Alfresco is a world’s leading open source alternative to Enterprise Content Management (ECM) developed and supported by large open source community. Alfresco is cost effective and provides best state of the art features as compare to other commercial vendor for ECM solution.  Alfresco is low cost ECM software with many features and benefits.

 Alfresco is available in two versions community and Enterprise.

1.       Alfresco Community Edition (Free)

Community Version is free to  download and has  GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) with support of open standard model.  Provides all the features as of Enterprise and purely support by community and its members, the current released  version of community edition is 4.0 in DEC 2011.

2.       Alfresco Enterprise Edition (Paid for Subscription)

Enterprise edition is open source ECM solution provider with annual enterprise subscription charges, Alfresco doesn’t charge any enterprise license fee.  The Subscription services include Technical Support, Alfresco Network access, Maintenance releases ,  Extended QA Process and  more. The current released version of enterprise edition is Alfresco Enterprise 3.4.

Features

• ·         Document Management
• ·         Record Management
• ·         Web Content Management
• ·         Enterprise Collaboration
• ·         Content Platform
• ·         Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS)
• ·         Activity BPM (New)
• ·         Enterprise Content Management
• ·         Social Content Management
• ·         Portal Integration
• ·         Knowledge Management
• ·         Imaging
• ·         Common Internet File System(CIFS)  
• ·         Compatible with windows and Linux
• ·         Microsoft Office and Open office integration
• ·         Raid Development
• ·         High Availability, Clustering and Security
• ·         Internationalization
• ·          Version Controlling
• ·         Light weight scripts

Benefits

• ·         Lower Total cost of ownership than other ECM systems with low cost subscription model.
• ·         Built by team of  leading members form reputed ECM products like FileNet, Documentum, OpenText, Interwoven and  more.
• ·         Flexible and open standard architecture.
• ·         Built using open source components like Spring, Hibernate, Lucene and MyFaces.
• ·         Based on Aspect Oriented Programming
• ·         Avoids vendor lock-in
• ·         Integration with SAP, IBM Lotus, Microsoft Office, SharePoint and Google docs.
• ·         Provides strong competence to the commercial equivalents.

IBM BPM Products:

1. FileNet BPM
2. Websphere BPM
3. Websphere Lombardi Edition (IBM BPM )

Key Features of FileNet BPM

• Content Driven process Capabilities.
• Event driven process support content for triggering events.
• Supports wide verities of content forms including documents, images, forms, business objects and XML.
• Embedded decision making in processes.
• Replaces the physical paper in business process.
• Orchestration of the services.
• Invented the term workflow.

Key Feature of Websphere BPM

• Comes with build in Enterprise Service Bus.
• Service Component Architecture.
• Provides Process Modeling, Service Modeling, Monitoring.
• Business Rule Engine integration.
• Event Driven.
• Provides adapters to do different functionalities.
• BPMN  Notation.

Key Features of  IBM BPM (Websphere Lombardi Edition)

• Rapid Development of BPM applications.
• The Picture is the process.
• Agile and Interactive.
• Unified model-driven design environment.
• BPMN 2.0 Notation.
• Real-time scoreboard.
• Process always runnable.

BPM Capabilities Comparison

**** Excellent *** Very Good ** Good *Lack Something N- Not Supported

	FileNet BPM	Websphere BPM	WLE (IBM BPM)
Process Design and Analysis	**	**	***
Process Orchestration	**	***	**
Leverage Content	***	*	*
Prioritize and Route work Automatically	**	**	**
Decision Making	**	**	**
Handling Exception	**	***	**
Business Rules	N	**	**
Business Events	**	**	*
Integrating with backend	*	****	*
Monitoring the business events	**	**	**
Integration With Content	***	*	*
Process Governance	*	**	**
Reusability	**	**	*
Process Control	**	**	***

Please leave your valuable comments and suggestions, let us know what ever we can include here.

IBM FileNet P8 is set of products covers Enterprise Content Management(ECM), Business process management and Compliance capabilities and it is a unified ECM and BPM product. FileNet P8 can be deployed as a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) platforms. IBM FileNet supports JAVA, .NET and XML Web Services Framework.

