We just completed the first phase of a major open source content management implementation for Harvard Business Publishing. Using leading open source software that included Alfresco and JBoss, we helped launch two new sites — the online edition of Harvard Business Review at hbr.org, and Harvard Business Digital at harvardbusiness.org.

In a note to their visitors, Eric Hellweg, Editorial Managing Editor of HarvardBusiness.org, highlighted some of the new site features:

“At HarvardBusiness.org, here are some of the new elements:

A sharper focus on the topics you care most about. You’ve told us a lot in the last couple years and have helped us hone our editorial focus on the topics of most interest to you. You’ll find expanded coverage in the core areas of Leadership, Strategy, Innovation, and a new section we’re calling “You at Work,” that will help you advance your ideas, your career, and your team.

Easier navigation through our full range of product offerings. We’ve organized the site with a more intuitive layout so that you will be able to see more of what we are creating on a daily basis. The new design makes it easier to access all of our offerings at Harvard Business Publishing including books, expert voices, interactive tools, case studies, video interviews, and podcasts.

Faster and more comprehensive search. Our new search functionality should allow you to find what you want a lot faster and more intuitively than before. By placing the search field front and center with an additional drop down menu we’ve streamlined the ability to narrow your search, eliminating a couple clicks.

Richer graphics. We’ve created room for richer graphics on the site that we hope will bring out the human element found in most management ideas.

Here’s what’s new at HBR.org:

Easier, faster access to more content. The “shuffle deck” navigation and “Current Issue” index front and center on the home page should make it easier to navigate the site and discover the content that’s most useful to you. Improved search functionality and new article collections will make it easier to tap into HBR’s 2,500 + digital article archive and new interactive elements.

More up-to-date content. You’ll see more timely and frequent updates to the site that will help you apply HBR concepts to your daily business and management challenges. Regular perspectives from the HBR Editors’ Blog, podcasts, and videos will help you stay current–even when you’re short on time.

New features to help you use HBR ideas more effectively. In the redesigned article pages, you’ll find In Brief summaries that help you grasp key ideas quickly and apply them in your own company or career. Interactive tools and video interviews give additional perspective and guidance.”

In the months ahead, we plan on rolling out additional improvements to both HarvardBusiness.org and HBR.org. These will include a streamlined shopping and checkout process, a further enhanced search, community offerings, and more.

Another major victory for enterprise-grade, commercial open source software.

JBoss just announced the JBoss Migration Assistance program, of which we’re a founding partner. The primary goal of the project is to provide a collection of open source tools and resources that will enable enterprises to more easily migrate from closed source, proprietary application servers to open source JBoss platforms. We’re happy to bring our experience with application and portal migration to this new JBoss.org project.

As Matt Asay points out, this is a community effort that will combine Red Hat’s efforts with that of its most experienced JBoss system integrators, as no one tool or process can cover the gamut of app server/portal/content migration. This type of communtiy effort represents the essence of collaborative open source development.

As a trusted advisor to many major enterprises who are using or considering open source portals and enterprise/web content management, we see first hand how real the trend is toward open source and away from proprietary software. However, many of our clients are unwilling to discuss publicly their growing adoption of open source (for the most part, they don’t want their competitors to know).

So it’s always great to see public recognition of leading enterprise open source platforms, especially when it comes from the likes of Gartner.

As Liferay’s CEO Brian Cheung points out, Gartner has recognized Liferay in two of its Magic Quadrants, Horizontal Portals and Social Software.

Well deserved.

We just helped launch a cool new Facebook application, Connected Weddings. Check it out at apps.facebook.com/connectedweds

A few months ago we first announced the start of this project, which was partially funded by a grant to our client (New Gravity Ventures) from the Facebook Fund.

Leveraging open source software from the likes of Alfresco, JBoss, and Ingres, Connected Weddings offers engaged couples on Facebook:

- Free Personal Wedding Website
- Seating chart that uses your Facebook Friend List!
- To-do list with over 150 of predefined tasks
- Gowns, tips, articles and much more

In addition to the Facebook version, there’s also an iPhone edition as well.

Learn more from our recently published Case Study: ConnectedWeddings: A first-of-its-kind
Alfresco-based application for Facebook

We just published a new case study on one of our projects in the public education sector. The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) does great work for advancing public education goals at the US Federal and State levels, and open source portals and content management from Liferay and Alfresco help them collaborate, find, and share critical information in support of many of their projects.

Learn more from our new Case Study: CCSSO Increases Project Efficiency Through Open Source Content Management and Collaboration.

