Informa, a technical publishing company with some 7,000 employees, straddles the worlds of Linux and Windows. The company uses Linux in all its applications that interface with customers. The London-based Informa has very active Linux development teams in its Dutch, German and UK offices. These developers create software for uses ranging from content distribution to […]
Informa, a technical publishing company with some 7,000 employees, straddles the worlds of Linux and Windows.
The company uses Linux in all its applications that interface with customers. The London-based Informa has very active Linux development teams in its Dutch, German and UK offices. These developers create software for uses ranging from content distribution to marketing.
“They’re all Web apps that deliver something to the broad public,” says Bob Hecht, the company’s VP of content strategy.
The Windows-centric side of Informa is its internal network, which supports its production and management functions. Although the company has open source developers based in Florida and New York, “We tend to, for expediency, write to the Windows platforms, because our infrastructure is all Windows boxes,” Hecht tells Datamation.
Despite the company’s clear dividing line – Linux for customer apps, Windows for its internal network – Hecht decided to take a major step: He introduced an open source element into Informa’s Windows-only internal network.
Surprisingly, the open source tool he introduced was an enterprise content management (ECM) application. In most companies that’s a critical app, but for Informa – whose entire business is content distribution – its ECM program is a defining element of the network.
Why did Hecht want Informa to take such a major step? Cost was the key consideration. Additionally, “I’m a huge Linux fan and supporter, and what has been happening in open source is just an incredible move.”
A New Tool
The open source ECM tool Informa chose is Alfresco Enterprise Network, developed by Alfresco. Launched in the fall of 2005, the software is not quite yet a year old. In its short life, the ECM tool has been adopted by companies like Boise Cascade and Knight Ridder Digital. The application is designed to run in the Linux, Mac, Unix or Windows environments.
One of Informa’s goals in adopting Alfresco was to allows employees to use the editor of their choice to participate in any stage of a document’s creation, from authoring to reviewing, approval to distribution. The company wanted support for EXL-FO (Extensible Stylesheet Language Formatting Objects) and Web services standards. It wanted its content management system to be open source so that it could incorporate third party tools without being limited to a proprietary software model.
Alfresco enables a network manager to apply an array of content management rules to virtual folders. For instance, “You say, ‘anything that goes into this folder, do this with it,'” Hecht explains. So any file can be automatically translated into the correct file format, locked, or versioned. The software also handles an array of security rules. It uses the Lucene Text Search Engine.
Alfresco employs CIFS (Common Internet File System), a protocol for allowing users with different platforms to share files. “It uses a CIFS mapping tool to make the Alfresco content repository look like a Windows folder,” he says. So users navigate within the comfortable, well-known Windows environment.
Because Alfresco supports the JSR-168 portlet standard, users can work in their native portal when necessary. The application employs a configurable Aspect-Oriented system where rules are defined to prompt actions.
The Cost Factor
Some users might expect a relatively new open source app running in a Windows environment to create network snafus. On the subject of Alfresco’s stability on a Windows network, Hecht says it’s hard for him to say, chiefly because he’s never run the app on top of Linux. Not that Alfresco isn’t stable, he explains, but “The only thing I can say with confidence is, I’d feel that it’d be more stable under Linux.”
Actually, there are some Alfresco tools that work better in a pure Windows environment, he says.
In Hecht’s view, Alfresco offers a cost advantage over comparable enterprise content management programs like Documentum. “I was a Documentum person before I came into this company. That’s straight Windows stuff, very powerful – the No. 1 management solution on the market, depending on who you talk to – but nobody in Informa wanted anything to do with it, because they couldn’t envision repurposing it across the company without breaking the bank.”
The Alfresco enterprise-level product is priced at three tiers: silver, gold and platinum, or $10,000, $15,000, or $20,000 per CPU. (Alfresco is also available as a free, unsupported download.) The software doesn’t need to be implemented onto all a company’s CPUs, Afresco sales director Jason Hardin tells Datamation. “Let’s say they have 200 users, and two CPUs with back-up would be just fine.”
Hecht, for his part, says Informa is moving at a “very cautious” pace with its new ECM tool, but that “I’m viewing Alfresco as a long-term solution for my company.”
“I’m putting in small systems, because the product is not even a year old yet,” he says. “There’s a tremendous amount of functionality that’s in the technical road map for this product and almost all of it is important for a mature enterprise content management solution.”
Ethics and Artificial Intelligence: Driving Greater Equality
FEATURE | By James Maguire,
December 16, 2020
AI vs. Machine Learning vs. Deep Learning
FEATURE | By Cynthia Harvey,
December 11, 2020
Huawei’s AI Update: Things Are Moving Faster Than We Think
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
December 04, 2020
Keeping Machine Learning Algorithms Honest in the ‘Ethics-First’ Era
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
November 18, 2020
Key Trends in Chatbots and RPA
FEATURE | By Guest Author,
November 10, 2020
FEATURE | By Samuel Greengard,
November 05, 2020
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
November 02, 2020
How Intel’s Work With Autonomous Cars Could Redefine General Purpose AI
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
October 29, 2020
Dell Technologies World: Weaving Together Human And Machine Interaction For AI And Robotics
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
October 23, 2020
The Super Moderator, or How IBM Project Debater Could Save Social Media
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
October 16, 2020
FEATURE | By Cynthia Harvey,
October 07, 2020
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
October 05, 2020
CIOs Discuss the Promise of AI and Data Science
FEATURE | By Guest Author,
September 25, 2020
Microsoft Is Building An AI Product That Could Predict The Future
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 25, 2020
Top 10 Machine Learning Companies 2021
FEATURE | By Cynthia Harvey,
September 22, 2020
NVIDIA and ARM: Massively Changing The AI Landscape
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
September 18, 2020
Continuous Intelligence: Expert Discussion [Video and Podcast]
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By James Maguire,
September 14, 2020
Artificial Intelligence: Governance and Ethics [Video]
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By James Maguire,
September 13, 2020
IBM Watson At The US Open: Showcasing The Power Of A Mature Enterprise-Class AI
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 11, 2020
Artificial Intelligence: Perception vs. Reality
FEATURE | By James Maguire,
September 09, 2020
James Maguire is Datamation's Senior Managing Editor and has been reporting on technology topics for more than 15 years. He has covered the gamut of enterprise and consumer technology, and regularly communicates with leading IT newsmakers, vendors and analysts.
Datamation is the leading industry resource for B2B data professionals and technology buyers. Datamation's focus is on providing insight into the latest trends and innovation in AI, data security, big data, and more, along with in-depth product recommendations and comparisons. More than 1.7M users gain insight and guidance from Datamation every year.
Property of TechnologyAdvice. © 2025 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved
Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.
