Alfresco is a Document management system, also known as enterprise content management system. While products like google docs and live office making a lot of noise in the document editing market and products like dropbox helping us save and share our documents and other type of files. There is an open market for enterprise class content management system.
Though it is called an ECM, individual users or a small team like can greatly benefit from it.
How would you like to have all your documents searchable on the cloud, group them, categorise them, render them on the fly, download and view them on any device and share them with any group of people. This is what a document management system is all about. Though the product is not targeting individual users or small groups, never the less the benefits are undeniable once you know what you’re missing. Products like google doc and live office are not any document management system, they are just storage for your document with online editors and allow you to share and collaborate them in a very limited way.
Watch this video to see some highlights of alfresco features
On the other hand smart products like Dropbox makes sure your file is always with you. Features like Dropbox offline syncing can be a great extension to alfresco. However seamless integration of Dropbox with various platforms did not come cheap.
Talking about offline file sync, Alfresco do supports CIFS export of its contents; with Microsoft offline sync you can access them offline too.
Alfresco is Open Source Open Standard product, built on java and runs on java tomcat application server and even on Jboss platform.
You can deploy it on your own cloud and set it up without spending a penny for license, which is almost as good as the enterprise edition, and good enough for most of small and medium enterprises.
Feature wise Alfresco lines up with products like Microsoft SharePoint portal and it’s a great alternative to it.
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