Alfresco Announces Facebook / ECM Integration

By Greg McNevin

November 19, 2007: Facebook is about to become a whole lot more to enterprises than merely a drain on staff productivity, as the open-source content management firm Alfresco has announced a new Facebook application that it claims enables enterprises to use the platform in a secure, auditable way.

While social networking services are becoming powerhouses online, it can be difficult for businesses to make use of them. Beyond Facebook’s reputation for distracting staff, social networking sites can prove invaluable for businesses that want to forge closer relationships with their customers and staff, if they were not risky and difficult to audit.

In terms of risk, the security firm Sophos claims that users could be putting themselves at risk of identity theft when they post too much information about themselves online, while organisations also face risk of their employees sharing information that could be used in phishing attacks.

Alfresco is attempting to take some of this risk out of social networking for enterprises wanting to get in on the action. The firm says its new Facebook-integrated enterprise content management (ECM) offering enables organisations to publish news and documents both internally and externally, while retaining an audit trail.

The firm says its ECM integration with the service includes single sign-on to application registration and document uploading, and enables employees to view documents recently uploaded by colleagues and friends through Facebook’s news feed.

"With Facebook, companies can engage with their customers, partners and employees to share social connections as well as content, and track what is going on in the enterprise," said John Newton, chief technology officer at Alfresco Software, in a statement.

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