Alfresco Software
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Software, Enterprise content management |
| Founded | 2005 |
| Founder | John Newton, John Powell |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | Doug Dennerline (CEO) |
| Products | Alfresco Digital Business Platform, Alfresco Content Services, Alfresco Governance Services |
| Owner | Hyland Software |
| Website | alfresco |
Alfresco Software comprises a collection of information management solutions compatible with both Microsoft Windows and Unix-like platforms, developed by Alfresco Software Inc. utilizing Java technology. Positioned as a Digital Business Platform, it offers a blend of proprietary and commercially licensed open source products that adhere to open standards, suitable for enterprise-level implementations. The Community Editions are distributed under the LGPLv3 license.
History
Established in 2005 by John Newton, co-founder of Documentum, and John Powell, former COO of Business Objects, Alfresco launched its first software release in July 2005.
Initially concentrating on document management, the company broadened its scope to include web content management in 2006 by hiring experienced technical personnel from Interwoven, among them the VP of Web Content Management.
By 2009, Alfresco had gained recognition as a leading Java-based open source web content management system.
In 2010, Alfresco supported the open-source BPM engine Activiti, thereby enhancing its business process management capabilities.
A strategic alliance formed in 2011 with Ephesoft enabled integration of document capture with Content Management Interoperability Services, facilitating advanced PDF processing and workflow creation.
Doug Dennerline, previously president of SuccessFactors and EVP at Salesforce.com, was appointed CEO in January 2013 to steer company growth.
The release of Alfresco 5 in September 2014 brought improvements such as advanced reporting and analytics, along with an upgrade of its document search functionality from Lucene to Solr.
In November 2016, Alfresco introduced an AWS Quickstart solution to streamline deployment of its Content Services server cluster on the AWS Cloud.
Rebranding as a Digital Business Platform occurred in March 2017, accompanied by the launch of an Application Development Framework featuring reusable Angular JS components aimed at accelerating application development.
In February 2018, private equity firm Thomas H. Lee Partners acquired Alfresco. Later, in September 2020, Hyland Software purchased the company from Thomas H. Lee Partners for an undisclosed amount.
Products and services
The core Alfresco platform consists of three main products tailored for clients requiring modularity and scalable performance. Deployment options include on-premises installations or cloud-based setups via Amazon Web Services (AWS) Quick Start. Additionally, a multi-tenant SaaS offering is available.
Alfresco focuses on enterprise content management (ECM), delivering a repository for content and metadata, a web interface known as Share, automated business rules, and text indexing capabilities. The company also provides records management solutions supporting information governance. Notably, Alfresco Governance Services is certified under DoD 5015.02 standards for records management.