Evaluation of Networked Tools
Based on Ninth House Requirements, July 31, 2007
Digital Places
August 17, 2007
Table of Contents
Executive Summary 3
Overview of the Networked Tools Evaluation 4
Summary Details on Leading Candidates 5
Additional details on leading candidates
Alfresco 8
SharePoint 8
MS MOSS vs. MS WSS 9
Stoneware Portal 10
Appendix 11
Full Requirements Definition Worksheet .xls
Product Ratings & Comparison Worksheet .xls
Details on Additional Products Considered 12
Executive Summary
Our July 31, 2007 Requirement Report addressed the business needs and tools requirements identified from our discovery work with employees across the Ninth House organization. This report presents a range of networked tools and evaluates the top candidates against the requirements.
A two-worksheet spreadsheet is part of this report. The spreadsheet scores the candidate products’ ability to meet each of the Ninth House requirements and includes a set of requirements that have been consolidated and refined since the July 31 report.
High-Level Summary Recommendations:
The selection of a comprehensive tools platform to support Ninth House’s collaboration requirements comes down to a decision between Alfresco and SharePoint. Both address the needs of NH, though in different ways. Only an internal trial of the user experiences on the two platforms, a detailed technical review of their APIs, and assessment of the network architecture and total license costs will enable a decision between them. Our suggested, staged approach to that decision applies whether the choice is SharePoint or Alfresco:
1. Implement the cost-effective Stoneware Webnetwork portal product to enable a single sign-on to NH existing network services for all employees and contractors, and to create a common environment through which the access to collaboration tools would be provided. Also, this “portal” implementation will drive network architecture decisions that could, in turn, impact licensing costs for SharePoint.
2. Decide on SharePoint or Alfresco for the collaboration tools platform.
3. Through the BPC (Business Process Council – see July 31 report), address the priority needs that can be met with Stoneware. In selecting Stoneware solutions, minimize introducing Stoneware-based tool practices that would later be replaced by practices based on the newly chosen collaboration tools.
4. Implement the chosen collaboration tools platform, SharePoint or Alfresco.
5. Business Process Council develops a staged plan to address the priority needs in Sales, Marketing and Production that the chosen platform will deliver.
Both Alfresco and MS SharePoint MOSS deliver solid functionality in document management. SharePoint has an edge in that it offers tools for task and project management out of the box. Although Alfresco scores lower in Comparison Worksheet we believe that a more detailed technical analysis around the Author Tool interface requirements can show that the standards-based Java architecture and multiple APIs of the Alfresco platform will offer the Production group more flexibility and easier custom development than the proprietary, (and possibly more expensive) SharePoint MOSS product. We place SharePoint MOSS as counterpoint to Alfresco (versus SharePoint WSS) here because MOSS' content management module provides the caliber of file management that the production group needs to professionally interact with custom clients during development of custom learning systems.
Besides the direct capabilities assessment of the two products, these factors will impact the choice:
· Network architecture decisions
· Ninth House’s trial use of any of these products turning-up previously unidentified user-experience issues, preferences, or functionality requirements.
· Identification of business risks with the Alfresco corporation – we have not done an evaluation of the status of the company. (Note, this is also true for Stoneware).
Overview of the Networked Tools Evaluation for Ninth House
Most networked tool[1] products fall into a “Project Management”- or“Document Management”-focused category.
Functionality Comparison
· Project management products’ core functionality is about capturing and organizing data on task assignments, status of tasks, interdependencies between and status of tasks, issue-management, milestones, schedule, etc.
· Document management products’ core functionality is about storing, tagging, controlling versions of, and acting on files and documents, as well as organizing workflows around documents, organizing, and searching for the documents.
Project Management Tools
Generally, current project management products are highly templated (e.g., fields defining a task, status-ing a task, etc.), with varying degrees of flexibility in the templates, depending on the product. So, with most PM tools, the user organization has to fit their existing approach to assigning, status-ing and task-reporting into the approach modeled by the product’s template. Document-management / file-repository functionality in PM tools varies from nearly non-existent to minimal. We know of no project management-oriented tool that provides robust document repository functionality.
