We’ve been hard at work with Crafter Studio, an extension to our open source Crafter rivet framework, that offers a complete authoring and publishing environment for managing various types of Web and enterprise content.

Today marks the release of Crafter Studio 1.7.0, which contains a number of updates, including an Alfresco upgrade for 3.4.5E support, Preview Tools enhancements, along with a number of bug fixes.

To learn more about this release of Crafter Studio, visit our wiki at http://wiki.rivetlogic.com/display/Crafter/CStudio+1.7.0.

It’s that time of year again, when Alfresco enthusiasts get together to learn what’s new and network with other community members at the annual Alfresco developer conference.

This year, Alfresco DevCon Americas will be held in San Diego, CA on Oct. 26-27th, and will feature two packed days of Alfresco technical sessions delivered by some key engineers and visionaries behind the technology. The agenda includes tracks on Alfresco as a Platform, Best Practices, Customizing Alfresco, Case Studies, BPM, and Building WCM Solutions with Alfresco. The conference will also discuss all of the new features in Alfresco 4.0 - Share extensibility, Activiti, and Solr.

And of course Rivet Logic will be participating as a sponsor. We will also be presenting under the “Building WCM Solutions with Alfresco” track, on the topic of extending Alfresco for next generation WCM with our Crafter Studio extension.

For more information and to register, please visit, http://www.amiando.com/alfresco-devcon-san-diego-2011.html.

Liferay’s annual West Coast Symposium (WCS) starts today in Anaheim, CA, and offers two full days of thought-provoking, eye-opening sessions that showcase interesting ways companies have used the Liferay platform to meet their business goals. The highly anticipated Liferay Portal 6.1 and Marketplace will also be announced at this year’s WCS.

As a Liferay Platinum Partner, Rivet Logic will be participating as a Diamond Sponsor. In addition to our main booth, our solution showcase will demonstrate our Team Beachbody case study. We will also be presenting a business track featuring a Sensus case study.

If you’re attending WCS, stop by and visit our booth!

A recent CMSWire article noted that content management and social business are two very different technologies, and while vendors try to incorporate social business functionality into traditional ECM solutions, that there is no real effective way for a system to fill both shoes.

While traditional ECM systems are considered “systems of record”, social business tools are in a newer category of “systems of engagement“, and the differences between the two seem to be at opposite ends of the spectrum.

“These aren’t just differences of philosophy or look and feel. They extend to the software architecture itself. CMS has its roots in transactional, database-driven systems. There are no provisions for essential social constructs such as activity streams, user profiles, social feedback and reputation mechanisms, a centralized view of community activity and collaborative messaging. These capabilities come from a bottom-up design, not just slotting in some new modules or slapping a new UI on top of an existing CMS foundation. Actually, adding social features after the fact can make matters worse, creating more walled-off information that is hard to manage and search.”

To support the argument, SharePoint was used as an example, where a user survey concluded that enhancing SharePoint for Social Business could cost between $500,000 to over $1 million, with more for ongoing maintenance, and that organizations serious about social business should consider a purpose-built tool, rather than a customized SharePoint solution.

While a lot of what this article states is true, I don’t necessarily agree with the argument that the same application can’t have both traditional ECM and social business functionality, and be able to do it well. A good example is Alfresco, which has a robust content platform for building a variety of content-rich applications, along with a social user-interface for collaboration and document management. Alfresco’s focus is on a new vision of Social Content Management, which sits at the intersection of traditional ECM and Social Software, with its own social applications to the left, and a strong content repository on the right.

And by focusing on this intersection of Social Content Management, users have the ability to discuss content, and then capture the results of that discussion inside an ECM solution in order to retain it and derive value from it.

So while ECM systems and Social Business solutions do serve very different purposes, it doesn’t mean the same technology platform can’t be used to satisfy both sides and be able to do it in a cohesive manner.

Since becoming a Liferay partner in 2006, we have worked closely with Liferay and have seen the product mature over the years. So its increased adoption by enterprises worldwide comes as no surprise as the product’s numerous benefits are being realized. Recently, Liferay named Rivet Logic a Platinum Partner after a significant year of growth in sales and new implementations of Liferay in 2010.

