alfresco Share, and Surf which is a new development platform. From there, they spent time performing extensive testing to prepare for the release of their latest enterprise version.

The enterprise version is the certified build of Alfresco—the one that is sold to production environments for companies and government organizations that want a stable, supported solution. Alfresco currently has over 700 organizations using the enterprise version.

Enterprise releases are available to customers with an enterprise subscription. Enterprise releases are tested and certified for customer deployment. The releases include a maintenance release train of engineering-led and customer-driven bug fixes to ensure successful operation in an enterprise environment. These bug fixes will periodically be made available in the community code-line, where they are mixed in with upcoming features and other product enhancements. Maintenance release schedules are driven by Alfresco Support.

Enterprise Edition	Community Labs
100% Open Source with Commercial Support	100% Open Source. No Alfresco or Certified Partner Support
High-Availability Cluster Certified	No High-Availability Cluster Testing
Scalability Certified	No Scalability Testing
Stress Tested, Certified and Supported Build	Daily Build with SVN Access
Certified across Combinations of both Open Source and Commercial Stacks	Quality Assurance on Periodic Build on a Basic Open Source Stack

Better support options

Alfresco comes with multiple support options. Firstly, it is supported by the company Alfresco, which gives users direct access to Alfresco's engineering team and the most recent bug fixes. This is currently the best way to receive high-quality support for the Alfresco software. However, as more and more people adopt the software, the options for quality support beyond Alfresco–the company–will improve.

At any given point in time, the following three support alternatives exist for Alfresco open source software:

• In-house development support: Because the source code is open source, you can train your developers in-house to support your application that has been built using Alfresco.

• Community support: Alfresco already has a big community world wide. With a growing community, you can always get help through the Alfresco community forums, although the quality of support can vary.

• Alfresco enterprise network support: As mentioned, Alfresco Inc. currently provides the highest quality option for production and development support. This support is provided to the company's customers who are using the Enterprise product. It includes direct access to the engineers who write the Alfresco code, up-to-date bug fixes, configuration assistance, and a range of other services.

Free upgrades

For every new release, you will receive free, upgraded software. You might have to take care of your specific customization to upgrade to the latest version of the software. It is important to follow best practices while implementing Alfresco, so that upgrades are easier and less expensive to handle.