Alfresco Professional and Enterprise Networks

[paulhh]

To the Alfresco Community:

We believe that enterprise document/ content management has moved from a 'nice to have' to a must have requirement for most organizations. A recent study by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) and AIIM found that

- Over 50 percent of IT managers surveyed said that they are planning projects in e-mail, document control and records management in the next year

- 15 percent of respondents were only slightly confident that their electronic records were accurate, accessible and trustworthy

However, the price of conventional proprietary ECM systems remains beyond the reach of many organizations, with even low end products costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Also, the price of these systems has held back the development of many applications, unlike the structured data market where a wide choice of applications is available based on an open standards-based infrastructure.

Our goal was to:

- Create a product that would be free/low cost to small scale users and application developers and a real alternative to shared drives or Microsoft SharePoint(TM)

- Create a product that would be a magnitude more cost effective for enterprise customers and a real open source alternative to Enterprise Content Management systems

- An ECM system for partners to develop applications on that is as easy to embed as other leading open source systems such as JBoss and MySQL.

With your help we have now achieved these goals and this product release reflects our teamwork and the power of the open source community in creating a platform for scalable Enterprise Content Management.  We have a clear policy to make sure all of the certified contributions are fed into the open source product for the benefit of the community.

The Professional and Enterprise Networks we are announcing today are 10% of the total cost of ownership (TCO) of Closed Source Enterprise Content Management systems. These networks are backed by the services and skills to enable mass adoption by any organization, from those looking for small team collaboration to those with thousands of users in single or multi-server environments.

Details of these Networks and the benefits they bring can be found at http://www.alfrescosoftware.com

We thank you for your support and look forward to continuing this journey with you, quenching the world's thirst for Enterprise Content Management and changing the DNA of the software industry through open source.


John Powell, C.E.O.
Alfresco Software Inc

[fselendic]

Hmm, rather unpleasant, but quite expected surprise. I'm not sure that this model is what will work best for Alfresco and you guys in general (I am not a fan of "cripled" product based licensing), but, wht, it is your product to begin with, so I do wish you and your company best of luck.

I was unable to find pricing information on the site for a long time, you sholud perhaps move it from PDF to some more visible place.

Also, I can't find any info on partner programs and/or discounts, with this kind of new bussines agenda you are surely thinking of building a capable partner network.

[jbaton]

As fselendic, I've been looking for your pricing policy and did not find it.

It's not funny to say "Hey guys, the features you need in your enterprise context are on sale !" when there is no price tag and when it is not possible to go meet the clerk with the product to ask for the price. (although it is fair as everybody needs to eat)

Enterprise version will only be available after the 1.0 release, am I right ?


Jerome

[paulhh]

Jerome

We're in the process of getting the .com site built, so it is really a place-holder for the moment.  The pricing is tucked away in one of the PDFs:
http://www.alfrescosoftware.com/pdf/AllProductsSummary_V5.pdf

I'm posting the following here just for clarity, we're keen for people to sign up, since you are right, we need to eat - but this isn't a sales pitch.

In summary:

Community Network (Open Source): free
Developer Network: $4.99 / 3.99 Euro per month per user
Professional Network: $9.99 / 7.99 Euro per month per user
Enterprise Network: $625 / 525 Euro per moth per cpu

Any queries, please follow up to sales at alfrescosoftware dot com.

Cheers
Paul.

[jbaton]

Paul,

thanks for the information, I had problems with reaching the .com site.
Well, it works now 🙂

I'll do my best to convince my responsible to sign up as I want you to eat to keep up with your nice work.

Guys, from what I've seen, your sources are polished and methods have comments. All the more, you all respond quickly on forums. I think you deserve a pay rise too

thumbs up guys, really


Jerome

[shakhruz]

Paul,
Are there any discounts/comissions for resellers for the Enterprise Network?

Shakrhuz

Jerome

We're in the process of getting the .com site built, so it is really a place-holder for the moment.  The pricing is tucked away in one of the PDFs:
http://www.alfrescosoftware.com/pdf/AllProductsSummary_V5.pdf

I'm posting the following here just for clarity, we're keen for people to sign up, since you are right, we need to eat - but this isn't a sales pitch.

In summary:

Community Network (Open Source): free
Developer Network: $4.99 / 3.99 Euro per month per user
Professional Network: $9.99 / 7.99 Euro per month per user
Enterprise Network: $625 / 525 Euro per moth per cpu

Any queries, please follow up to sales at alfrescosoftware dot com.

Cheers
Paul.

[paulhh]

Shakrhuz

Please send an email to info at alfresco dot org.  We have had a lot of interest in this area so we developing our strategy at the moment.  We have had people working with different business models, so we are trying to be flexible.

Cheers
Paul.

[lgr]

Jerome

http://www.alfrescosoftware.com/pdf/AllProductsSummary_V5.pdf
Community Network (Open Source): free
Developer Network: $4.99 / 3.99 Euro per month per user
Professional Network: $9.99 / 7.99 Euro per month per user
Enterprise Network: $625 / 525 Euro per moth per cpu

Hello,

I think the PDF is erroneous. The first page describe exactly the same you said. But the second page says that the "Open Network" version is free, "Community network" is 4.99/3.99 and "Developper Network" has disappeared.

Laurent.