“Enterprises dealing with content management and collaboration strategies are looking for best-of-breed tools as well as thought leaders who can guide them through critical decision points during the purchasing, development, and deployment cycles,” said Bryan Cheung, Liferay’s Chief Executive Officer. “Liferay provides a fantastic platform for developing web content and collaboration solutions, and Rivet Logic has become an industry thought leader in the development of these sophisticated solutions. With some of the largest deployments worldwide, Rivet Logic has earned its position as a Liferay Platinum partner and we look forward to their future success and partnership.”

We’re honored to become a Liferay Platinum Partner and will continue to deliver high-quality Liferay-based solutions to our customers while remaining active in the broader Liferay community!

Next up is the Liferay West Coast Symposium held on September 21-22 in Anaheim, CA.

Last year, a survey conducted by Accenture revealed that a majority of organizations anticipated increased investment in open source software this year. To further reinforce this notion of increasing open source software (OSS) usage, a recent survey by Gartner found that more than half of the organizations surveyed have adopted OSS solutions as part of their IT strategy. Over the past five years, each of Gartner’s OSS surveys taken have reflected an increase in the amount of OSS that makes up responding organizations’ portfolio, from less than 10% five years ago to more than an expected 30% within the next 18 months. Not surprisingly, the rate of proprietary software has decreased at about the same rate as OSS usage has increased.

Similar to the Accenture survey, which stated reasons beyond cost savings benefits that make OSS seem attractive, the Gartner survey yielded analogous responses in which respondents cited benefits of flexibility, increased innovation, shorter development times and faster procurement processes as reasons for adopting OSS solutions.

“Gaining a competitive advantage has emerged as a significant reason for adopting an OSS solution, suggesting that users are beginning to look at OSS differently — if they can customize the code to make it unique to their company, they have created a competitive advantage,” said Laurie Wurster, research director at Gartner.

The survey also sheds light on some other aspects of how OSS is being used, including key initiatives supported by the use of OSS and how OSS components are used in conjunction with internally developed software to enhance existing systems.

The full report is available on Gartner’s website at http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?ref=clientFriendlyUrl&id=1528219.

CMSWire’s topic of focus for this month is enterprise collaboration. It touches on a variety of important topics that organizations should consider before implementing an enterprise collaboration tool.

One point that struck me as particularly interesting is that collaboration starts offline with the people and not with the technology platform. It seems like this is an important factor that can easily be overlooked by many organizations during the process of determining a collaboration solution. As the article indicates, it’s important for an organization to realize its own work place culture and select tools that build on what they already do. For example, a wiki solution may be a better fit for a small team of collaborators than a full enterprise collaboration platform, which may be overkill. In essence, “this existing culture should be thought of as a blueprint for a collaboration system”.

Along similar lines, it’s also important for an organization to determine what they want to achieve with enterprise collaboration before implementing a solution. Collaboration requirements for a departmental team may be different than enterprise-wide collaboration goals. The technology will always be readily available, but without the proper analysis, a solution may not be implemented in the most optimal way to achieve the desired results.

With that being said, there are a multitude of collaboration solutions available. CMSWire names a few major players in the open source enterprise collaboration space that are worth considering. Not surprisingly, Alfresco Share and Liferay Social Office were both on that list. While Alfresco Share is highlighted as a SharePoint agitator that appeals to both users and IT administrators, Liferay Social Office is commended for its product maturity and robust collaboration features.

The HTML5 standard brings endless possibilities to the future of Web applications. By enabling desktop-like features, the Web can finally achieve a new level of rich user experiences. SproutCore is an open-source HTML5 application framework for building responsive, desktop-caliber apps in any modern Web browser without plugins.

What’s the motivation behind the SproutCore project? This new digital age goes beyond PCs and into mobile devices, iPads, and tablet computers. So what’s the best way to make data commonly accessible from these devices? By developing Web applications that can be accessed from anywhere, on any device. This is where SproutCore comes in, to enable development of rich cloud applications with dynamic UIs.

In fact, Apple’s MobileMe, amongst other apps, are currently using the SproutCore framework. Charles Jolley, creator of SproutCore, helped lead that effort at Apple before leaving last year to start his own company. His new startup, Strobe Inc., will focus on “helping companies bring great native-style app experiences to mobile device,” with the center of the company being SproutCore.

