Interview : Eric Barroca, Executive VP Operation

from Nuxeo.

Hello Readers !

Today, I'm very proud to have the opportunity to interview Eric Barroca, Executive VP
Operation from Nuxeo.

Reminder: These interviews aim at proposing another insight of the ECM world. They allow
us to discover one professional, his/her job, his / her company and its ecosystem and... ECM !

Hello Eric,

First of all, can you tell us what is your role within Nuxeo? Has an Executive VP of
Operations anything to do with architecture? Management? Consultantcy? Sales? A bit
of each one ?

Indeed, a bit of each!

My job at Nuxeo consists in managing production and delivery aspects (R&D, Software,
professional services), corporate strategy, corporate communication, as well as managing
legal issues, back office and financial aspects. And of course, I can be involved in any
strategic move of the company (critical presales, partnerships, projects, etc.).
But... it's actually quite easy, thanks to a highly motivated and capable team!:-)

What are your educational and professional background?

I'm not fond of talking about myself, so... here is my corporate biography :-)

“Self-taught, Eric Barroca has been working on the ECM and open-source markets for the
past 10 years, designing and leading critical content-centric projects for highly demanding
organizations, especially in the defense and press sectors. He's is a recognized expert of both
the ECM and the business-oriented open source worlds.

His impressive track record in ECM projects fuels the vision he has of the mid- and long term
evolutions of this market. This real experience is enforced by his ability to identify potential
technologicel standards. This combination makes him a great organizer and visionary.

That's how, three years ago, Nuxeo chose for its next platform, some of today's industry
standards, such as OSGi, REST or Eclipse RCP. And that's what allowed Nuxeo to offer
robust and scalable technologies to enterprises seeing the ECM as their core backbone, to
store, preserve and manage information, allowing any authorized stakeholder to share,
exchange, enrich, store and find any piece of information, from pure collaborative
environment to the strictest legal compliance.

From the 5 people-company it was when he joined, Nuxeo gathers now 40 employees in
France, UK and Canada, structured in focused teams, around the R&D squad, that has been
established and is still managed by Eric.”

http://www.opensourceecm.fr
http://www.open-source-ecm.com
 Interview : Eric Barroca, Executive VP Operation
from Nuxeo.

So corporate !:o)
Now, let's talk about Nuxeo 5, your open source ECM solution – or is it a platform? By
the way: how do you define Nuxeo 5: A platform? A solution? A framework? Or does
each of those match the 3 names of Nuxeo 5: SP (Service Platform), EP(Enterprise
Platform) and RCP (Rich Client Platform)?

We've recently renamed and refactored our technical infrastructure to make it simpler and
easier to understand. Therefore I'm really happy to have the opportunity to explain today!

Nuxeo Platform is composed by 4 major groups:

• Nuxeo Core (in which Service Platform has been merged) offers all essentials
services: content repository (storage, content model, security model, query, ...),
relations, audit trail, directories/vocabularies, lifecycle management, ... Nuxeo Core is
our lightweight and versatile ECM core that can be embedded in other applications.
It's a really innovative approach for software vendors, enabling them to add content
related features to their verticals apps.
• Nuxeo Enterprise Platform: based upon Nuxeo Core, it is our ECM service platform
which proposes a service model and a high level ECM services set: workflow,
comments, annotations, picture processing, IS integration (ie: WS, EJB, seamless
authentication ), ... Nuxeo EP also offers a full-featured ready-to-use ECM application
(based on SEAM and JSF).
• Nuxeo Rich Client Platform: mainly based upon Nuxeo Core, Nuxeo RCP is a
framework enabling the creation of “Rich Applications” (Rich Desktop Application -
RDA). This kind of application meets the needs of strong desktop integration, highly
reactive interfaces, huge data volume to be processed on the client side... Typically,
Nuxeo RCP based applications are connected with a Nuxeo EP server.
• Nuxeo WebEngine is the latest kid in the family ;-) It's a modern web framework, a
"content-centric web framework". It allows rapid development of content-centric web
2.0 applications. Basically we think web sites are now applications exposing content
than web publishing, so think framework enable the creation of those new content-
based apps. We see WebEngine as the Rails or the Django for content apps.

