Alfresco Extends ECM Reach

Version 3.4 of Alfresco Community adds support for the Microsoft Office SharePoint Protocol and CIFS and an application programming interface (API) for integrating with GoogleDocs.

In addition, Alfresco has added the ability to integrate with the Spring application environment via new frameworks that can be access via OpenCMIS interfaces.

According to Alfresco CTO John Newton, Alfresco is making a concerted effort to more seamlessly integrate its ECM platform with a wide variety of application environments. In particular, Alfresco wants its ECM platform to be able to integrate with Microsoft Office environments as effortlessly as Microsoft SharePoint, he said.

That integration capability, coupled with the open source licensing model, should expand the appeal of Alfresco as a more cost effective alternative to other content management systems, Newton added.
That ability, said Newton, is especially important as IT organizations are asked to support a broader number of workflow environments that now span multiple types of applications.

Other new features in version 3.4 of Alfresco Community include support for distributed content replication, the ability to integrate with portal via a JSR 168 interface and new templates of collaborative authoring.