Teknologi Document

Total Cost of Ownership for Enterprise Content Management

2009-12-11T02:33:00.000-08:00

Executive Overview
Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is traditionally thought of as very expensive to license and
extremely costly to roll-out and scale. Additionally, it often requires expensive hardware and
supporting software in the underlying stack.
For a long time, the ECM industry was dependent upon a model based on high cost and complexity,
with the vendor controlling the customer through proprietary power. ECM pricing models are often as
complex as the product offering, with literally thousands of options for customers to consider when
pricing a product configuration. Customers are not clear on what extras are required to deliver a
working system, what fair value is based on usage, or what rights they have regarding software use.
As a result, it is difficult for customers to understand and control the total cost of ownership of ECM.
These hidden extras pricing models continue because they are an important source of revenue for
some enterprise software companies. However, the lack of transparency on true pricing has major
implications when an audit occurs.
Fortunately, there is now an alternative. The most scalable collaboration sites and websites in the
world now run on open source software. These Web 2.0 sites have commoditized the scaling process
and changed the way content is both accessed and mashed-up. In short, given their requirements,
they would not be affordable or economical without open source. They have changed the economic
landscape of both ECM and Reliability, Availability and Scalability (RAS). Open Source allows
companies to do more with less and have a solution that focuses on:

·   Lower Cost A low cost, subscription model with minimal upfront investment that can be
   driven out of operating expense as opposed to capital expense;
· Greater Simplicity Rapid deployment to deliver immediate business value; and
· Greater Customer Choice Lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) by reusing existing
   hardware, software and skills. No lock-in to one ECM vendor or one stack which means when a vendor    tries to dramatically increase maintenance fees, organizations have a choice to go elsewhere.

The ECM Pricing Problem

Unfortunately, most ECM pricing models dictate multiple, complex pricing methods based on user, type of usage, intranet, extranet, website or compliance requirements. These models are typified by per user pricing which is often called Client Access Licenses (CALs). In this model, companies are tied into paying the same cost for the employee who uses the software for one hour a year as the one who makes use of it for 24 hours a day. Firms will pay multiple times for a single user to use different software just to access or edit different content formats (such as Word and CAD files). There is often confusion with SharePoint pricing regarding the difference between Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Services (MOSS) and the extra cost of support and maintenance. WSS 3.0 is freely available with Windows server 2003. MOSS adds extra functionality, but at a significant extra cost. Many of the advanced features users require are only available in MOSS, which can add hundreds of dollars per user to a company's budget. Furthermore, MOSS is available in Standard and Enterprise editions and is also available as a hosted offering. It is important to understand the differences between each of these products to avoid incurring the entire cost of Microsofts CAL (Client Access License) model.

Methodology Used

This white paper will review publicly available pricing information and look at the cost of a typical basic
system with the ability to offer:
   · Office Integration;
   · Collaboration;
   · Content Management;
   · Workflow or Business Process Management;
   · Transformation/Rendition Management (Word to PDF, Flash etc.); and,
   · Search.

The analysis of ECM vendors pricing is conducted for a basic 100 and 1000 user configurations. For the sake of transparency, the product part numbers are shown for each vendor along with the pricing calculation. The URL for the price list used in the calculations is detailed in the Appendix. In the majority of cases, the analysis is based on publicly available pricing from the GSA Advantage website (see Appendix for more details).

EMC/Documentum

EMC/Documentum has over 1,032 options to choose from, with a pricing model that charges:
   · For the content server;
   · Per user pricing;
   · Extra cost depending which client is being used (e.g. Collaboration or Office);
   · Extra cost for process management;
   · Extra cost for content transformation; and,
   · Extra cost to annotate a PDF.

OpenText
OpenText has over 3,000 options to choose from on the publicly available list, with a pricing model
that charges based on the following combinations:
· For the content server;
· Pricing per module as a percentage of main product pricing;
· Pricing per module, per server; and,
· Lower pricing for read-only users and higher pricing for full-named users.

SharePoint
It is important to be aware that SharePoint only runs on a Microsoft stack, thus creating a long-term
vendor lock-in with Microsoft. Some industry commentators have speculated that SharePoint is the
next operating system from Microsoft, and it certainly seems to be the cornerstone of Microsofts
business-focused applications. A typical Microsoft stack includes:
   · Internet Explorer;
   · SharePoint Portal;
   · MS-Office;
   · SharePoint Designer;
   · Web Parts, ASP.NET, C# API;
   · .NET;
   · SQL Server ;
   · Internet Information Server (IIS) v6.0 and higher;
   · Windows Server 2003 and higher.

Therefore, an organizations existing investment in non-Microsoft skills, software, and hardware
cannot be leveraged. So, for an implementation of SharePoint this means:
· No Linux, Unix;
· No Oracle, DB2, MySQL;
· No J2EE , JBoss, BEA Web Logic (Oracle), WebSphere (IBM);
· No PHP, Java, Adobe;
· No DreamWeaver;
· No Microsoft Office on a Mac, no Open Office;
· None of a companys existing portals;
· No Adobe Flex; and,
· Less functionality when using browers such as Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera.
It is also worth noting that SharePoint stores content in the database as a binary large object (BLOB).
Apart from imposing a performance penalty, this also prevents companies from using the free SQL
Server edition for all but the most trivial content applications (as it has a 4GB limit).

It should be noted that on this page it states:

"To be licensed for the Enterprise Edition functionality of Office SharePoint Server 2007, both theStandard and Enterprise client access licenses are required."

