Lost!

I’ve been around CMS solutions for awhile now, I’ve even been around ECM solutions like Sharepoint for a bit as well. It seems, when ECM started getting popular, a term term sprouted out of the internet ectoplasm called “Knowledge Worker”. Honestly, I don’t see what all the hub-bub is and it actually annoys me to see the term used.

Now, according to the great and all knowing Wikipedia (You thought I was going to say Google, right?), a Knowledge worker is:

Knowledge worker (also referred to as as intellectual worker or brain worker) is someone who is employed due to his or her knowledge of a subject matter, rather than their ability to perform manual labor. It includes those in the information technology fields, such as computer programmers, systems analysts, technical writers and so forth. The term can also refer to people outside of information technology but who are hired for their knowledge of some subject, such as lawyers, teachers, and scientists.

Wikipedia’s entry on the subject goes on to talk about the term showing up way back in 1959, but I had honestly not heard it until a fellow Sharepoint freak was talking about it in the office. Why not say “User” or “Customer”? Heck, why not just say “Worker”? What’s the point, other than acting like you know what you’re talking about, to saying “Knowledge worker”? Some of these ECM solutions are so simple that even a ditch digger could use them and, according to the definition, he doesn’t apply as a “Knowledge worker”.

Oddly enough, I even saw a reference online while researching the term and saw a new word. Not surprising since everyone is trying to coin the newest word all the time… Anyway, I ran across “Kworker” today and that just dumbfounded me. If “Knowledge Worker” is too much to say, then stop saying it because it’s a generic term, at this point in time. The only difference between a knowledge worker and someone thats not is the computer usage. Yes, there are some people out there that simply refuse to touch a computer, even today. Would those people not be considered knowledge workers because they use machinery or shuffle papers back and forth all day?

Sorry, but seeing blog posts with it, or the occasional person - especially someone giving a class, spouting off this needless term just annoys me. The term Knowledge Worker was originally for people that were REALLY smart with years of schooling- now it applies to anyone that can use their brain. Nice.

Preview of the Next Blog Post: Content Management Interoperability Services - CMIS:

So, what is Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) anyway? This term exploded onto the Content Management Scene this month (late last week, actually) and every major ECM solutions provider from Microsoft, to EMC with Alfresco in-between are worked up over this. Heck, even the almighty IBM has jumped in!

Recently, I talked to a friend about CMS engines and how he felt about them. He gave me some insight as to how he decides what to download, what to install and what to trash. It’s a little interesting to get into the mind of someone that knows just enough to be dangerous on the web side of things.

Typically, an IT professional will do a lot of research before installing anything. We like to know who’s going to be using the application, what the requirements for it will be, what the server requirements are, how it will affect our security, etc. We also take to heart the fact that our decisions could cost the company millions of dollars in extra costs.

My friend has a different way to do things. He likes to use the “I just install it and test for a a few days and see what happens” approach. While this works, it wastes a lot to time, energy and could compromise your web and DB servers very quickly. The other thing is, if you don’t do research, you may end up installing Mambo then later trying Joomla only to find out that they’re both roughly the same thing due to a fork awhile ago.

The “blindly install and test” mentality gets a lot of people in trouble, but oddly, it’s probably the most popular method with someone just getting started in the web world.

So, how does someone go about picking a CMS for them? Well, it matters really. You have to start asking yourself a lot of questions. This is one of those situations where “Patience is a virtue” kicks in…. So, some questions you should be asking yourself are:

• What type of web and database servers will this run on? Windows/Linux, MySQL/MSSQL
• What type of web language does your server support? Java, PHP, .NET (ASP) C# or VB, Ruby On Rails?
• Who will maintain the application? A team or an individual?
• How professional must it look? Is this situation for a family or for a professional organization?
• How many users are you supporting? 10 people or 1,000 people?
• Will the template of the application change often or once every few years?

Those are the primary questions you should be asking yourself before you even look at the available CMS solutions out there. With the answers to these questions already answered and thought out, you’ll have a much easier time digging through the masses - even if you already know what the answer to those questions are in your head.

