So, while doing yet more research for work while at home, I ran across an OSS version of SharePoint Portal Server(SPS), or more recently, Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server (MOSS). I compare the two because Alfresco is listed as an Enterprise Content Management system. I even noticed a story on Infoworld from last year that dubbed Alfresco a SharePoint killer.
Without installing it, I saw one major flaw with Alfresco that will keep it away from the Enterprise masses: no Office integration - none. It apparently plays with OpenOffice. I haven’t seen a major business yet that has even admitted to installing OpenOffice (if you know of one, let me know…) Now, after playing with SPS 2003 for a week in a classroom environment that allowed me to hose it, reinstall it, etc, I have a pretty good feel for SharePoint.
While I understand that Microsoft wouldn’t open up the backend of their products to anything other than SharePoint, I’m sure there is a way around it somewhere that someone can figure out. Unfortunately, I’m playing the part of the village idiot stating that something is easy when I have no clue.
But, looking over the Alfresco website, one thing that really irks me is the whole “Contact Us about pricing…” model. No, I’m sorry, this doesn’t irk me - it annoys the piss out of me.
I work with a major organization where, if it all boils down to it, money doesn’t matter. While I say that, we always look to save money where possible. But, I’ve looked at several software packages over the last few weeks (not just Sharepoint and Alfresco) and the whole “contact us” thing is all over the place. I’ll tell the masses right now. I don’t care how good your product is - if you don’t list the price, I’m gone.
Ultimately, this type of pricing scheme boils down to how much money the business can get out of the client. The Alfresco team couldn’t even list a form, I have to blindly email them about pricing.
If you think I’m being harsh, I’m not - far from it. Not only does the licensing scheme annoy me, but the attempt (I want to be much more vulgar here…) annoyed me even more. The company is selling software thats competing against software that costs business many, many, thousands of dollars. Heck, my company is looking at a SPS 2003 portal (management isn’t digging 2007 yet) and the server we’re looking at putting it on cost us over $30,000 and the Alfresco team just expects me to send them an email asking for Enterprise Scale-out licensing - give me a break.
After all thats said and done, I’ll still download it on my home network and set it up and probably use it for a few weeks to see how it feels compared to SPS, which I use on a daily basis. I’ll write an update later, in about a month or two.
Go to Part 2 of 4: Alfresco vs Sharepoint: Company Sales and Service, pricing and install.