As a sponsor of JBoss World this year, we’ve had a chance to talk with many JBoss users — both new and old. The conference is focused on a few major themes:

- Next Generation Web Applications with JBoss Seam, Richfaces, AJAX, Facelets, Portal, and more.
- Integration and SOA with JBoss’s new SOA platform that includes JBoss jBPM, ESB, and Rules
- Core technologies such as EJB3, Hibernate, and Cache
- Security and Management of large-scale, enterprise deployments

This is the largest JBoss World event yet, with almost 800 attendees. In our booth we’ve been showing off new web applications built with JBoss Seam/Facelets backed by the Alfresco content management platform and jBPM. Definitely a lot of excitement about using these technologies for next generation Enterprise 2.0 applications.

Our latest white paper on Open Source Document Management is now available.

Register for it here.

In it, we talk about how open source ECM and portal software can help with fundamental document management requirements including:

• Rules based repository that can replace shared network drives
• Effective search and retrieval
• Standards based interfaces, including WebDAV, FTP, CIFS
• Library services
• Forums and other ways to facilitate team collaboration beyond email
• Workflow
• Scanning and document imaging support
• Records management
• Security

Starting to look at Alfresco 2.0 for Web Content Management? Interested in learning a little bit about what’s under the hood?

You may find our recent Technical Note useful: “Alfresco By Example - A Simple Introduction to Alfresco’s WCM API”

Feel free to download the package (as a zip file) from here. All source code is GNU GPL.

Here’s the intro:

We provide a few simple working examples that illustrate the use of new APIs included in the Web Content Management (WCM) module in Alfresco 2.0. Our purpose is to demonstrate a small portion of Alfresco’s underlying capability that will be useful to developers who are just starting to use (or starting to evaluate) Alfresco for dynamic web site content management and content delivery. We assume the reader has some familiarity with Alfresco 2.0 and its WCM features; for those who do not, we recommend reading Alfresco’s WCM Tutorial first.

Continue reading here.

Our latest white paper is available here

A sneak peek:

As Records Management continues to migrate onto the desktops of business users across the enterprise, and as new laws and regulations stipulate how content should be stored, classified, and destroyed, organizations have become caught in a profound business transformation.

Records Managers and IT personnel struggle to meet the day-to-day needs of rank and file employees creating and sharing content while dealing with highlevel challenges such as compliance, e-business initiatives, and knowledge sharing.

Legislation demands that enterprises manage the proper control, classification, storage, auditing, and disposition of records. General business users, however, prefer to continue their reliance on shared file systems and e-mail to productively manage and share content.

Adding to these problems is that up to now, traditional enterprise content management (ECM) systems have been costly to implement and difficult to use. Enterprises of all types – from government agencies and financial institutions to insurance and healthcare companies – can benefit from a robust yet simplified approach to records management.

We get lots of questions regarding Alfresco’s move from the Mozilla Public License (plus Attribution) to the GNU GPL.

First off, what is the difference between MPL and GPL?

Well, a primary difference is in the reciprocity requirements. The GPL requires that any derivative work of the original software program be licensed under GPL, whereas the MPL requires only that modifications to one of the files containing Original Code or previous Modifications or a new file containing Original Code or previous Modifications must be released under MPL.

In other words, if GPL code resides anywhere within your end software solution/product (i.e., is compiled in), the entire software code base must be licensed under GPL. In contrast, you may combine/compile MPL code with closed-source code as long as your closed-source code does not mix with the MPL code at the file level.

The bottom line: any OEM or end-user who wants to build a solution using Alfresco Community (GPL) must also release their entire software source code base under GPL. Alfresco provides an exception to this if it involves software licensed under an OSI approved license by virtue of Alfresco’s Free/Libre Open Source Software Exception.

If you are an OEM or end-user who wants to ensure that your modifications, extensions, and customizations to Alfresco remain closed, well that’s where Alfresco’s Enterprise license comes in — it waives the reciprocity requirements of the GPL. This dual-licensing approach to open source software is very common (e.g., MySQL)

So now there are two (independent) reasons to purchase Alfresco Enterprise:

1) Support - to get responsive support and consulting help from Alfresco and their certified partners like Rivet Logic

2) GPL Waiver

Other thoughts:

• Alfresco is now truly open source as defined by OSI and free software as defined by the Free Software Foundation (”free” as in “free speech”).
• And as a result, Alfresco’s community should grow much larger. According to John Newton (Alfresco’s Chairman and CTO), this effect has been immediate.
• Look for more Alfresco integrations with other open source projects.

A great move in all respects.