After your choice
Evaluation of packages can last from seconds/minutes to months. Oddly, a lot of people I’ve met fall within the hours area of that mentality - if there are install problems, thats lasting seconds.

So, once you pick the software you want, how do you evaluate it? Well, first, more research actually…

• What version of whatever language does it require? If it uses PHP, does it require 4 or 5 - .Net 2 or 3.5? Does it require extra Server Side technology to be used?
• Are there known issues with the database version you plan on using? Do you need to use OLDPASSWORD in MySQL or is there a FullTextSearch requirement that your MSSQL 2005 server isn’t going to have? Do you need an ODBC connector?
• Is security on your web server going to cause problems due to the configuration? This is mainly language related, but those of us that must work in very secure environments know this can be an OS issue as well…
• Is the web address going to cause problems for you? Will Localhost suffice instead of a fully qualified domain name?
• What security problems are there with this package (there are always security issues)? Did you download a version that needs to be patched right away? Have you checked out what type of past vulnerabilities have existed for this software to get an idea of how well the software is coded?
• What are the known installation problems? Do you have to edit some obscure file deep inside the folder structure to avoid hours of toiling with the install because the devs haven’t released the patch just yet? Believe it or not this happens all the time.

But wait, there’s still more! Thats right folks, installation of a CMS package won’t get you from point A to B quickly (ok, some packages install almost seamlessly, but thats not my point).

Now that you have done your research, you’re itching to install your package… But, what do you do once its installed? If you’re installing something simple, things go easy and you can start working with it immediately. What happens when you install something that is really built as a full on Portal as well? A great example is PHPNuke vs Mambo. Installation and configuration of PHPNuke is pretty easy by today’s standards, but installing Mambo without really doing research - you’re going to have a world of confusion about you. Sure you’ll figure out some things immediately, but you’ll have a bad case of “learning while I’m doing”, which can cause a lot of problems later for you.

So, after you pick your package, what do you do? MORE RESEARCH… How does the configuration go, are there extra hoops to jump through, how much time will you need to devote to editing, updating and creating that content on your CMS?

Questions, questions, questions… I think you really get the point - there is a lot of research before you really pick a CMS Engine. So, in the end, by the time you actually pick a CMS and download it, you should know it’s the right one for you. Download and install 1, not 8…

Preview of the Next Blog Post: Just What The Heck Is A “Knowledge Worker” Anyway?:
I’ve been around CMS solutions for awhile now, I’ve even been around ECM solutions like Sharepoint for a bit as well. It seems, when ECM started getting popular, a term term sprouted out of the internet ectoplasm called “Knowledge Worker”. Honestly, I don’t see what all the hub-bub is and it actually annoys me to see the term used.

I just wrote about Alfresco, so I figured I should do the same for SharePoint, since Alfresco and SharePoint are considered direct competitors. SharePoint is also mentioned in a hust list of Press Releases from Alfresco.

Company Growth
Microsoft has always been a strong company, no matter how much you look at it or hate it. Since the very beginning, most things have always gone right for the company - either that or there is just so much going on between hardware and software, that things typically don’t get noticed (except Vista, right?). With that said, Microsoft is still a strong company. Hiring is still strong and they’re even taking back employees that have left Google to return or start at Microsoft. Needless to say, Microsoft isn’t going anywhere, anytime soon.

Application News
While I should have mentioned the current version of Alfresco in my last story, I just forgot (they’re on 2.2). So, to make it quick and simple, Microsoft is currently pushing Sharepoint 2007, otherwise known as Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server (MOSS). Unless you’ve been hiding under the proverbial ECM rock, you’ve heard of Sharepoint. Currently, they’re working on the next version rumored to be a 2009 release.

Sharepoint was recently placed in the in the Leader’s quadrant with IBM, ECM, Open Text and Oracle for Enterprise Content Management (ECM). This is interesting because I truly expected a larger share of the ECM market for Sharepoint. Alfresco is mentioned around mid-niche grade as well. Oddly, OnBase is the only Niche provider listed as a challenger - it’s the first time I’ve heard of them… Again - another story for another time. Anyway, this is a pretty decent news item because it literally plots Sharepoint on where it stands on the map - especially considered next to Alfresco.