From these platforms, we plan to release ready-to-use business packages, such as DAM,
Correspondence management, Enterprise blog/wiki, ...

http://www.opensourceecm.fr
http://www.open-source-ecm.com
 Interview : Eric Barroca, Executive VP Operation
from Nuxeo.

Before all this, in the early days of Nuxeo, you used to have another solution called CPS.
This solution used to be and is still considered as a reference in content management.
For the CPS -pros – and I know a few- its key interest relied in the functional richness of
document types, newsletters, chats, forums, pics gallery... Which part of Nuxeo 5 lies
now this richness? Nuxeo Webengine?

CPS was very much dedicated to create corporate "intranets", but wasn't really a global
platform. When migrating to Java and creating Nuxeo Paltform, we did actually focus our
efforts on building a solid, extensible, scalable and performing infrastructure, covering the
global scope of ECM with a high functional level comparable to top tiers proprietary
vendors...

BTW, Most the features you're referring to (pics gallery, forums...) are available as Nuxeo
EP's addons.

In my opinion, when talking about DM and collaboration, Nuxeo EP offers a more functional
and user-friendly application / UI than CPS.

One of Nuxeo 5 key strengths is its plugin oriented architecture through mavenised
OSGI modules (for more info: http://www.nuxeo.com/en/solutions/sp/#extensible) It is
thus very easy to extend the solution either in adding or in subtracting any components.
Let's take the example of the workflow engine: is it easy to change the default JBPM
workflow engine via OSGI components?

OSGI is a standardized component / packaging model. It defines the packaging, components,

services, names, dependencies between components, class visibility between components,
component management, etc.
On top of the OSGI component model, Nuxeo added an extension system, based on
"extension points", pretty close from what can be found in Eclipse RCP. This brings a
powerful extension technology which enables one component to define the extension points
from which other components can register and thus contribute to the configuration ... The
bundle of OSGi and extension points makes the strength of our platform bringing versatility
and a truly innovating architecture, that developers like.

The entire platform is based upon this principle: a set of components that are extending
themselves mutually or that can easily be extended. This is really clean and powerful when
you're a developer needing to create an application.

As a side-note, 3 years ago, when we chose this technology, only IBM and the Eclipse
Foundation believed in it. It looks like we made the right decision: all application servers
ISVs did or are currently migrating to this component model ( IBM, SpingSource, Jboss or
Sun). This is of an interesting advantage for Nuxeo to be able to natively leverage the new
generation of Java application servers.

http://www.opensourceecm.fr
http://www.open-source-ecm.com
 Interview : Eric Barroca, Executive VP Operation
from Nuxeo.

Is it possible to know more about the OSGI model?

My recommendation for further information:

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSGi
- http://java.dzone.com/news/there-place-osgitm-enterprise-
- http://www.osgi.org/blog/

When do you plan the release of your next stable version (5.2) and what are the new
features?

We're aiming at a release at the end of November for Nuxeo 5.2 GA (which, by the way, may
be renamed in version 6.0 – this is still under discussion ; we'll ask the community as well
as:-).

On the “new feature” front:

• a native SQL-based store for Nuxeo Core which stores data in an SQL base using a
“natural” relational model allowing to access your content repository data directly at
the RDMBS level via common/legacy tools for reporting / Business Intelligence,
replication/backup, ERP integration, on the fly data model changes, ETL for data
migration, etc. This new store also brings a big improvement in performance, making
it one of the fastest, if not the fastest document engine (x2 compares to current store
engine).
• Document annotation service: annotation of document content or of multimedia
objects ( pictures, videos), allowing the handling of any document
text/multimedia/hybrid, inc. very large pictures ( ie: satellite or medical imaging above
1GB)
• Native integration API for Flex and GWT to quickly build RIA applications
• OpenSocial support: OpenSocial gadgets and integration of an OpenSocial based
portal/customization engine
• default integration of Nuxeo WebEngine, as lightweight web framework, based on
JAX-RS (Java standard to build REST apps)
• Nuxeo Webengine based enterprise Wiki / Blog engine, fully integrated with the
ECM solution
• Support of Glassfish 3 as application server, alongside JBoss 4.2
• New packaging "Nuxeo Light" based on GF3 embbeded to a faster startup of the
platform (under 4s for the Webengine light server)
• Asynchronous job service: easy grid-based asynchronous execution of actions /jobs,
thus allowing high scalability (google-like scalability for your ECM platform ;-)
• Upgrade of components: Lucene 2.2, Seam 2.0, JBoss 4.2, ...

