Alfresco Meetup Paris : Review and Feedbacks

Hello everyone!

On Thursday 30.04 I was in Paris at the Alfresco Meetup.

First the planning : the day was divided into 2 parts.
Part 1 : Alfresco "Crew" (Morning)
Part 2 : Alfresco Partners (afternoon).

Alfresco Morning
The first presentation session was devoted to ...........? Alfresco of course!

Submitted by Denis Dorval Vice President EMEA Alfresco, the session was about Alfresco, ECM and the ECM market in general.

I noted some interesting key points like :

• A person who uses Alfresco is called: "Alfrescan(s)" (I didn't know I had this name too...)
• Alfresco community represents 90 000 people worldwide.
• France is the 2nd community after the USA.
• Alfresco won 270 customers, 90 partners and 18 OEM 2008.
• 2009 is the year of open source acceptation.
• 2009 is a consolidation year for the software market.
• More than a dozen clients manage more than 10 million documents with Alfresco.
• Adobe (with acrobat.com) manages the largest number of documents with Alfresco: over 120 million documents.
• Alfresco want to test its application to cover one billion of documents.

If you want more informations : Support Alfresco

Then I attended a case study entitled: "EADS (Astrium & EPS) paperless HR solution or UBIC project (Atol CD / Astrium)".
During this presentation, we discovered how it's possible to dematerialize all HR processes of a large company such Astrium (and EADS in the future).

Interesting points were :

• 2008 : Project Initiation
• 600,000 : Number of documents managed in a first step,
• 10 million : Number of documents managed in a near future.
• Alfresco 2.2E, GWT, Red Hat Linux, Oracle 10g, JBPM, WebDav, Webscripts: Main components of architecture and implementation.

For more information, you can see a screencast of the application at this url : http://www.atolcd.com/ubic-demo-flash.html

At the end, UBIC will become a plug-in that can be added in Alfresco for HR document management. This project will also be supported by Astrium and Atol CD.

To learn more about UBIC project: http://www.atolcd.com/btn-ll/alfresco-ecm-ged/personnalisation-avancee.html


To conclude morning sessions, Mike Farman, Director of Product Management at Alfresco presented Alfresco Roadmap, Vision and Strategy.
Important points were :

• Record Management: DOD5015.2 Certification in September 2009
• Managing and archiving e-mails. (MUST-SEE!)
• IMAP Implementation and creation of Virtualized Repository (MUST-SEE!)
• Alfresco SURF means .... NOTHING! (always good to know ...)
• Admin tools for Alfresco Enterprise subscribers (Enterprise Only Capabilities: clustering, monitoring ...)
• Share Service Forms
• Web Delivery Runtime
• Alfresco Query Language (based on CMIS + Alfresco Extensions)
• Index Consistency Check
• Alfresco Mobile (Example:iPhone integration)

If I had to summarize, Alfresco continues to spread its perimeter on corporate documents life cycle. Next targets are e-mails and legal archiving. These 2 aspects are strongly expected by functional people. To support inevitable and unavoidable document spread, Enterprise customers will benefit tools for managing Alfresco clusters !
Did you say Alfresco continue its evolution ?


Partners Afternoon
The afternoon was devoted to technical presentations from Alfresco partners. Overview :

NB: "Alfresco Partner of the Year" to Sopra Group: http://www.sopragroup.fr/

Componize and XML document management solution.
As a neighbor(Marseille, France), I finally discovered Componize solution! It is based on components principle. Indeed when we create office or technical documents by default we create documents by components without realizing it.
A paragraph is a component of a chapter.
A chapter is a component of a book.
A book is a component of a library
etc ...

And often, we realize these components are the same in a lot of documents!
and what happend when we decide to modify one ? We have to go back over ALL the documents having this component! Lost time guarantee!
To optimize document management, we have to use a tool like Componize!

For more information: http://www.componize.com/overview/overview-home.html

Xenit and Castor integration .
Firstly if you do not know what is CAStor Caringo, let's have a look at : http://www.caringo.com/products_castor.html
Now try to make links with document management system like Alfresco. Next, use an addon developped by Xenit...
You have a solution that can easily manage millions of documents with high-scalability and high performance guaranteed!
Impressive!

For more information on Xenit: http://www.xenit.eu/

Openwide and data migration with ETL (Talend)
Generally, when we start an ECM project, there are always existing documents. So, we have to find a way to transfer this documentation to Alfresco.
How? With an ETL (Talend in our case) and a component developed by Openwide. This one allows you to create and integrate content within Alfresco through "jobs" (automated).

For more information on Openwide: http://www.openwide.fr/


Atol CD and SURF applications :
JSF is dead, long live REST! It's the main idea or slogan of this presentation which explains how to create a new user experience with Alfresco.

For more information about this presentation : http://www.atolcd.com/fileadmin/Publications/Alfresco_Meetup_RIA_et_SURF.pdf
and Atol CD: http://www.atolcd.com/


Workflow conception with BlueXML
How is it possible to generate 1200 lines of code to create and setup a workflow in Alfresco in a few minutes?
The answer is simple: You have to user BlueXMl Alfresco Generator !
This tool, based on Eclipse, allows via drag & drop (and forms) to create all necessary files for setting up a workflow Alfresco.
The dream of every developer!

For more information on BlueXML: http://www.bluexml.com/v2/alfresco-generator/


Finally

First as its logo suggests, Alfresco can be compared to a flower that has evolved in its ecosystem (content management).
In this ecosystem, it met

• Bees (OEM) who have created their miels (solution) from the pollen of the flower (Alfresco. ..)
• Florists (OEMs) who used the flower (Alfresco. ..) to create compositions (specific solutions)
• Horticulturalists (Partners / Integrator / Community) who took the flower to make it evolve (Alfresco. ..) and make it even stronger.
• Enthusiasts (Communitu) who think this flower is beautiful.

Then, if you want to live happy, you have to live hidden. This idea is THE fundamental trend of Alfresco, integrators and partners.
They are abandoning more and more history JSF interface to more responsive and more 2.0 interfaces. Goodbye Java, Hello Java... script! (I am exaggerating but the idea is here ...)

Finally Alfresco continues to integrate its application seamlessly with tools that the user knows and uses every day!
Yesterday CIFS for sharing documents in a Windows folder. Today Windows Office suite via Sharepoint Protocol integration. Tomorrow IMAP for sharing and managing emails in Microsoft Outlook ...


And me ?

For my first participation in an event Alfresco (my second for an ECM community event), I think I have to improve "networking" between sessions :o)
It is important that I improve my "commercial" side.

Then I totally confirms my interest for integration and information (content) systems.
Indeed, if you have read all of this article you can:

• Manage your documents and e-mails (Alfresco ECM)
• Collaborate (Alfresco Share)
• Create and manage websites (Alfresco WCM)
• Manage technical documentation and XML (Componize)
• Divide your data in high availability (Castor - Xenit) with tools (Enterprise Capabilities Only)
• Integrate existing data via ETL (Talend - Openwide)
• Create rich interfaces (Alfresco SURF) for specific business needs
• Create workflows in a simple and intuitive way (BlueXML)
• Archive everything (Alfresco RM)

And who are the people with this kind of abilities ?

Integrators (like me ...)!!!

Finally, when I was young I loved playing with Lego ... I think I'll continue on this path ...

As you can see, the road is still long.

Thank you for everything. And see you soon!


PS: You can find some pictures I took during the event at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/36931301@N03/sets/72157617655796047/