On other news items, Sharepoint adoption in Europe is “exploding“. While I wish I could vouch for this, I only see the US side of things. While I know that certain parts of the US Government use it, covet it and all that touchy-feely stuff, there are other parts that downright refuse to look at it or use it because 1 person (who happens to make the decisions) “doesn’t like it”. Oddly, that sounds like an OSS excuse as well doesn’t it?

While there is no specific GSA award for Sharepoint (lots of training GSA contracts, however), Sharepoint is in use by multitudes of Governments and does price with a standard Government scheme. They also allow for educational usage, etc. Licensing costs can be harsh, depending on what you want though.

Open Source, Right?
Those of you that know anything about Sharepoint know that the only “open source” like files are the templates and a few odds and ends, here and there. No core files are sourced, nor do you want to look in some of the files that do have the source - they’ll give you a headache (research CAML if you really want to go cross eyed).

Well, Microsoft is Microsoft and you won’t see the Sharepoint code…ever. While it would be interesting to make some sections of Sharepoint OSS, coming from an Enterprise angle, I’m not sure if I’d want that. Customizing an Enterprise application is something a lot of companies do. When you do this, it makes updating the application a worse situation every time you touch a file. By the time you’ve got it the way you like, more likely than naught, you won’t be able to update the application without breaking nearly everything about it.

Sales
Sales for Sharepoint have risen up and up over the last few years. Now, in 2008 (it is 2008, right?), Sharepoint sales are expected to top $1 Billion. I would say that Sharepoint sales have been steady at this point ;-)

What is interesting is that Microsoft is making that much money, yet has barely touched the leader quadrant of the Gartner survey…

Wrap-Up
While I’d love to provide a quote, it’s really un-needed due to the link above. Sharepoint is a decent product, as long as you use it right. The features added in the 2007 release make Sharepoint an even nicer product for the corporate environment due to the Blog and Wiki features.

Other than that, I’ll try to have part 3 of the Alfresco vs Sharepoint story out here soon. I’m finishing installing my Dev environment on my Mac (VMWare Fusion) as I type this. Once that gets all setup, it’ll be so much easier for me to take screenshots and compare everything. I’ll use the actual server I have for performance comparisons so I know that the Mac environment isn’t causing problems.

Preview of the Next Blog Post: The Best CMS For “Me”:
Recently, I talked to a friend about CMS engines and how he felt about them. He gave me some insight as to how he decides what to download, what to install and what to trash. It’s a little interesting to get into the mind of someone that knows just enough to be dangerous on the web side of things.

After a long hiatus from blogging, I’m starting to get back into the ECM scene and I’m trying by doing a blog post daily for this entire week… But, since I’ve been so down on Alfresco for so long, I figured I’d take an in-depth look at them. Again, I’m not anti-Alfresco. I truly and honestly would love to see Alfresco take a good sized chunk of the ECM market away from other companies - and remember, there isn’t just Sharepoint out there as a competitor… I’ll be doing the same for Microsoft and SharePoint 2007 (MOSS) here shortly as well and will hopefully be able to get my hands on a few other solutions soon. Lets see if I can get called names again by someone in England - where Alfresco happens to be headquartered…

Company Growth
Earlier in the year, Alfresco was awarded $9 Million in their Series C funding round bringing the total funding received around $19 Million. Not bad for an Open Source company that is still decently young. But I’m curious on how Sales have propped up their books and if they’re currently seeking funding. Only time will tell since no startup company would ever release this type of information. The more interesting piece of information is that the $9 Million from above came from SAP. In fact, there is an interview posted here where SAP officially talks about why Alfresco was invested in. The primary reason was the management team then it goes on to list several other key factors in the decision.

Alfresco has posted numerous jobs in various locations in the past and today is no exception. Listing 3 job types, one of which is a Technical Support Engineer which they nearly always advertise, employment looks to be normal. There was a lull a few months ago where they appeared to have slowed down their hiring process, but it seems they’re back to it.

