Guest author: Janne Lautanala
1 -- Open source has still a lot more potential.
The open source movement has gained significant momentum in the operating system and database market as evidenced by the wide acceptance of Linux, Apache, PHP and MySQL.
This momentum has yet to have a significant impact on the open source Web content management (WCM) and portal market. Although the number of Web content management open source solutions available is large, the adoption rate remains low when compared to the market size.
2 -- Not all Open Source solutions are same.
The open source ECM vendor landscape is divided between ECM frameworks and systems. Frameworks provide the building blocks for developing very complex ECM implementations whereas systems are more comparable to commercial packages. The offerings come from a broad number of countries and with a wide variety of software license agreements. The systems can further be divided to fully fledged ECM/DM and web content management (WCM) solutions.
3 -- Focus on product selection.
There is a great variety of open source products in the market. It is essential that you select the right product, preferably a proven one with adequate user base in order to ensure that you also have the next release of it.
4 -- Even though you save on product price, you still have costs.
Even though you would get your Open Source ECM product for free, you still have to prepare for spending quite a bit of money on the implementation. There are no (open source) silver bullets.
5 -- Open Source support is excellent.
In many cases, the open source support beats commercial vendors’ support. The communities are active and many providers have commercial support in place, too.
6 -- Understand your open source license implications.
There is a big difference in the licenses out there and the limitations and possibilities they bring. Review and understand the implications!
7 -- Leverage your experiences and code.
Hey, that what’s open source is about!
8 -- Open Source is mature.
Based on my experience, the functionality and maturity of open source ECM is quite in parallel with commercial products.
Janne Lautanala has more than 15 years of experience of Information management. He has held positions in TeliaSonera, Accenture (as the Accenture Information Management Nordics lead) and currently at Avanade as the Nordics Innovation Lead.
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