Features and Benefits:

1. Event-Driven Architecture
2. Object Management Services
3. Universal Catalog Services
4. Content Federation Services
5. Robust, High-Performance, Scalable Unified Repository
6. Easy To Use, Fully Customizable Zero Footprint User Interface
7. Native Workflow
8. Full Lifecycle Management
9. Retention Management
10. Robust XML capabilities
11. Fully Integrated Capture Environment
12. Multilingual System Capabilities
13. Classification Framework
14. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) capabilities
15. Audit Capabilities
16. Single Sign On & Native LDAP support
17. Framework for Enterprise System Interoperability
18. Broad Range of Integration Options
19. Support for Java, .NET and XML Web Services Frameworks
20. Business Agility

IBM FileNet P8

EMC Documentum

ECM Documentum provides solutions for Enterprise Content Management(ECM) with Integrated Business Process Management Capabilities and tools to manage the content.

Features and Benefits:

1. Industry-leading content management.
2. Proven and powerful platform offering a broad set of solutions and integrations.
3. Unified platform and code base
4. Open, standards-based architecture
5. Content analytics and federated search
6. Compliance and security
7. Global distributed deployments -Support global environments with federation, replication, and caching.
8. Building robust applications with a scalable, fault tolerant and extensible architecture
9. Reuse content at a granular level and apply a full set of ECM capabilities to your XML content.
   Multi-language support and localization

Documentum

Alfresco ECM

Alfresco is open source alternative for Enterprise Content management(ECM), Alfresco is aimed to keep high stability product for true enterprise with open source model. It is built by the team how worked on major ECM products like Documentum, FileNet, Vignette and Interwoven.

Features and Benefits:

1. A single unified repository to manage any content – Documents, Images, Video and Audio
2. Industry standards interfaces (i.e. CIFS, IMAP, the SharePoint Protocol, etc.)
3. High Scalability Architecte
4. Standards Driven – built on leading industry standards
5. Fine grained security levels
6. Simple to configure clustering
7. Automated Rules and Actions
8. Lightweight Scripts
9. Workflow
10. Transformation Services
11. Microsoft Office Integration
12. Automatic Version Control

Alfresco ECM

Microsoft SharePoint

Share Point is Microsoft ECM to manage site, content, communities, search and more with one tool. Using SharePoint, people can set up Web sites to share information with others, manage documents from start to finish, and publish reports to help everyone make better decisions.

Features and Benefits:

1. Manage a Unified, Scalable Infrastructure +
2. Maintain Control with Flexible Deployment Options
3. SharePoint Health Analyzer
4. Fully Use Platform Services
5. Deploy and Monitor Flexible Solutions
6. Business Connectivity Services
7. Work Better, Faster, Smarter
8. SharePoint Content makes content management easy
9. SharePoint Sites for business Web sites
10. SharePoint Insights for reports, and business applications.
11. SharePoint Composites offers tools and components for creating do-it-yourself business solutions.
12. Compliance measures
13. SharePoint Search

Microsoft SharePoint

Open Text ECM Suite

Vignette is now part of Open Text, said to be a global leader in Enterprise Content Management with Web content management, portal and collaboration solutions provider for dynamic Web experiences.

1. Document Management,Records Management,Rights Management
2. Email ManagementSimplified user experience
3. Fully featured software development kit
4. OpenText Enterprise Connect features a powerful plug-in architecture to facilitate rapid deployment 
5. OpenText Extended Workflow
6. OpenText Extended Collaboration
7. Content Lifecycle Management
8. OpenText Knowledge Management
9. Supports single-sign-on
10. Increase corporate agility and productivity
11. Reduce the risk of litigation and regulatory non-compliance

OpenText ECM

Oracle Enterprise Content Management Suite

Oracle has now Universal Content Management (UCM) is the industry’s most unified enterprise content management platform that enables you to leverage market-leading document management, Web content management, digital asset management, and records retention functionality to build and complement the business applications.

Oracle ECM

Autonomy Content Management

Autonomy Content Management delivers the next generation information infrastructure platform enabling computers to process and manage not only structured data, but also vast amounts of semi-structured and unstructured information.

Autonomy CM

Ever Team – EverSuite

EVER TEAM Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solutions provider enable mid to large organizations leverage unstructured business content, enhance business processes productivity and comply with content related regulations through a suite of integrated solutions that are quick to deploy, easy to use and targeting a Return on Investment within a year. EVER TEAM provides technology independent ECM Solutions available on both SharePoint and J2EE environments.