Document Management Tools
Document management products have robust capabilities for versioning and access control of documents/ files, but the ability to database task information, show milestones, etc. is minimally available to non-existent. In some document management tools, task management is supported by workflow functionality, but this is an incomplete solution for task management. The time and costs of setting up the workflows and the confusion factor caused by some but not all project tasks being on the system may not be offset by the benefits.
We considered leading toolsets in both categories.
The table on the following page provides more details on the leading
candidate products that emerge as leading candidates from the comparison
worksheet. We also included several related products that could contribute.
Digital Places for Ninth House – August, 2007
Summary Details on Leading Candidates
Product / Type of Platform / Description / Approximate price and costing considerations / Links to demos, product reviews, etc.Alfresco / Document management / Has a robust set of features within a flexible Java platform. Compared to Share Point, it would require more up-front programmer work for initial deployment.
However, since it is fully XML you should be able to easily create data formats with fewer development constraints than you’d face with proprietary products. Also, given its open architecture, published APIs, conformance to standards, and use of many open-source modules (JSR 170, WebDAV, Hibernate, etc.), we believe it would be the best candidate with which to develop a rich interface to NH’s Author Tool.
This is perhaps the best tool for the Production group. / Alfresco is open source. The priced product, “Enterprise” version, provides a tested and supported release.
Pricing: ~ $15K/year for 4-hour response to a support request or ~ $20K/year for 2-hour response.
The “Community” version contains all functionality of Alfresco Enterprise under an Open Source license but is only supported by the community.
Considerable customization may be required to provide capabilities not available out of the box – see table of requirements ratings. (Using Stoneware could reduce the customization effort considerably by providing calendar and Exchange mail integration). / Register for hosted trial
Enterprise trial – download
Open source – download
Decent objective overview of
Alfresco ~March 2007
InfoWorld review, June 2006
General:
Open Source Content
Management options
July 2007
Blog post on Open Source
Content Management July 2007
MS Sharepoint WSS
Windows Sharepoint
Services, Version 3 / Straddles project mgmt. and document management capabilities. / WSS would meet many Sales and Marketing needs, but is a much weaker solution to all of Production’s needs. If licensing of Windows Server is such that WSS could be provided to employees and staff with no incremental cost, it could be a good decision to implement it for Sales & Marketing. The decision whether WSS would support customer workspaces would need to take into consideration the different needs of off-the-shelf and custom customers, the numbers of each, etc. / Priced to be included with Windows Server, see details below. / Click stream videos of common Sharepoint uses.
Sharepoint business solution templates.
MS Sharepoint MOSS Office Sharepoint Server 2007” / Straddles project mgmt. and document mgmt. Includes enterprise content mgmt. capabilities. / This is an enterprise version of Sharepoint WSS. It has all the capabilities of WSS plus more, at a significant price premium. See details in notes below. It could meet the needs of the Production group, but, its proprietary architecture could complicate custom developments desired such as creating interoperation with Author Tool, developing a uniform solution to client commenting on media files, etc. / See details below for how to price server and CAL (Client Access License) cost additions to WSS costs.. / Spreadsheet comparing features across all versions of Sharepoint
Stoneware’s Webnetwork 5e / Portal framework / Can provide single sign-on access to most of NH’s existing networked tools (Exchange, shared drives, Salesforce.com, Octel fax server, Replicon, IT Help Desk, Great Plains, IM, Webex, plus the to-be-chosen tools). Its customizable permission settings will enable individual and groups of employees, contractors and customers to access existing and future networked capabilities. Also provides secure, SSL VPN without client software which would simplify both the issuing of VPN accounts by IT and the accessing of VPN based services by users. / Pricing is based on concurrent users:
25 concurrent users - $14,300
50 concurrent users - $22,750
Unlimited concurrent - $45,500
One hardware server could handle up 1000 concurrent users. / Demonstrations on Stoneware site
Vendor-delivered demos available.
User Guide
Review of WebNetwork
Information Week product review
Additional Products / These remaining products are not in the spreadsheet evaluation. They address aspects of Ninth House’s needs,
but do not directly address the specific requirements principally addressed in this report.
