Leading knowledge management solution specialist and resident at The Innovation Hub, i-Kno Knowledge Solutions (http://www.i-kno.net/) has now become the only official partner in South Africa for Alfresco (http://www.alfresco.com/) - the open source (OSS) alternative for enterprise content management (ECM).
Alfresco recently announced that i-Kno is now officially its partner in South Africa. According to i-Kno Managing Director, Gerrit van Dyk, this is a significant development, as they can now turn to a properly accredited and professional company for their support needs for South African institutions using the Alfresco platform, versus previously having to rely on the OSS community for product support.
"Since Alfresco made the announcement about the partnership, we have had a number of enquiries coming in. There are already quite a few companies in South Africa that have implemented the community edition of Alfresco which, as a result of this partnership, are now able to move over to the Enterprise edition with a properly supported local company," says Van Dyk.
As the leading open source alternative for ECM, Alfresco's OSS model allows them to use best-of-breed open source technologies and contributions from the OSS community to get higher quality software produced more quickly, at much lower cost. With an offering that includes document management, collaboration, records management, knowledge management, Web content management and imaging, Alfresco allows the conversion of any file system into a simple to use, compliant, auditable repository.
Despite the platform's many benefits, Van Dyk admits there are some significant challenges ahead for i-Kno, such as establishing Alfresco as the preferred "open source alternative for ECM" in South Africa. Among these, he cites the marketing effort required to establish the Alfresco brand locally, and dealing with the predicted "explosion" within the ECM market space in South Africa. Van Dyk says: "We will need to ask ourselves 'how do we expand?' and 'who do we partner with?'"
i-Kno has also secured the training rights for Alfresco and is currently in discussion with potential partnering companies, as Van Dyk believes it would be a good idea to do everything themselves, as this is a big product, playing in a big market space.
i-Kno Knowledge Solutions specialises in the knowledge management (KM) domain. A team of highly-trained professionals provide solutions from capturing tacit knowledge to the advanced reproduction of data for business intelligence. Some of the areas covered in KM include Culture, Enterprise Content Management, Enterprise Portals, and advanced solutions in the business intelligence arena. With over 30 successful open source deployments in both government and private sector, i-Kno delivers on the promise of open source.
For more information on i-Kno Knowledge Solutions, contact Gerrit van Dyk on +27 12 844 0940.
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