06/07-09   -   Press releases

New Alfresco Release Cuts Cost of Records, Email, Mobility, Extranets and CMIS Support

Alfresco Software, the leader in open source enterprise content management (ECM), today announced the immediate availability for download of Alfresco Community Edition 3.2, unveiling a range of new features that continue to build on Alfresco’s ability to deliver low-cost, innovative and interoperable open source ECM solutions. In addition to enabling mobile content management, streamlining email management and supporting open specifications and standards including CMIS and IMAP, Alfresco Community 3.2 also lays the groundwork for records management support for U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) 5015.2 certification in September 2009.

Reducing costs, improving integration, increasing innovation and supporting regulatory requirements top the list of priorities for IT executives in 2009, according to a recent report issued by Forrester Research*. Alfresco has responded to each of these industry demands in developing enhancements to Alfresco Community Edition 3.2.

“Lean times call for a lean, robust and inexpensive ECM system. Alfresco Community Edition 3.2 has been designed to reduce the cost of information handling while supporting corporate Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) Management," said John Newton, CTO, Alfresco Software. “Our aim has been to deliver a content services environment in which users can work the way they want, with the tools they want, enhancing productivity through work-force mobility and future proofing organizations’ content applications with CMIS."

New features in Alfresco Community Edition 3.2 include:

* Enhanced Records Management – Laying the groundwork for supporting Records Management (RM) in readiness for DoD 5015.2 certification in September 2009, Alfresco RM will enable companies to support the strict legal requirements needed to manage vital company information. Functionality will include metadata management, YUI-based forms, life cycle management, CMIS-based query access, email capture, import/export facility and auditing. (Note: Support for DOD 5015.2 will be released in September).

* Mobile Access – The Smartphone client provides support for mobile devices (including Apple’s iPhone), providing the first ECM designed to enable mobile collaboration for business processes on the go. Users can now search, view and edit content, activities and tasks from anywhere. Rather than delivery by desktop application, the client interface is designed for the new Smartphone form factors.

* Email Client Access & Archiving via IMAP Support – Simple ‘drag and drop’ allows users to share key messages with colleagues and team members without contributing to the ever-growing volume of forwarded email. Alfresco’s unique transparent IMAP standard protocol support provides full access to repository services without a client install and can be accessed from mobile devices. The virtualized repository support enables users to manage and archive emails within the corporate content repository. By using automation to extract key information from email metadata, attachments and associations, Alfresco Community 3.2 makes it easy to classify emails and attachments in accordance with an organization’s Records Management processes.

* CMIS/Interoperability Support – Alfresco Community 3.2 offers full support (SOAP Web Services, REST and Query) for version 0.61 of the Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) specification, providing the most complete implementation of CMIS to date and allowing CMIS compliant clients and repositories to interoperate and share content across information silos.

* Extranet Collaboration – Alfresco Community 3.2 is scalable to tens of thousands of users, is cloud-ready for EC2 and other cloud service providers and supports content collaboration outside the enterprise or in the cloud. Enhancements to the Alfresco Share application include new components such as image galleries and a forms system for flexible metadata capture. A new systems administration module provides moderated sites and advanced user, group and site membership management.

* WCM Authoring and Deployment – Alfresco Community 3.2 includes significant performance increases to improve deployment of web site content to external web sites through highly-parallel website deployment and publishing. A new open and flexible deployment architecture makes it simpler to deploy content to multiple delivery environments and allows easy integration into the web delivery tier.

“With Alfresco’s new Smartphone client, users can take their work with them, and they are no longer tied to their desks. Similarly, organizations need tools to effectively manage huge amounts of email content pulsing through their systems. Alfresco Community 3.2 further demonstrates our investment in ensuring that our products consistently provide users with lower cost, compliant and innovative solutions," commented Newton.

Alfresco Community Edition 3.2 is immediately available for download from http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Download_Community_Edition

Alfresco has seen major adoption of its open source ECM system throughout the world as companies strive to address costs, with more than 1.7 million downloads of the Alfresco Community Edition. Alfresco Community Edition is a free-to-download, free-to-use version developed on an open source stack that runs on Windows, Linux or Mac for the Alfresco Community. The Alfresco Community members are able to access and share knowledge on the Alfresco Wiki and Forums and contribute extensions on the Alfresco Forge.

The Alfresco Enterprise Edition is certified against a larger range of technology stacks (both open source and proprietary), goes through a more extensive QA process and is provided with full commercial technical support.

*The State of Enterprise Software: 2009, Forrester Research (June 5, 2009) http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerpt/0,7211,54466,00.html

About Alfresco Software, Inc.

Alfresco Software, Inc. is the leader in the open source enterprise content management market. The company couples the innovation of open source with the stability of a true enterprise-class platform at a tenth of the cost. The Alfresco content platform uses a flexible architecture to provide document management, web content management and collaboration software to enterprise customers worldwide. Founded in 2005 by a team of content management veterans that includes the co-founder of Documentum, John Newton, and former COO of Business Objects, John Powell, Alfresco is based in London. For more information, please visit www.alfresco.com.