Hybrid Alfresco DMS

I would like to collaborate on the documents with colleagues within the organization, but also with customers and external partners. Hmm… Do I need two DMS systems in that case?

No. 🙂

Step towards e-business has led to the fact that today absolutely every organization has a document management system, either a common shared disk or a specialized tool.

Mature organizations, especially those that operate in highly regulated environments need a high level of control over the documents, starting with the fine-grained access rights to the possibility of adapting the metadata and tracking the history changes on documents. Document Management Systems (DMS) delivers to organizations the required level of control, but their reach is limited to the organization itself.

Lean way of thinking that puts users and their business needs at the center of attention leads to more comprehensive cooperation of an organization with the very user, but also with other parties involved in the creation of value for the user. Project teams of the new generation are characterized as multi- and cross-functional. They consist of employees of the organization, as well as user representatives and potential associates. The standard document management systems work great within the boundaries of the organization, i.e. while all system users are employees of the organization or can access the system from the internal network or a controlled environment (e.g. VPN).

However, with the appearance of external users who formally do not take part of the organization, document sharing becomes more complicated. Security Officers are not inclined to open accounts to external customers or give them the right to a DMS system. Sharing documents in such a heterogeneous environment becomes an issue that is often bypassed with unpopular (not to mention illegal) methods such as mailing and placing documents on Dropbox. Except that system administrators lose control over access rights, document version history is getting lost too.

Alfresco has identified this problem and offers a solution in the form of a hybrid DMS system. The organization still has its own DMS system installed within the private network and the full control of access rights. Hybrid feature comes from the fact certain documents can be synchronized to Alfresco instance in the cloud, available on my.alfresco.com. Users decide themselves which folders or individual documents are the subject of synchronization. Changes to the documents in the internal Alfresco system are synchronized in the cloud. And vice versa: changes to documents in the cloud are synchronize into internal Alfresco system. Here used the standard HTTP protocol, so there is no need for the opening any special ports.

This kind of approach enables organizations to keep their internal and regulatory documents safely stored on its own location within the private network, and to offer only the documents that are the subject of collaboration to other parties through instance in the cloud, maintaining the full control of documents versions and access rights.

No longer need for e-mails, no longer necessary the Dropbox. The organization has the full control over documents and facilitates the collaboration of cross-functional teams. Alfresco instance in the cloud is available to all users of Alfresco One Departmental and Enterprise subscriptions.

For more details do not hesitate to contact us!