State of Vaud CTO, Mr. Do, was attending the sessions. He found interesting the theory we were delivering – illustrated by live demos. The feedback was: “we want the same for SugarCRM” – as we are currently running a SugarCRM implementation project for the State.

We had several discussions about various topics. I summarize below major ones:

• Architecture
• Web Content Management
• Workflows
• Lotus Notes migration

Architecture

We have arguying about the transversality of their Alfresco ECM implementation. Currently we have planned to deploy one single instance where various applications content will be stored in it.

We have reconsidered this statement by defining criterias for separating application stores in several instances like:

• SLA
  • do these applications have same SLA?
• Need of sharing content
  • do these applications have the need of sharing content form their respective documents folders?

The output of our discussion is that current applications using Alfresco ECM do not need sharing content and they have different SLA. Therefore we will put them on two separate instances.

These arguments need to be compared against the effort of maintenance and release management.

Web Content Management

Currently, Alfresco WCM solution is too young. It does not fullfil their need for potentially replacing their current solution which is Typo3.

Workflows

The discussion around workflows was very ‘rich’. State had very limited experience and knowledge of the capabilities of jBPM workflows into Alfresco as well as out of Alfresco (as a dedicated BPM solution).

We were able to show them by the theory and the practice what is required, as preparation and implementation, in order to implement a business process.

They had the confirmation that business process implementation is not the task you will leave to a business user. Which contradicts what BPM vedors are trying to sell.

Let’s be realistic, business user can draw a business process, can specifiy rules; but there is no way they will model it, no matter the modelling tool they are using. The modeliing task is the ownership of technical people.

Lotus Notes migration

The State is still locked with Lotus Notes. They currently have 400 Notes databases and they would like to migrate them. Currently, they look at their Alfresco ECM as the platform to replace these Lotus Notes applications.

Optaros do have both competencies: 1) Lotus Notes compentencies thanks to our former IBM team, 2) Alfresco expertise and 3) A similar experience currently performed in Holland.

We hope will have soon in 2008 intiatives coming asking us to help them for migrating Notes applications to their Alfresco ECM platform.