Alfresco study highlights business use of open source

Firms looking at open source ECM solutions shun Microsoft in favour of Ajax and Java

Companies looking to implement open source enterprise content management (ECM) solutions are shunning Microsoft's Silverlight and .NET in favour of Ajax and Java, according to the latest annual survey from Alfresco.

The open source ECM vendor surveyed the habits of 25,000 global customers for its Open Source Barometer to determine how extensively open source is being used in the enterprise.

Alfresco found that, while nearly two-thirds of respondents said they evaluated its software on Windows, 92 per cent do not use or intend to use Silverlight. Eighty-six per cent do not use or intend to use .NET/Web Parts.

"It seems that open source users want an open source stack, with Java still the dominant infrastructure choice," said Alfresco chief marketing officer Ian Howells.

The research also found that firms implementing open source ECM were unlikely to have a preference for independent blogs, wikis and business process management tools, and more likely to go with an integrated tool.

However, experts are unconvinced about the value of such statistics. "It's still a data point, but these are Alfresco customers and they will always be predisposed to using open source, so the research must be seen in this light," argued Alan Pelz-Sharpe of analyst firm CMS Watch.

"Also, blogs and wikis nowadays are just functionality; some do better than others but there are not many enterprises prepared to pay for them [as standalones]."