http://www.opensourceecm.fr
http://www.open-source-ecm.com
 Interview : Eric Barroca, Executive VP Operation
from Nuxeo.

And on the interoperability front:

• MS Windows Sharepoint Services (WSS 3) protocols support to use Nuxeo Core as a

Sharepoint server from Microsoft applications (ie: Office)
• CMIS and ATOMPub support
• OpenSocial support

Let's talk now about your ecosystem. What do you think about the recent announcement
of the CMIS specification (Content Management Interoperability Services)? Do you
plan to integrate it in the 5.2 roadmap?

We're very enthusiastic about this spec and are investing to implement it. You may find our
comprehensive reaction at: http://www.nuxeo.com/en/news/interoperability/

If, as a developer, I want to contribute to Nuxeo 5, what should I do? What are the
constrains? Will my code be accessible to everyone?

There aren't any constrains except from following Nuxeo development rules and quality
standards (and signing the contributor agreement).
We warmly welcome contributors, either for platform core modules or for additional plugins.
Our contribution policy is very open and we're more than happy to work with new motivated
developers.

How much does the community contribute to the development of Nuxeo 5? What would
you consider the most noticeable contributions?

The community contribution represents around 15% of the platform, which is great. If we add
the documentation and the Q&A, it raises to 20-25%.
The most noticeable contribution lis Nuxeo Theme, our theme and layout engine. It's been
created by Jean-Marc Orliaguet (Chalmers University, Sweden) who've been working with us
for 5 years.

Thanks to Nuxeo Theme, our platform benefits from advanced graphical and user-friendly
customization capabilities, far above those of our competitors. I's a truly surprising
technology! you may have a look at it... ;-)

Does Nuxeo belong to any ECM promoting community, either in France or worldwide?

We're currently an APROGED member in France and an AIIM member at international level.
We're pretty active in the different organizations and work groups working on
standardization. Within the JCP, we're participating to the JCR2 standard.
As soon as it'll be approved by OASIS, we'll get deeper into CMIS as well.

http://www.opensourceecm.fr
http://www.open-source-ecm.com
 Interview : Eric Barroca, Executive VP Operation
from Nuxeo.

What are your favorite blogs?

Here is an extract from my blogroll related to ECM:

The Aquarium - http://blogs.sun.com/theaquarium

Scrum Log Jeff Sutherland - http://jeffsutherland.com/scrum
Maison Fleury - http://thedelphicfuture.org
The Open Road - http://news.cnet.com/openroad
CMSWire - http://cmswire.com
Angry Bill - http://bill.burkecentral.com
Alan Pelz-Sharpe @ CMS Watch - http://cmswatch.com/Analyst/10-Pelz-Sharpe
Sacha Labourey - http://sacha.labourey.com/
Jonathan Schwartz - http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/feed/entries/atom
Planet Eclipse - http://planeteclipse.org/planet/rss10.xml
High-Scalability - http://highscalability.com/rss.xml

And few more...

Do you have a last word for us?

If I may, I'd like to announce our forthcoming first "Nuxeo Developer Day" which should be
held on December 1st, in Paris, within the Open World Forum
(http://www.openworldforum.org/). We'll soon post the detailed agenda and you're all warmly
invited !

Thanks a lot of this interview. I remain at your disposal:-)

Farewell on the Open Source ECM road !

For more informations, don't hesitate to visit this link : http://www.nuxeo.com/

http://www.opensourceecm.fr
http://www.open-source-ecm.com