10 questions about alfresco in the Cloud

[webdesigner]

Dear Alfresco Community,

for a new project I investigate the possiblities to use the Alfresco Cloud.

My experiences with Alfresco Cloud is unfortunately "out of date", therefore I decided to ask you about current state regarding Alfresco Cloud (because not all of my questions are well covered by the official Alfresco documentation). I think these questions can help to everyone who evaluates Alfresco Cloud solution:

1. Is it possible to define custom Content Types/Metadata in Alfresco Cloud?

2. Is it possible to define custom Workflows in Alfresco Cloud?

3. Is it possible to define custom Web-Scripts in Alfresco Cloud?

4. Is it possible to customize Share Forms in Alfresco Cloud (e.g. Search dialog with custom metadata)

5. Does Alfresco Mail integration work with Alfresco Cloud?

6. Does alfresco Record Management work in the Cloud?

7. Does alfresco Desktop client works with the Cloud?

8. Are there Alfresco Cloud providers in Switzerland or Germany available (The goal is to store the data in Germany/Switzerland)?

9. Cloud doesn't work with Alfresco Community, is that true?

10. In case my customer decide to use hybrid approach(Alfresco On-Premis and Sync to the Alfresco Cloud): If he buys Alfresco Enterprise license, does he need to pay for Alfresco Cloud extra?

Thanks in advance!

Best regards

Vitali

[resplin]

Alfresco in the Cloud is a limited product in the use cases it can meet. It was designed for the simple use case of basic content collaboration outside of the firewall. With the addition of the Cloud Sync capability, that content can then be brought back into the on-premise system of record for archiving. Though there is some API access, the SaaS product is not intended to be customized.

As a result, the short answer to almost all of your questions is "no". Instead of thinking about changing Alfresco in the Cloud, the intention is for you to do all the custom workflow and data modeling with the on-premise repository and only synchronize the content externally when external collaboration on the content is needed. The answer to your last question is that Alfresco in the Cloud is currently included with a license for Alfresco Content Services (the new name for Alfresco One Enterprise Edition).

Since building that product, Alfresco has developed some alternative approaches to the same use case:

* Alfresco Content Services can now be licensed for external user access. Therefore, you can set up an Alfresco system for collaboration with external parties. That content can then be replicated to your internal system for archiving.

* Partner products exist that can synchronize content between two Alfresco repositories. One example is Xillio.

* Alfresco has started offering managed hosting of Alfresco Content Services, but I think we currently host it all in the US.

* Some partners provide managed hosting of Alfresco in Germany.

If your customer is interested in a supported deployment of Alfresco Content Services, you should engage with the Alfresco sales team who can answer these questions and ensure that your proof of concept is successful.

[afaust]

Regarding hosting in Germany: I believe the set of commercial entities doing that is limited to Community Edition only (e.g. ecm4u). I know from experience that Alfresco Enterprise licensing for such a use case was extremely incompatible / unfeasible (or maybe the Alfresco sales contacts in Germany did not know how to handle that and repeatedly ignored my remarks about "but guy X from Alfresco product management said it should be possible").

[jpotts]

It sounds to me like you just need to pick a cloud provider that will house your data in Germany, then install and run Alfresco there. You want to do custom forms, custom workflows, custom web scripts, and custom data models anyway, so it sounds like you are up for doing the hard part yourself.

[webdesigner]

Hello Richard,

thanks for your explanation!

Best regards

Vitali

[webdesigner]

Hello Jeff,

thanks for your answer. The problem is more in separation of contents, e.g.:

- One part of Alfresco (cloud) is accessible via cloud to external partners

- Other part of Alfresco (on-premise) is accessible for internal users only

- Both Alfresco are synced with each other (e.g. internal users can proceed a workflow initated by Cloud user etc.)

followign to your suggestion regarding German hosting, would something liek that work:

1. Install Standard on-premise Alfresco on German hosting

2. Install on-premise Alfresco on intranet

3. Add the URL of Alfresco from point 1 as Cloud URL to the Alfresco of point 2

Or syncing the contents between two on-premise alfresco is not possible?

Best regards

Vitali

[afaust · Accepted solution]

You cannot connect two "on-premise" installations (it does not matter where they are installed) using the cloud sync feature. There needs to be a special module installed on the "cloud" system which is not available for deployment outside of the Alfresco Cloud service. Consider it an "internal" module.

There are replication functionalities in Alfresco that can be used between two on-premise instances for uni-directional syncing. But there is no active-active sync feature.

With a proper permission model / ACL maintainance, authentication/authorisation setup and DMZ proxy servers, it usually is quite acceptable to provide external access to the same Alfresco instance that internal people work on, and still keep all the content separate / confidential. Even with paranoid customers we settled on that kind of approach in the end (usually after months of belaboring extremely complex solution options and theoretical issues/problems).

[webdesigner]

Thanks Axel,

I expected also that it doesn't work. Would be a cool extension, very useful for lot of use-cases.

Best regards

Vitali