Case Study - UK Defence Agency
Open Source Strategy for Cost Effective Defence
The Defence Academy was formed in April 2002 as a result of the 2001 Defence Training Review. The Academy is a military and academic community that provides professional and personal development to some 11,600 students per year. It has an annual operating budget of £110 Million and manages contracts worth £1.2 Billion. It has some 750 military, academic and support staff. The Academy is a British institution playing an international role.
The mission of the Defence Academy is to deliver high quality education and training, research and advice in order to sustain and enhance operational capability and advance the defence and security interests of the United Kingdom. The Academy provides education in the management of defence at government level; leadership at the corporate and strategic level across defence; command and staff training; and the management and exploitation of military technology.
Minimal User Training and Cost Effective Rollout
The Defence Academy, due to the constant high rate of military staff and student turnover, required a system that needed minimal user training. Most staff are not prepared to learn a new interface to access a repository/document management system. Hence, the system needed to appear as a shared drive that could be simply accessed via Windows Explorer and MS-Office through “drag-and-drop” and “Save-As”. This environment was required to be delivered without vendor lock-in and to avoid what the Academy refers to as a “monogamy vortex”. Due to the size of the rollout cost effective scalability and scale-out was required without the need for a step change in hardware and licensing costs.
For these reasons the Defence Academy has an open source strategy where practicable and cost effective.
“Most staff are not prepared to learn a new interface to access a repository/document management system. Hence, the system needed to appear as a shared drive that could be simply accessed via Windows Explorer and MS-Office through “drag-and-drop” and “Save-As”
Secure, Scalable Document Control and Search
The Defence Academy needs to be able to offer document management and control for all file types through a simple Windows Explorer or MS-Office interface that is also web enabled. Automatic version control, auditing and lifecycle management should be transparently applied to all content.
This includes basic records management where inadvertent deletion is difficult and reversible.
The content also needs to be easy to search and retrieve, using a combination of meta-data and full text indexing accessed through a Google-like interface. Content also has to be securely stored with permissions integrated to Active Directory with Windows group permission support. Web access, through a browser or portal, is also required and this must also support URL driven access to enable document management from email via a URL.
These technical requirements must be based on a set of open standards.
“The Defence Academy investigated: SharePoint 2004 with Meridio, Trove, Hummingbird, Vignette, Harvest Road HIVE, IBM CMS and Documentum. Microsoft and Meridio failed on the minimal-training requirement and security model. All except Documentum failed on one or more essential criteria.”
Why the Defence Academy Chose Alfresco
The Defence Academy was an existing Microsoft SharePoint user. There were issues with increasingly large data volumes, and a lack of intuitiveness for contributors. WebDAV also proved to be unreliable when mapped as a shared drive where it also had less functionality that Windows Explorer, which was what users traditionally used. The Academy investigated: SharePoint 2004 with Meridio, Trove, Hummingbird, Vignette, Harvest Road HIVE, IBM CMS and Documentum. Microsoft and Meridio failed on the minimal training requirement and security model. All except Documentum failed on one or more essential criteria. Document was too costly and complex. The Defence Academy also plans to use Alfresco as a learning repository with a Moodle front-end.
The Benefits of Using Alfresco
- Ease of Use – Simple shared-drive, MS-Office “save-as”, web and URL interfaces requiring minimal training
- Sophisticated Security Model – Integration to Active Directory with Windows group permissions support
- Cost Effective scalability and scaleout architecture
- Open Source and standards based