Alfresco Software is a collection of information management software products for Microsoft Windows and Unix-like operating systems developed by Alfresco Software Inc. using Java technology. The software, branded as a Digital Business Platform is principally a proprietary & a commercially licensed open source platform, supports open standards, and provides enterprise scale. There are also open source Community Editions available licensed under LGPLv3.

John Newton (co-founder of Documentum) and John Powell (a former COO of Business Objects) founded Alfresco Software, Inc. in 2005.

In July 2005, Alfresco released the first version of their software.

Alfresco initially focused on document management, in May 2006, the company announced its intention to expand into web content management by acquiring senior technical and managerial staff from Interwoven; this included its VP of Web Content Management, two principal engineers, and a member of its user-interface team.

In October 2009, the 2009 Open Source CMS Market Share Report described Alfresco as a “leading Java-based open source web content management system”.

In 2010, Alfresco sponsored a new open-source BPM engine called Activiti.

In July 2011, Alfresco and Ephesoft announced a technology collaboration to offer document capture and Content Management Interoperability Services brought together for intelligent PDF capture and search and workflow development.

In January 2013, Alfresco appointed Doug Dennerline, former president of SuccessFactors, former EVP of Sales at Salesforce.com, and former CEO of WebEx, as its new CEO.