If the numbers are accurate, then Alfresco is only marginally less expensive than proprietary offerings.

Again, just an over-simplification from The VAR Guy. But that’s what bloggers (including anonymous ones…) tend to do.
-TVG

My understanding of the rule of thumb for commercial OSS solutions is that they offer up to 90% savings on year one (subscription vs. proprietary license) and up to 40-50% savings in the subsequent years (subscription vs. maintenance). The average savings for all years might be in the neighborhood of 30%.

The following figures are illustrative and not meant to reflect accurate ECM pricing:

- Say the total license/maintenance price tag (all years) of a proprietary ECM system is $1,000,000 and the total subscription price tag (all years) of the OSS alternative is $300,000. (customer realizes the 30% savings referenced above)

- Now let’s say that the services price tag is the same. (I suppose the price of services would be influenced by the available supply of experienced integrators, but let’s assume services cost the same for proprietary and OSS offerings.)

- Using the 10-15X services:subscription ratio, the services price would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $3,000,000.

- The overall price tag (services + subscription) of the OSS solution would be $3,300,000 and the overall price tag (services + license/maintenance) of the proprietary solution would be $4,000,000.

-In this scenario, the OSS solution would offer roughly 20% savings over the proprietary solution.

1. An integrator could be involved with an Alfresco customer engagement ongoing. So is the integration fee all rolled into a single year? That likely depends from one customer to the next.

2. The VAR Guy pays pennies on the dollar for his open source platforms. But our resident blogger pays a healthy premium to developers who customize the code into a true solution. So, in the open source world, it’s hardly surprising that the bulk of the cost involves customization rather than acquiring software.

Still, you raise an interesting point. The VAR Guy should take some time to put some actual dollar cost estimates to the Alfresco integration fees. Thanks for posting the comment. Our resident blogger appreciates you raising the question.
-TVG