100% Open Source Alfresco including Enterprise Features

[johnn]

Open source as a business model is still evolutionary and it is true for Alfresco too. Having had an opportunity to distribute and sell services to enterprise customers, we have come to the conclusion it is not necessary to withhold functionality to have enterprises invest in services and support. Therefore, we are considering making Alfresco, including Enterprise features, 100% open source in the 1.3 Release of Alfresco in May. There will still be an Enterprise service package that includes support, maintenance, additional documentation, indemnification and warranty.

We would like your help as we consider this initiative in positioning and in branding. If you could take a moment to take our poll, we would appreciate your input. Also, if you have any comments we would love to hear them.

-John Newton, CTO

[enomaly]

Personally I think the more you can include in the Community edition the better. That said, you have to make money. A business that doesn?t make money won?t last very long. The most obvious way to do this is to include value added services, support and components at an additional cost.

If you focus to heavily on lets say providing consulting services, you run the risk of alienating your partners. If you focus too much on value added extras, you may alienate some potential customers. Customers that are not willing to pay for the extra?s probably are not going to be the right fit anyway and will choose the more basic version. These extra's need to target the type of customers the need those extras and are willing to pay form them.

Ultimately I think you need an enterprise edition. What this means comes down to what will create a sustainable and profitable business for years to come, not only for Alfresco, but your partners and end users.

[enomaly]

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This board is acting strangely. It posted my reply several times.

[pmarreddy]

From a marketing/branding perspective, I would try to keep the branding as simple and straightforward as possible. There's nothing worse than a product range with too many product names and 'feature comparison matrices'. You need to get your name out, make sure that people associate it with what you're trying to accomplish (be a player in the ECM market?) and then, with some help from the community you've already started to build, the rest will hopefully follow. The name is already out there : 'Alfresco' so I'd stick to that. The support contracts could be under the umbrella of 'Enterprise Services' or something the like.

i think what u said is right.

keep it simple.

prasanth

[rdanner]

Personally I think the more you can include in the Community edition the better. That said, you have to make money. A business that doesn?t make money won?t last very long. The most obvious way to do this is to include value added services, support and components at an additional cost.

If you focus to heavily on lets say providing consulting services, you run the risk of alienating your partners. If you focus too much on value added extras, you may alienate some potential customers. Customers that are not willing to pay for the extra?s probably are not going to be the right fit anyway and will choose the more basic version. These extra's need to target the type of customers the need those extras and are willing to pay form them.

Ultimately I think you need an enterprise edition. What this means comes down to what will create a sustainable and profitable business for years to come, not only for Alfresco, but your partners and end users.

I agree with you that companies must make money.  But money can be made in many ways.  What is the deal with alfresco partners/integrators? They send leads to alfresco? Or alfresco gets a cut?  I have no idea.

I think alfresco has a kick ass repository that we will see "OEM"'ed all over. Off the top of my head I can think of at least 7 companies that SHOULD go right after alfresco, put it in as infrastructure and cut alfresco in on the deal for support and engineering upgrades.

I really don?t care if alfresco (or anyone else) decides to sell their software.  Alfresco has something special and people are going to pay for it one way or the other.   Because NO business actually believes it gets something for nothing. You get only what you pay for. The question is really answered better by the benefits of not charging for software:
   Better adoption
   Community good will - feeds adoption, feeds innovation
   Free is the lowest barrier to entry
   Innovators that want to work with you (Which one of you out there doesn?t realize that if you want to learn about Content Management ? alfresco is your game.  I don?t think you will find a better place for a mentor)  How does alfresco benefit from the act of mentorship? There is no better time to educate when there is desire to learn.  The more programmers out there educated about CMS? the more opportunity for alfresco. 
   In essence other long term revenue opportunities generated by what seems to be good will but is just good sense.
  

What I really want from a company these days is access.  Direct access.  An insiders view in to the roadmap and vision for the company and its product.  I want to participate in the process.  I want a say, and my participation level should generally be equivocal to the voice I have.

Who cares about licenses and source code… that?s just the cost of getting work done?  The real power lies in a voice.  Screw open source.  Open Communication.

It so happens that opening the source code is the first step in opening up the communication channels.   Opening up the commitership is the next step.

BTW… Microsoft seems to think that shared source will savb their wounds and silence the OS community.  I doubt it.  People aren?t interested in access to source code, the just think they are.  They are interested in dialog.  If you look at Microsoft participation in standards and their product stack you can be sure they are not interested in the kind of open communication that is present in the OS community.

OK? my soap box is complaining?. Time to get down J

[rdanner]

The forum is acting up… The PHP library for SQL turned all my punctuation in to question marks.

[townxelliot]

Excellent. I was very impressed with the product when I first looked at it, but found it difficult to fully evaluate due to the missing features. I think you will gather a lot more momentum by pursuing this model, and Alfresco will get the exposure it deserves. Matt's comments on his blog about open source being a marathon are spot on: you need to keep chiselling away at the big boys, and there will be plenty of money-making opportunities coming your way. You're also more likely to pick up contracts with public sector organisation, educational institutions, charities, and the like, more and more of whom are mandating open source solutions. Good move all round.

[knowledgeblue]

As one of your most recent Partners, we agree that Alfresco should be 100% open source. The reason is simple, it is one less barrier to entry, allowing us to acquire new accounts, much faster.  We have already proven this works - as one of the largest certified Compiere, Inc. Partners, we can close deals three times as fast with Compiere vs. SugarCRM because of the "pure" open source model Compiere offers.  It also makes it much easier as an Alfresco Partner to generate more revenue back to you because we can easily upsell Alfresco training, support, etc. because the Prospect / Customer expects to pay for those type of services. We are looking forward to May…in order to generate more revenue back to you.

[fthamura]

Cannot wait the beta, why dont you release the beta first.

Alfresco will rock the eCM market

[leon]

Great news!

"Alfresco" will be more Attractive and Charming ,and so I do think more people will enter this Kingdom….

[tulum]

just for joke:

"alfresco" in italian language sounds like "go to jail"

🙂