Application News
Older news, but still worth note: In January 2008, reached the 100 Million Document mark with it’s Enterprise package, one has to wonder what is next on the benchmark news. SharePoint currently can hold a predicted 1 Billion documents across 20 Indexes. Are they going to continue reaching towards the 1 Billion mark? Of course, but notice that I said “predicted”… I can predict that Alfresco will make it to the 1 Billion mark as well, but I’m more interested to see how the Databases are handled when you get up near the 1+ Million range. Making a change-over from a Share Drive environment, like most of us have setup, to a ECM solution can be daunting task for any DB Admin.

Recently, however, Alfresco landed a large customer with an even larger external facing website, Acrobat.com (Press Release). Right now, the site lists as Beta and has a pretty slick Flash interface as well and I’m curious to see if its already running Alfresco. I would be crazy to ask for bigger player names in the game, but their Customer List has some decent names in it already. Interestingly enough, the Adobe interface is so heavily customized via Air/Flash that it looks like a CMS solution that is completely Flash driven, but there really isn’t a way to tell. It’ll be interesting to watch the site over the next month or so to see how, or even if, it switches. The fact that it’s currently in Beta tells me that they are already using Alfresco with a heavily customized front-end. If so, this interface is something that all ECM Template Code Moneys should look at.

They’ve also won a few awards this year, but interestingly enough, the awards seemed to have slowed down from previous years. At this point, I truly think that it’s due to Alfresco being a more common name in the ECM scene, not because of lack of product. When it first hit the market, it was one of the more talked about Open Source Packages for awhile, now, the “chatter” has subsided.

Awhile ago, Alfresco also posted a Press Release that caught my attention: A GSA Contract schedule. For those outside the US Government, it means that Government entities (mostly Federal and Military) can purchase Alfresco without major difficulties or jumping through extra hoops requiring extra quotes and such. I’m a little concerned that it’s through a third party company and only valid for about 1.5 years, but as with any software, there is ramp up and testing time. It will allow those in the government to really get to know Alfresco a little easier.

On the note of Government purchases, I wanted to stress the fact that many government agencies - especially the military, wrongly distrust Open Source Software. Unfortunately, from what I have seen, it is purely due to ignorance of licensing and security concerns - OK, mostly security concerns. Anyone thats been in an environment where there is someone screaming that “OSS sucks because of X and Y” out of ignorance will understand. I’d love to go into more detail, but that mentality is what Alfresco is up against with regards to Government related IT purchases.

It’s Open Source, Right?
Sure, Alfresco maintains that it’s Open Source, but is it, really? For lack of a better word, Yes. Both versions, Lab and Enterprise, are 100% Open Source according to their website. Enterprise has specific licensing that makes it a for-cost, subscription based, service. “Labs” is maintained under the GPL, which restricts other companies from making improvements and calling it their own without giving back to the community.

On that note, one thing that has always stirred interest in Alfresco is their Open Source Barometer. For those that have never seen this, Alfresco makes a lot of their Survey data from customer trials and installs public showing what the Technical Sector is doing when they evaluate, test and use Open Source Software. It’s also worth quoting the survey response areas: “Open source has a geographic long tail, reflecting global demand fulfillment” – survey participants come from 200 countries – US 24%, EMEA 50% and ROW 26% Notice that “EMEA” leads the pack on respondents, this could mean two things, either the people in Europe, Middle East and Africa respond to more survey requests or there are more OSS installs going on here. For now, I’ll vote on the latter.

Sales
In the past, the Alfresco sales team really had problems giving a correct answer. Lets face it, I’ve hammered on them several times about this fact. Last time I emailed them, I received three different answers from three people then a fourth answer when I ran a story. None of the amounts agreed with each other.

Another issue I had was the fact that Alfresco wasn’t listing it’s pricing on it’s website. I would like to say it’s changed, but it hasn’t. At this point in time, you still need to contact Alfresco for a quote on the pricing scheme. Little did the know that I was watching when they released the RedHat link and pricing on it. The original page has been changed back to a “Contact Us” type sales page, but thankfully Archive.org has a copy of the page. I’m not going to quote it since it’s older data, but it still is interesting that they backed away from a public pricing scheme where Microsoft actually made it easier to find SharePoint pricing. Still a little disappointing, but at least they gave it a try before. I hate to take a stab in the dark, but it’s almost as if they want you to contact them so they can talk to you and attempt to answer any questions right there about the software. I’ve personally seen this type of situation go bad when a company gets desperate for customers and just about chases them away.

