Alfresco Software announced a Beta program for Alfresco SMB Edition, a cloud-based appliance designed for Amazon EC2. This new version of Alfresco Software’s ECM and social collaboration product is designed for small and medium-sized businesses (SMB). The Alfresco SMB Edition will offer a pre-configured Alfresco Cloud appliance that combines the Alfresco server, Explorer and Share modules into an on-demand offering aimed at SMBs with up to 100 users and 200GB of document storage. These appliances are hosted on Amazon EC2 and made available as paid Amazon Machine Images (AMIs). Alfresco has partnered with JumpBox, who specialize in building software appliances, to develop Alfresco SMB. Initially the beta will be restricted to US based subscribers with EU access to follow within two weeks. The program includes access to the Alfresco SMB paid AMI, although testers are expected to pay all relevant Amazon EC2 hosting fees. The Beta program will run from March 15 through May 20, 2010. http://www.alfresco.com