"Alfresco is the fastest, most scalable CMS on the planet," Powell said. "A large retail bank is using Alfresco for loading 80 faxes per second and an unnamed US government agency - one that takes pictures of eyeballs at airports - is loading 200 million objects into Alfresco."

Powell also digressed into a lengthy discourse as to why classical enterprise content management is the wrong vision that was "artificially constructed by content management vendors in the 90s to sell more product".

"ECM implies silos of information," he said. "People want transparency and trust, and rather than thinking about ECM as a product, think about content services delivered to users on demand in the application of their choice. It should be available to everyone. Open source is driving this change and so is the Web 2.0 revolution. The open source model is built on the Internet and collaboration. ECM leaves the boundaries of the enterprise and can be used through Facebook or Google."

Powell touted Alfresco as "the open source alternative to Microsoft's SharePoint", saying it is the only software distribution model that will level the playing field.

"Many organizations are deploying SharePoint because it's included in the Microsoft distribution, and suddenly I need SQL Server, SharePoint Portal, and I'm locked in the Windows platform and you must pay licence fees," he said.

"We don't care what the operating systems is, what the database is, whether it's Java or .Net, so there is no hidden lock in and you won't end up in a position you will regret."