Open source ECM Alfresco now emulates SharePoint
I had a long talk the other afternoon with John Newton, CTO and Chairman of Alfresco. John previously co-founded Documentum.
If the name Alfresco rings a bell but you can't place it, perhaps it's because former InfoWorld Open Sources blogger Matt Asay is VP of Business Development at Alfresco and runs the company's US operation in Palo Alto. In any case, Alfresco is in the open source Enterprise content management business.
John was calling from England, where it was about 8 in the evening and an uncharacteristic 80 F. We started off by talking about how Alfresco has been doing, and the numbers John quoted were impressive: roughly 1.3 million downloads, about 10 thousand installations, and 500-600 paying customers. According to John, Alfresco has expanded faster using an open source model with paid services and support than Documentum did at the same point in its history with a traditional proprietary software model.