EverSuite

Hyland Software – OnBase

Technically, OnBase provides enterprise-level document content management. Enterprise content management software integrates with existing business applications so you reduce, even eliminate, wasteful, redundant tasks. Documents and content you’d normally spend time searching for are at your fingertips.

OnBase

Nuxeo Enterprise Platform

Nuxeo EP will help organizations to build ECM applications to enable them to manage growing volumes of content and ensure that they are compliant. This solution will benefit organizations that have a need for transactional or content-centric processes.

Nuxeo EP

XEROX Docushare

DocuShare enables users to capture, manage, share, and protect a wide range of paper and digital content in one secure, central, and highly scalable repository. DocuShare’s intuitive, easy user interface is so simple, teams adopt it in a matter of a few days; users can be fully trained in one week. DocuShare is easy-to-deploy, requiring little to no IT support, and it works with all common hardware and software.

Xerox Docushare

Ektron

Ektron Web Content Management to automate the entire web publishing lifecycle from creation through dynamic delivery, reducing. costs and speeding time to Web.. Ektron Web Content Management to automate the entire web publishing lifecycle from creation through dynamic delivery, reducing costs and speeding time to Web. Ektron Web Content Management to automate the entire web publishing lifecycle from creation through dynamic delivery, reducing costs and speeding time to Web.

Ektron

Docuware

The DocuWare document management system is state-of-the-art software for integrated document management. It can automatically process any type of document regardless of its source, with internal control procedures that help you meet audit and compliance requirements. DocuWare imports them, classifies them, adds a fulltext index and makes them available for onward processing.

Docuware

Fabasoft Folio Enterprise

Fabasoft Folio Enterprise provides for reliable capturing and storage of all digital business records. The product features informal collective cooperation and furthers the implementation of agile business processes with workflow.

Fabsoft Folio

Formtek Orion

Formtek Content Management Solutions will help you capture, store, and securely manage your organization’s structured and unstructured content. With robust search capabilities, you can search, identify, and locate content in disparate repositories, Unix and Windows file systems, and mail servers.

Formtek

KnowledgeTree

KnowledgeTree makes sharing content and controlling document processes simple with secure, affordable online document management solutions. KnowledgeTree is easy to use, does not require extensive training and enables content to be accessed and managed anytime, anywhere via cloud computing. Rich and open APIs allow for seamless integration of popular third party business applications.

Knowledge Tree

HP Trim

HP TRIM is a proven enterprise records management system that provides a scalable, policy driven foundation to your information governance strategy, driving control of your business, efficiency and records integrity — fast. It simplifies the capture, management, security and access to your corporate records — in context to meet governance and regulatory compliance obligations.

HP TRIM

Laserfiche Rio

Laserfiche Rio enterprise content management is a powerful, complete solution that is straightforward to purchase, deploy, extend and manage. With Rio, you have the flexibility to reconfigure your system to accommodate changing requirements, project scopes and business conditions, so your solution fits even unique situations without extensive development, programming or staff effort.

Laserfiche Rio

Marex Group FileBound

FileBound Document Management Solutions improve the way you Locate, Process and Protect your valuable documents—giving you peace of mind as you save time and money.

Filebound

Perceptive Software

Perceptive Software enterprise content management (ECM) products, including ImageNow document management, document imaging and workflow, give’s the power to capture, process and collaborate on important documents and information, protect data integrity throughout its lifecycle and access precise content in the context of your everyday business processes.

Perceptive Software ECM

Definition by AIIM:

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is the strategies, methods and tools used to capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver content and documents related to organizational processes. ECM tools and strategies allow the management of an organization’s unstructured information, wherever that information exists.

Definition by Wiki:

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is a formalized means of organizing and storing an organization’s documents, and other content, that relate to the organization’s processes. The term encompasses strategies, methods, and tools used throughout the lifecycle of the content.

Below are the factors which considered  for the need ECM Products and Development

1. Using Best Practices to Manage

2. Easy way to Organize the Content and Metadata

3. Reduce the Cost to Company

4. Scaling the Application and Functionality

5. Increased Productivity and Efficiency

6. Minimizing the Risk