Alfresco
Alfresco has a simple price list for simple configuration:
· All products are included in one subscription Document Management, Collaboration, Web
    Content Management, and others not under comparison here Records Management, Image
    Management; and,
· All required components are included in the same subscription (Business Process
    Management, Workflow, and Transformation Services).
    The subscription is based on fair usage per CPU:
· There is no per User/CALs pricing; and,
· There is no extra charge depending on which client is being used (e.g. Collaboration or Office).

ECM Stack Costs
A typical ECM system runs on top of a stack consisting of an:
· Application Server;
· Database; and,
· Operating System.

Some ECM systems require an application server to be purchased, some bundle it and some do not require it. Some systems force companies to use one stack; some give them the freedom of choice.

Red Hat Application Stack
As has been previously mentioned, a typical ECM system runs on top of a stack consisting of an
application server, database and operating system. With respect to Red Hat, a complete stack known
as the Red Hat Application Stack can be purchased and consists of the following elements:
· Apache HTTP Server;
· JBoss Application Server;
· JBoss Hibernate;
· MySQL and PostgresSQL;
· Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Alternatively, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and a database MySQL can be purchased separately.

Open Source Versus Proprietary Software

2009-12-10T07:38:00.000-08:00

Open source software is growing in popularity in both the commercial sphere and the number individual end-users are increasing. The open source development methodology has been heralded by some of its proponents, such as EricRaymond[34], as a superior way of producing software code. Whether open source software is indeed faster, better, and cheaper is a matter of controversy. To begin with, what is open source? Roughly, it means that the source code is made public, and that the modifications made by its users also is turned back to the community. The details vary with the license adopted for the software. Some of the key criteria included in the Open Source Definition[30] are (a) the royalty free redistribution of the program, (b) the release of the source code, and (c) the requirement that all modifications be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software. Open source software should not be confused with shareware (which is freely distributed, but whose source code remains proprietary) and public domain software (which is not licensed and thus available to anyone without constraint).[25] The today common, proprietary software (or closed source) development methodology means that customers pay for a nonexclusive license which allows

to them to use the software, but not to view or modify the source code. In other words is the software not sold as it is commonly formulated, it is rather leased to the customers. Customers are restricted in their use, modification and copying using technical or legal means and often both. Technical means can be to only provide machine-readable binaries and withholding the human-readable source code. Legal means can involve software licensing, copyright, and patent law.[39] The open source development methodology, with Eric Raymond at the front, is about offering practical accessibility to software source code. There is also Free
Software Foundation’s with Richard Stallman at the front which as a somewhat different view on the matter. The Free Software Foundation also propagates the practical benefits of open source, but they wish to emphasize the ideological aspect of freedom. They in particular wish to emphasize liberty and prefer the term of free software instead of open source software to stress this. The Free Software Foundation view free software as a matter of the users’ freedom to run, copy, distribute, study and modify software.[37] A software license is a contract between the software publisher and the user of the software. This is where the difference between open source, free, and proprietary software is defined. An example of an open source license is the BSD license. It more or less allows anyone to do anything with the source code, with the exception three paragraphs about copyright notice and promoting derived products.[27] Any software using this license can become proprietary and only the object code will be distributed without the source code. This is by many considered as maximum flexibility and freedom, but the Free Software Foundation wish to prevent this from happening. The Free Software Foundation wishes to always make sure that free software stay free. Any software in the public domain is also possible to make proprietary in the same way as the BSD license. To avoid free software of becoming proprietary, the Free Software Foundations have created their own software license. The Gnu’s Not UNIX’s General Public License, or more commonly known as GNU GPL or just GPL, is a strong copyleft license for software and other kinds of works. Copyleft is a general method for making a program or other work free, and it requires that all modified and extended versions of the program to be free as well. This license was originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU project and it is used for example by the Linux kernel.[37]

Document Management and Web Content Management

2009-12-10T07:30:00.000-08:00

Document Management

The core of both systems in this thesis is document management features, and this is a good choice of area to begin for better understanding of enterprise content management. This is more or less where content management began. In the early days, it initially dealt with the interface between printed document and computer systems. Today electronic documents are an integral part of business processes and document management systems include indexing and retrieval, workflow capabilities, versioning, document check-in/check-out, collaboration and distribution. Today’s systems are able to handle the relationship between documents and business processes, and are capable of managing the entire document life cycle. Features such as auditing, security and authorization, and document archiving, are as important as the content of the document itself. This sample will mainly focus on the Document Management capabilities when comparing Alfresco and the IBM based prototype

Web Content Management

This area of enterprise content management primarily focuses on web-based content, but it is not necessarily limited to HTML and XML content. Whilst these formats are the most common storage and presentation formats for web pages, the overall site will also include many other content formats, such as images, audio, video, word-processing files, PDF files, and other specialized formats, such as software code. Web content management ranges from basic applications that are capable of handling a company intranet, up to full-blown systems that specialize in supporting the largest scale e-commerce initiatives, and the management of multiple Web properties, on a global scale. The fundamentals of web content management are the ability to separate content from its presentation, using templates to simplify the process of content creation and contribution, without the intervention of technical staff to publish material. High-level web content management systems will include the sophisticated workflow and administration tools that are required to manage complex web sites, and large numbers of content contributors. Some systems will also support mass personalization of web content, suitable for large-scale e-commerce initiatives in both consumer and business-to-business environments.