A True Quote
I haven’t officially contacted Alfresco’s sales department for awhile now. I have had no reason to bug their offices and waste their time. At this point though, I’m at a stage where I’m working for a different employer and there is a small interest in a CMS solution. I decided to email Alfresco’s Sales Dept again to get another email quote on the following configuration:

2 DB Servers (1 Production, 1 Testing) - both 4x Quad Core Xeon
2 Web Servers (1 Production, 1 Testing) -both 4x Quad Core Xeon
5000 User Connections Per Seat or 2000 Concurrent Connections if licensing allows

In the end, I received the following from their Sales dept. Again, this is a real-life situation where an employer is interested in a full blown CMS/ECM solution.

[Update: This is a little embarrassing. I posted the story before I actually received the quote. Oops on me. I'm pretty surprised that I haven't seen the quote yet (only 28 or so hours so far), but it's not unheard of for sales depts to run a little slow. I'm just hoping that they're not ignoring me... I'll post a new story with the quote information when I get it.]

SharePoint vs Alfresco Part….
Whats really interesting is that Alfresco completely dominates my blog for entry/exit pages, especially the past where I started to compare Alfresco and SharePoint. I wanted to stress that I didn’t forget or give up on the stories, but ran out of time and reliable hardware to run it (thus the server story). I’ve also been nagged/bugged/prodded/poked/nudged and politely asked by several folks via email to continue the story so that they can see a full side by side comparison. For that, I can say its coming - very soon. Unfortunately, when I setup my MOSS box, I completely forgot screen shots, so that’ll cause me to setup a new virtual machine. While I know SharePoint has become a little easier to install with MOSS coming out, I’m seriously excited to finally get to install Alfresco in an environment where it can shine. That story should be out in the next 2 or so weeks - I hope.

Preview of the Next Blog Post: Whats New With SharePoint 2007 (MOSS):
I just wrote about Alfresco, so I figured I should do the same for SharePoint, since Alfresco and SharePoint are considered direct competitors. SharePoint is also mentioned in a hust list of Press Releases from Alfresco.

Now that I have a full blown server at home, I needed a way to use it for several purposes. There where two options:

Install Everything, including the kitchen sink, on one OS and deal.
Install a Virtual Machine Server to allow me to use multiple computers.

Between those two options, I’ve done the first, not fun. The second was the only way to go. The hard part about that option was, which software to install.

There has been 1 major vendor for the VM market for several years, but several have come out recently that are making headway - mainly, Microsoft’s Virtual Server. I chose to go with Virtual Server because I get the Enterprise Edition with my MSDN subscription and VMWare’s 64bit environment, from what I’ve read, is a software hack that happens to work right. VMWare can also cost a lot more than I was willing to spend for my little po-dunk test server.

Install
Installation of the software is so simple, your typical teenager could do it. The hard part is getting it to actually fire up. The reason I say that is because I installed it on Server 2008. If you’ve never messed with Server 2008, I strongly suggest you start learning ASAP, because things are much different. Server 2003 allowed you to select various components of IIS to install in Add/Remove Programs - 2008 takes it a step further by allowing all kinds of weird options inside of IIS to be added and removed individually. On top of that, IIS 7 threw me through a loop too.

Long story short, I installed the software, went to the configuration screen (which happens to be a web page) and nothing happened. All I got was a blank page. The standard “Welcome to IIS 7″ page wasn’t displaying either. To fix this, I had to do all of the following:

Activate CGI Access (IIS)
Activate .Net (IIS)
Activate Simple Auth (IIS)
Activate Static Content (IIS)
Add the localhost name to the trusted zone (IE)
Check “Always Prompt” for username/password (IE)

After that was all done, things worked and the fun got worse. I accidently downloaded and installed the 32 bit version - oops. I had to uninstall and reinstall the software, which went very quick and things where back to normal again.

