The early 90's saw the rise of powerful, inexpensive team collaboration software on one hand and huge document management systems on the other. Open source and cloud have brought us full circle. Today's businesses can implement extremely powerful productivity enhancing solutions quickly and easily. Alfresco capitalized on this trend. It used open source to get to the market quickly. It delivered functionality on par with legacy ECM as open source. Today, however, it is not just an open source alternative to things like Documentum and SharePoint, it is a visionary in the ECM market. This presentation tells that story, putting into context the things happening in ECM, collaboration, open source, and cloud from the 1990's to present day.

1. Alfresco: The Story of How
Open Source Disrupted the
ECM Market
Jeff Potts, Chief Community Officer

2. Alfresco is the second largest,
privately held, pure play, open
source company in the world
after Red Hat.

3. The Roaring 1990’s
Howard Shao & John
Newton create
Documentum
“Groupware” and
team collaboration
software is hot
Linus Torvalds
open sources the
kernel
Aggressivel
y goes after
Pharma
Re-branding
of Free
Software as
Open
Source
EDMS
released in
1993
DCTM goes
public in
1996
Lotus buys Iris
Associates for
$84 million
IBM buys
Lotus for
$3.5 billion
Quick & easy
dev, without
IT
Apache
Web Server
Netscape
goes open
source

4. No one realizes
at the time, but
these three
threads are on a
collision course
that would disrupt
an entire
industry.

5. The first half of the 2000’s
Documentum
4i is web-
native
Team collab
software
starts to be
used for
low-end DM
needs,
WCM
IBM embraces
LinuxDocumentum 5
adds extensible
content types,
BPM
EMC acquires
Documentum
for $1.7 billion
in 2003
Documentum
acquires eRoom
Intranets
SharePoint
Recession
focuses IT on
value
Basecamp
launches,
2004
Salesforce.com
IPO, 2004
Sun Java Web
Server
becomes
Tomcat
Red Hat goes
public

7. They threw great parties
But, there were a few problems…

8. Problem #1: Cost
$X,XXX,XXXUp-front license
$XXX,XXXMaintenance
$X,XXX,XXXServices
Too Much! And it still doesn’t do exactly
what we need it to do

9. Problem #2: Transparency

10. Problem #3: No source code

11. Meanwhile, back in the lab…
Where are you, ECM?

12. What client conversations about Open
Source felt like in the early 2000’s

13. One fine day, a blog post

14. Alfresco: Open Source ECM
Built with open source, shipped as open
source
A “real” software company
Founders had major ECM and commercial
software cred
Example of open source “moving up the
stack”
Set to commoditize the ECM industry

15. Second half of the 2000’s
Facebook
opens to
everyone, 2006
Android
unveiled
Alfresco 1.0
released in 2005
Reaches 1
million
downloads
1.4 adds jBPM in
2006
Twitter
tipping point
Andrew
McAfee coins
“Enterprise 2.0”
John Newton & John
Powell create
Alfresco
John Newton
clarifies Open
Source
strategy
Ubuntu
Foundation
Amazon Web
Services
launches, 2006
Open Source
web
frameworks

16. Alfresco Founders
John Newton, CTO & Chairman John Powell, Board Member & Co-Founder

17. The 2010’s, thus far
Alfresco
launches iOS
client as
OSS
Dropbox
has 50
million
users, $240
million in
revenue in
2011
Rackspace and
NASA launch
OpenStack,
2010
Alfresco
launches SaaS
offering, 2012
Simple file
sharing
wars
SharePoint
2013
upgrades
look tricky
Alfresco 4.0
Alfresco
acquires
WeWebU
Red Hat
OpenShift,
2011
Github gets
big
Quick & easy
dev, without
IT

18. Perfect timing
The market wants
• Openness
• Ease of integration
• Friendly, modern interfaces on any device
• RESTful APIs
• Social features
• File sharing
• Cloud
• Scale

19. Today’s Open Culture…

20. Makes proprietary seem out-
of-touch
Old School Proprietary… Alfresco…
Reinvents the wheel Leverages “upstream” open source
components to build our products
Limits early exposure to their products Releases early and often to get as
much feedback as possible
Hides bugs, roadmap, &
documentation
Manages issues in the open, updates
the roadmap, provides public access
to docs
Holds customers hostage, using lock-
in to extort obscene profits
Earns customers’ business every year,
shows confidence by providing a free
alternative, flexible in how we’re
deployed
Treats source code as a closely-held
secret
Shares all source code openly to
promote collaboration, quality,
integration, and innovation

21. Market forces
Open Source
Government
Regulation

22. Alfresco today
Millions of downloads & installations
Thousands of paying customers
Partners & customers defecting from legacy
ECM
Alfresco leading the way on industry-wide
ECM standard (CMIS)

23. Annualized Revenue
Consistent Quarter-over-Quarter Growth
BookingsinUSD

24. Visionary ECM
Gartner Magic Quadrant for ECM (2010) Gartner Magic Quadrant for ECM (2012)

25. Some challenges
Early accusations of not being “true” open
source
Community Edition versus Enterprise Edition
differentiation
Shift in sales mentality from inbound to
outbound model
Open source no longer a compelling go-to-
market message on its own
Cloud as the preferred trial mechanism

26. Enterprise Edition Includes
Clustering
Support for Enterprise databases
Support for Enterprise app servers
JMX
Storage policies
JOD Connector
Transformation Server

27. Where do we go from here?

28. Worldwide excitement
Active Alfresco forum users by location, November 2012

29. You Could be a Star
An engaged community…

30. Fighting against software
tyranny!
• Helping out in the forums
• Editing the wiki
• Writing blog posts
• Listing Add-Ons
• Becoming Registered Developers
• Starting open source projects
• Downloading Community &
Enterprise Trials
• Reporting bugs
• Organizing meetups
• Hanging out in #alfresco
• Sticking it to the man

31. As our platform evolves, so
too will our community
More SaaS
• Alfresco in the Cloud
• Hybrid ECM
More mobile
More APIs
More Solutions
More end-users
New developers
New programming
languages &
frameworks
More outreach to
business users

33. Alfresco bridges the gap
Legacy
ECM
(On-Premise)
Simple File
Sharing
Startups
(Cloud)
Alfresco
Hybrid ECM

34. Before I wrap-up, two quick
plugs

35. CMIS: Important ECM
standard for interoperability
Everything you need to
know about CMIS
1.0 & 1.1
Lots of Groovy and
Java examples
Also covers Python,
Android, & iOS
Now on MEAP!
37%-off: 12cmisal

36. Alfresco Summit
Barcelona, Nov 4 - Nov 7
Boston, Nov 12 - Nov 15
The mission of the Alfresco Summit is to be a key enabler of
success for anyone doing anything with our software products by
facilitating discussion, collaboration, and discovery around both
technical and non-technical topics related to Enterprise Content
Management.

37. Summary
The democratization of IT began with
desktops and groupware and today is
realized through open source and cloud
Alfresco capitalized on this trend by
• Getting to market quickly by leveraging open
source
• Backing open source innovation with
commercial software know-how/drive
• Undermining legacy vendor positions with
heavy price pressure

38. Thank You!
Jeff Potts
Blog: http://ecmarchitect.com
Twitter: @jeffpotts01