Migration from Fatwire to Alfresco

[infiniter]

Hi everyone,
I'm working in a project to export all the content from a Fatwire CMS to another Java option. Basically I'm looking for a similar CMS with good support. It doesn't necessarily have to be open source. I thought Alfreso could be a good candidate only due to it's popularity and the comparison table from http://www.cmsmatrix.org.
Since it's a large migration, I would like it to be as painless as possible, considering support, features and structure.

Do you guys know, what option could help and why??

[mrogers]

<disclamer>
I know nothing about Fatwire other than what I have seen in a few minutes browsing on their website.
</disclamer>
Fatwire seems to WCM specific in which case you may be interested in Alfresco's WCM.

I also see on the Fatwire site that they integrate with content management systems so it may well be possible to run both Fatwire and Alfresco together.  Alfresco can either look like sharepoint or can expose a filesystem that looks like NFS or Windows.

Migrating from one CMS to Another can range from a fairly trivial task if all you are interested in preserving are the current set of the content files to a long and involved process if more features need to be transformed.  It rather depends upon what features of Fatwire you want to carry over to Alfresco and what new functionailty you want to set up in Alfresco.

[infiniter]

I actually don't want Fatwire and Alfresco working together. The client just wants to get rid of Fatwire (it's a long story).
We just need to migrate the content. What concerns me the most is the structure.

These are some things to consider:
- Fatwire has two asset types, Basic and Flex.
- A flex asset is one that does not map fields directly to a database table – The API will take this information and output it to an XML file.
- Non-Flex Assets can be exported directly from the Database tables as fields correlate directly to content in the table – (i.e. headline would have corresponding headline column in db).
- There may well be associations across assets – this information is stored in a specific table. Page structure information and Collections are stored in specific tables as well.

I don't mean to migrate the whole thing, but as you know there are several considerations to make before starting.

[bherbert]

We would be able to help you with your migration requirements…

We Proventeq is a technology company which specializes in providing content migration solutions. Our flagship product, Content Migration Suite, offers
an end-to-end solution for migrating existing content from a structured/unstructured source into Oracle UCM or Microsoft SharePoint. It can migrate web content, documents and other digital assets from a wide range of sources. Designed with flexibility in mind, it can easily be configured and/or extended to address any kind of content migration requirement. To compliment the Content Migration Suite, we offer a consultancy service. We deliver the consultancy through a proven methodology (http://www.proventeq.com/services/content-migration-consulting) with well defined steps to help achieve a successful migration.

A detailed description of products and services can be found on the following link:

http://www.proventeq.com/products/content-migration-suite

We have got source connectors to extract content from file systems, databases, websites, cms systems, portals, ECM  (e.g. Stellent, Sharepoint, etc…) and target connectors to major ECM platforms such as Oracle UCM, SharePoint, etc…

A detailed description of migration adapters can be found on the following link:

http://www.proventeq.com/products/content-migration-suite/cms-adapters

If your requirement is still valid, get in tocuh with us and we can look at your migration requirements and come up with a value proposition to meet your migration requirements.

Thanks,
Balu Herbert

[mdutoo]

As mroger says, first make sure whether and how Alfresco fits your requirements. Alfresco alone is rather focused on document management and collaboration, but along with WCM, Alfresco Surf and Web Studio it provides CMS / website publication features.

Now for your migration needs, you can use the Open Source ETL tool Talend 3.1 and its Alfresco connector to import data (taken e.g. from a database or anything Talend can look into) into Alfresco as any kind of Alfresco content (documents, folders, custom…).

Some links :
Talend 3.1 including the Alfresco connector is available at http://www.talend.com/download.php
Its Alfresco connector has been contributed on the Alfresco forge at http://forge.alfresco.com/projects/etlconnector/
More information at http://knowledge.openwide.fr/bin/view/Main/AlfrescoETLConnector