VM Setup
I ran into more problems here, and those problems may turn people off from this software. I honestly got a little upset when I found out that, even if you are running a 64 bit OS, with a 64 bit install of MSFT-VMS, you can ony run 32 bit Virtual Machines. Aparently, the 64 bit VM capability will be added in the next major release, which is slated for…awhile. This problem caused me to re-download a lot of the OS’ and software that I needed as well as rethink my plans for later. This is also the reason that I was forced to install Exchange 2003 since 2008 is only 64bit. MSSQL 2005 was installed because 2008 wasn’t officially out of Beta at the time and I needed to brush up on it before moving to 2008. I’ll be installing Exchange and MSSQL 2008 when the VM software supports the 64 bit environment.

Other than that, setup went ok. There are some issues I have with the software, however.

• CPU Utilization is a little clunky. I can only evenly split up the CPU states. If I barely use Exchange, but would like to push more resources towards IIS, I have to assign a “Weight” to the process, making things a little odd to understand.
  
  

  CPU Utilization and Weighting

• When remoting in, you are given an itty-bitty 640×480 (approx) box to use via webpage. This is, unless you decide to use Remote Desktop to remote into each machine. I’ve turned this on, because things just don’t size well using the internal web (ActiveX) Viewer. And yes, there is an RDP client for the Mac… Click the picture below for a full size view of the internal Remote screen.
  
• Only 32bit OS’ are currently supported. This means a max of 4GB of memory per machine. If I wanted to allocate more memory to my MSSQL server and just shut off Exchange, I have wasted memory since I can’t force more than 4GB on it. This also starts to cause problems on what you can and cannot install - ie: Exchange 2003 vs 2008.
• For some reason, I don’t know if it’s caused by Windows or the VM Client, but when mounting ISO’s to the machine, the ISO is cached until you switch the ISO option to the physical disk then back to a new ISO file. This causes problems when you’re attempting to install something with multiple disks.
• I haven’t put much effort into it, but due to the way the VM Environment is setup, certain flavors of Linux have problems with it. It is not setup like VMWare that emulates full on hardware.

HyperV
Some of you slick people out there may be shaking their heads wondering why I’m running Server 2008 and Virtual Server instead of HyperV. Well, first, go and read this. It’s a copy of a Blog post by the original author (that post now 404’s on the authors website). Secondly, Microsoft’s own website lists an oddly worded explanation between the VM Server Product and HyperV:

Q. What are the differences between Hyper-V and Virtual Server?
A. Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 is the current server virtualization solution from Microsoft and is based on a hosted virtualization platform. Hyper-V, a key feature of Windows Server 2008, is a hypervisor-based virtualization platform that will enable customers to not only consolidate a vast array of workloads but also enable moving toward a dynamic IT environment. Core feature set differences include support for 64 guest virtual machines, SMP support, performance improvements, and other key features in Hyper-V.

Well, there you have it - it has a few things that I want, but after reading that blog post, it needs to mature a little more than I care to even think about. At least right now, I can literally copy and paste a machine to a secondary dir and have a full-on backup. When I started this exercise, I built one machine up and copied it to other files, fired those machines up, renamed a few things and *poof*, things just worked.

In the end, I’m satisfied with the VM Product from Microsoft, but not wowed like I was when I first saw VMWare. I would love to get ahold of a 2008 copy at some point as well. Oddly, I have a feeling that MSFT will try to sway the market by changing 2008 to the point where people like myself are forced to use HyperV. Maybe one of these days, I’ll be brave enough to touch it.

Preview of the Next Blog Post: What’s Next For Alfresco?:
After a long hiatus from blogging, I’m starting to get back into the ECM scene and I’m trying by doing a blog post daily for this entire week… But, since I’ve been so down on Alfresco for so long, I figured I’d take an in-depth look at them. Again, I’m not anti-Alfresco. I truly and honestly would love to see Alfresco take a good sized chunk of the ECM market away from other companies - and remember, there isn’t just Sharepoint out there as a competitor…