Flemish Government - Alfresco Credit Crunch Innovation Awards 2009 - EMEA Public Sector
Category: EMEA Public Sector
Winner: Flemish Government (VERA)
Industry: Government
Geography: Belgium
Summary of project and achievements:
Online collaboration tool for the management of generic and specific "social service information = products" for 40 local communities in region of Flemish Brabant. The system is completely written with webscripts for the different workflows the 300 products have to complete before publishing. Each product can be adapted by Local authorities for their own website. Product content is also "fed" by webservices integration to federal government application.
Please describe the business and/or technical challenges you faced in this project:
Business : First collaboration platform for local communities in Flemish Brabant. Convince partners of the profits of collaboration. Technical : LDAP connection for user management and rules management. Need to have the solution working on VMWARE on Solaris.
Please describe why you choose Alfresco. Were you using a different solution previously? If so, why did you change?
Robust repository and flexible way to publish to external resources by means of webscripts. A lot of necessary functionality (groups, roles, rules simple workflows, metadata, multiple language) were already in the basic stack.
Describe the solution/service/web site you built using Alfresco:
http://www.digitaalsociaalhuis.be and the intranet site for this application http://intra.digitaalsociaalhuis.be. The intranet is where users update their products, contact information and specific information. They also participate in a product forum. The intranet site is connected to http://www.rechtenverkenner.be , http://socialekaart.be and has a separate contact information system.
Please provide a technical description of implementation, including the size of deployment (e.g. hardware specs, applications, O/S, databases). Please highlight the use of other open source software in the solution:
ESX VMWARE, 64 bit , 1 CPU 4 GB RAM , Solaris, Mysql, Tomcat, Alfresco and separate Apache server.
Did you work with a certified Alfresco partner? If so, please name them and describe your experience:
Xenit - http://www.xenit.eu
What value did you gain from implementing Alfresco and how did this impact your business?
Time to market - 4 months
Cost reductions - new product, no comparison possible
Revenue increases - non-profit project
Service delivery improvements - syndication to other websites, companies
Other quantifiable increases/decreases - interest for company grew
What sorts of “soft” benefits do you have (collaboration, ease of use, flexibility of deployment and access, etc.)?
Collaboration, easy interface, easy to extend with new products, reuse, syndication to external platforms (Websites, teletext TV) easy to extend with new functionalities
What advice do you have for other companies facing a similar business challenge? Investigate in user/group management and access management, test hardware specifications, even though confirmed by partners.
