Alfresco and Ixxus are now referenced in the Cabinet Office / Home Office white paper on Open Source Options. The Coalition Government has been vocal in its support for open source software (OSS) and states that it believes OSS “can deliver significant short and long term cost savings across Government IT”; such savings which are of crucial importance in this time of austerity and cuts.

OSS is not currently widely used in Government IT, and the leading systems integrators for Government Departments do not routinely consider OSS for IT solution options, as required by existing HMG ICT policy.There are significant obstacles to open source in Government and some of these are lack of procurement guidance, resistance from suppliers, concerns about license obligations and patent issues, and a lack of understanding of open source maturity and its development ecosystem.

The Government recognises that OSS is underused across Government and within the public sector as a whole, and have been working on further promoting and encouraging its use, a process which was started by the previous administration. As well as the cost effectiveness of OSS, the Government are also interested in other noted benefits such as interoperability, easier integration and customisation, compliance with open technology and data standards thus giving autonomy over your own information and freedom from vendor lock in.

After working with the University of Westminster to build intranet 2.0, Ixxus and Alfresco are now listed in the Cabinet Office / Home Office white paper Open Source Options (Version 1.0), which details how and where open source software is being leveraged within Government, as well as functioningas a non-prescriptive, non-definitive guide to open source alternatives to proprietary software.

The University of Westminster’s objective was to find an innovative, cost-effective alternative to Immediacy, which it had been using for the past ten years. After an investigation into various content management products on the market, Ixxus were chosen by the University to leverage Alfresco in order to implement a University wide Enterprise Content Management “Intranet 2.0”.

The development delivered an integrated Enterprise Content Management System which goes beyond the existing functions of email and shared network drives, to support internal collaboration and enhance partnership beyond the institution. More on the project can be found here: The University of Westminster Builds Intranet 2.0 with Alfresco and Ixxus.