alfresco wcm case study: national academy of sciences

ARTISANS OF OPEN SOURCE

Alfresco WCM at The National Academy of

SciencesAlfresco WebinarMarch 8, 2011

Paras Jain, Senior Software EngineerMike Vertal, President and CEO

ARTISANS OF OPEN SOURCE2

Rivet Logic Overview

• Award-winning professional services focused on:o Enterprise Content Managemento Web Content Managemento Collaboration and Social Communities

• Using Leading Open Source Software


Rivet Logic-Awards and Honors

Innovator of the Year

Partner of the Year - North America Overall Innovator Award

ARTISANS OF OPEN SOURCE4

Overview

• The National Academy of Sciences, along with three other organizations, collectively form the National Academies

• The Division on Earth & Life Studies (DELS) is one of six subject area divisions

• DELS has 12 program units, or Boards, that produce scientific reports


Presentation Outline

• Challenge• Solution• Results• Q&A


Challenge


Challenge

• Legacy system…

o Homegrown CMS

o Comprised of static HTML and some PHP

o Lacked any Web publishing tools necessary for staff members to produce content themselves

o IT support was necessary for any content updates or creating new pages - resulting in lost productivity & outdated content

o Organically grown system made maintenance increasingly difficult

o No authentication or user permissioning in place – no accountability


Goals

• Faster publishing cycles

• Richer, more engaging site visitor experience

• Secure, enterprise-wide access

• Better accountability

• Reduce maintenance and operational costs

• More editorial control by business users

• Open source flexibility in code customization

• Scalability for future growth


Why An Open Source Approach?


Reason #1: Pay for Value

• Proprietary software todayo Long sales cycleso Expensiveo Inaccessibleo 76% of new license revenue goes to sales and marketing expense

• Open source software can return 5x more value on investment

Source: “The Value of Open Source in the Content Management Landscape”, The Wharton School and Rivet Logic, 2009


Reason #2: Transparency

DeveloperDevelopment(Bugs)

ProductMgmt

Support

Sales

MarketingAccounts

Reception

QA

CustomerCustomerCustomer

PartnerPartner

Partner

Media

Shipping Customer

Developer

PartnerMarketer

Tester

Mgmt

SupportEngineer

Internet

BloggerCode

Open Closed


Reason #3: Flexibility

Customization is natural. Vendor inflexibility should not be.


Solution

Alfresco WCM at DELS/NAS


Alfresco Platform Overview

Web Applications Knowledge Portals Web Services

High AvailabilityVirtual File System

App Server

Portal Server

CRM

BusinessProcessEngine

FTP

CIFS

WebDAV


Basic Alfresco WCM


Alfresco WCM Flexibility

• Decoupled Content Delivery Approach

o Content management and delivery are separate

o Offers flexibility to use a presentation-tier framework of choice

o Advantages:

• Strong support for multi-user content production

• Rich and flexible content modeling

• Multi-site and multi-channel publishing

• Better scalability and performance

• Produces standards compliant XHTML/CSS

• Built-in support for SEO and Web analytics


DELS Web Content Architecture


Solution Highlights

• Two applications were developed:o Aetos – Manage enterprise content o DELS – Public facing website application

• Alfresco WCM for managing the entire website presentation tier, and all non-Aetos content

• Crafter rivet for Web content delivery seamlessly integrated with Alfresco

• Real-time In Context Preview

• Google Search Appliance (GSA) for search

• Mule ESB for content integration


Solution Detail

• Aetos

o Database-driven Grails application internal to NAS

o Houses core information about Academy Reports, Studies, Events and Projects

o Data fed from a variety of enterprise content sources

• DELS

o Public facing Grails Web application

o Aggregates and renders content from Aetos and Alfresco

o Feature-rich visitor experience


dels.nas.edu


Solution Detail

• Alfresco WCMo Web content and all digital media assets

o Page templates, scripts (Groovy)

o Key content management services• Advanced versioning• Private user sandboxes• Robust metadata modeling• Role-based permissions


Solution Detail

o Open source content delivery frameworko Provides seamless integration with content published from Alfresco

o Enabled integration with third party systems like ExactTarget and GSA

o Additional functionality including caching, searching, SEO, and real-time in-context preview


In Context Preview


Solution detail

• Search Integration

o Hybrid solution utilizing GSA and database search

o Federated search allows different types of data to be searched thru single interface

o Dynamic UI components driven by search provided relevant contextual information throughout the site

o GSA indexes updated upon Alfresco content publishing


dels.nas.edu


Content Integration

• Mule ESB enabled integration between Aetos and various enterprise content sources


Content Migration Process

• Aetos content migrationo Reports - Automatic migration via scriptso Events, Studies, Projects - Manual migration for fresh update

• Web content migrationo Business users authored content on QA system

o Provided user training and acceptance testing (UAT)


Development Methodology

• Agile & iterative approach in collaboration with customer

• Maintain transparency through open communication and constant knowledge transfer

• Web conferencing, Skype, daily SCRUM calls, Confluence, and JIRA

• Multiple, iterative success milestones


DELS (Before)


DELS (today)


Project Results


Results

• Enterprise-wide access• Flexibility and

scalability for future growth

• Successful go-live (April ‘10)

• Richer site experience• Better user

accountability


Results

• Dramatically reduced IT involvement

• Business users now have total control

• Faster publishing cycles

• Timelier, fresher and richer content

• Increased productivity

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)


Q&A

Download Full Case Study:

http://rivetlogic.com/resources/case-studies

alfresco wcm case study: national academy of sciences

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