X1 Search / Full indexing & search, only. For individual staff PCs or entire network. / This well-regarded search tool is available both as a low-cost standalone product for individual users’ PCs or augmented with a premium-priced enterprise / network capability.
Standalone version indexes all categories of Outlook data in the individual’s local .pst files (emails, attachments, calendar, tasks, contacts).
In addition, it indexes over 100 other file types on the user’s PC hard drive. It provides phenomenally fast search and its interface presents results in a far more useful format than either Google or Windows desktop search.
The enterprise (network server) version could index multiple servers on the NH network. Considering the extent of NH staff dependency on Outlook email, just the standalone version of tool offers a quick productivity boost to everyone at NH. / The X1 product for individual users
(no server required) is called “X1 Enterprise Client Professional.” Its list price is $50/user and includes 1 year of tech support. Corporate pricing
may be available.
X1 Enterprise Server versions for multi-server indexing are in the ~ $30k (+annual maintenance) for 200+ users. That price may not include “Content Connectors" for Exchange and Sharepoint which maintain Active Directory permissions. / Search client for individual PC info
Flash intro to use of X1 search product
Enterprise Server product info
X1 interface to Exchange
Zimbra Collaboration Suite / Potential substitute for Outlook-Exchange / Zimbra is not in the spreadsheet because we are simply suggesting it as a candidate to be monitored. The Zimbra business model, like Alfresco’s, is open source product with commercial service offerings. If you choose to go with Alfresco over Sharepoint, we believe it will be valuable for NH to monitor the progress of this Outlook-Exchange competitor. There is a good chance that, when considering a significant cost for upgrading or maintaining Outlook-Exchange licenses, you may find Zimbra economics, features, and its impact on your overall network architecture an attractive value. A caveat: Zimbra must solve performance issues with its web client. / Zimbra Server is open-source and free for browser-only access to mail, calendar, contacts, tasks, etc..
Ability to use Outlook as the client is available for ~ $28/year per mailbox. / Demo on Zimbra site
Customers
Zimbra was released in early ‘06; most reviews and press are from that period:
ZDNet review April, 2006
Clark’s pasted words into Nick’s stylesheet …
Additional details on leading candidates
Alfresco
Alfresco’s stated goal is “bringing enterprise content management (ECM) capabilities to open source.” The Alfresco team brings content management experience from Documentum, Business Objects, and SeeBeyond. Alfresco WCM 2.0 is an optional add-on which can be installed on top of the core platform to enable Web Content Management capabilities.
With Alfresco you:
· Can dynamically update / add users as LDAP source changes.
· When searching do not see files you do not have rights to see in the search results.
· Can mount Alfresco drives on Windows desktop.
Time permitting, we can make many more notes and details from our discussions with technical users and Alfresco support staff available.
SharePoint
The two versions of SharePoint are effective, powerful, and much more capable with the 2007 versions released (WSS v.3 and MOSS 2007). The ease with which end-users can create workspaces and configure functionality of those workspaces is an empowering capability for modern teams. (On the other hand, that same capability could result in workspaces full of unorganized information without careful organizational management i.e., BPC.) Both SharePoint versions integrate well with Exchange and Outlook (and Groove) to provide a broader range of services than is available without custom development from any other platform.
Generally, MOSS 2007 (Microsoft Office Server 2007) provides features that support use across an enterprise (multiple divisions and/or multiple lines of business). Probably the most significant difference between WSS and MOSS is that with MOSS, the Business Intelligence, Content Management, search, forms, and other capabilities can act on any subset of the divisions or lines-of-business collections of sites. This provides powerful cross-enterprise information capabilities. The collection of sites (workspaces) in a WSS implementation are, in a sense, just one division or line of business.
Specific MOSS capabilities not available in WSS
1. MOSS has more full-featured Search – relevance and ranking factors not included in WSS algorithm, improved crawl rules, granular indexing for easy inclusion and exclusion of searched content, and people search by account demographic factors and many more.
2. MS Content Management Server (previously a separate, standalone MS product). Includes features to:
· Describe to users what business policy or workflow governs a document