What does this new company mean for SproutCore? In Charles’ own words:

“First, SproutCore is now and will always be totally free and open source. I think this business of charging for a commercial license is not an effective way to grow a project. Sure you make a little cash, but at what expense to the community? My goal is to make SproutCore and all of the developer tools that surround it totally free to everyone. All I ask is that you participate in the community somehow to make things a little better for those who come after you.

Second, now that I am no longer held back by big-company legal restrictions, I am going to be much more involved with the platform.

My goal is that by the end of the year, any average developer can pick up SproutCore, build, and deploy a basic app without feeling lost. This is open source and I can’t usually guarantee timelines but at least now we can do what we need to make it happen.

Finally, I started working in SproutCore almost 5 years ago because I believe the future of software development lies in native-style apps in the web browser. It is the platform of the future and when that shift change happens, I want to be there with the technology. Now, I believe that time is almost finally upon us.”

For a sneak peek of what might be in store for the future of Web apps, take a look at the NPR demo built with SproutCore Touch, the first edition of SproutCore that includes complete touch support for touch events and hardware acceleration on the iPad and iPhone. But the beauty of it lies in that apps built with SproutCore Touch can run on both touch devices and desktop computers.

Currently, Strobe Inc. is focused on the digital publishing vertical, however, the possibilities are endless.

Alfresco is kicking off 2011 strong with Content.gov, a free, special one day event in downtown Washington DC focusing on open source content management in the government and public sector agencies. The event will be held on January 20th, 2011 at the Washington Marriott at Metro Center.

There’s been a long-time conception that government agencies are slow to adopt emerging technologies including open source products. However, in recent years, open source adoption has rapidly increased in the commercial sector due to a combination of factors, from the down economy and enterprises seeking cost saving alternatives, to the maturity of open source products finally proving themselves in areas of quality, security, and flexibility. The government, while slow to follow, are now beginning to realize the true benefits of open source software.

Content.gov 2011 will feature John Newton, Alfresco CTO & Founder, as the keynote speaker, followed by customer case studies delivered by actual customers and Alfresco implementation partners.

Rivet Logic will present a customer case study featuring a guest speaker from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). The presentation will cover how Rivet Logic helped NAS implement an open source Alfresco WCM solution that helped streamline operations, resulting in faster publishing cycles, increased productivity, richer site experience, and better accountability.

For more information and to register, click here.

As a new year starts, we’re optimistic for what’s in store for us in 2011. in 2010, Rivet Logic experienced continuous growth as an organization even in this down economy. Open source continues to impact the content management, collaboration and search markets, and we are excited to be part of this revolution.

In a recent CMS Wire survey, open source CMS and related vendors share some of their insights for 2011. Some of the high priorities for product enhancement include:

• Improve General Usability - 78%
• Additional APIs / Integration / Platform Features and Social / Engagement / Personalization / Optimization Features - Tied at 64%
• Address Performance and Scalability Limits - 52%
• Better Mobile Device and/or Multi-Channel Support - 48%
• CMIS Enhancements - 29%

Alfresco and Lucid Imagination participated in this survey and here’s what they have to share:

“What are the top 2 things you want to achieve for your project/product in 2011?”

Alfresco: Focusing on Web engagement to evolve how users produce and consume content, and improving technical aspects of their products like scalability, stability and performance.
Lucid Imagination: Cloud readiness and deployment, and widespread acceptance and displacement of commercial search vendors.

“How do you see content / information management evolving in 2011?”

Alfresco: We’ll see CMS’s “supporting a greater diversity of content distribution channels, such as consumer-oriented social networks, as more and more businesses express a desire to gain better visibility and ‘control’ over their respective brand and messaging.”
Lucid Imagination: Better integration across vendors will further legitimize open source as a strategic alternative to enterprise content technologies.

“How do you see open source business models evolving in 2011?”

Alfresco: Commercial open source models will be refined, with adjustments made to address factors like the economy, evolving technology, and so on.
Lucid Imagination: The folks at Lucid Imagination see continued acceptance of commercially-supported open source as the best practice in open source enterprise adoption.

“What do you expect to be the most disruptive technology or trend in 2011?”

Alfresco: Intelligent application of social computing principles behind the firewall with an eye toward efficient collaboration will continue to change the way that enterprises conduct business while improving overall agility and productivity.
Lucid Imagination: Search integration in cloud-enabled content technologies.

To see the full survey results, click here.