Like the content of your website or intranet, planning and governance is technology agnostic; whether its SharePoint or another portal or content management platform, the necessity for and the approach to governance is the same. Given its technology neutral status in the realm of website and intranet evolution this module on planning and governance is largely applicable to any technology platform and as such is generic to start.

While generic in nature, there are some components of SharePoint that require specific consideration, and are discussed and addressed by the interviewed subject matter experts and the included case studies (see Planning for SharePoint Success).

“Without proper architecture and governance, I can guarantee you that SharePoint will fail,” says Bob Mixon, President of Mixon Consulting, addressing the annual Enterprise 3 conference in San Diego.

In particular, the powerful Team Site features and easy deployment features (Site Collections) of SharePoint make it even more demanding of a rigorous plan and detailed governance model. While intranet governance provides clarity and rules: namely the titles, roles and responsibilities of its owners, managers, stakeholders and contributors.

Sadly, very few organizations actually have a well-defined governance model, and many of those have spent hundreds-of-thousands to millions of dollars on their website or intranet – amounting to extraordinary investments left to chance and execution on a whim.

According to the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey:

• only 47% of organizations have a defined governance model (32% have 6,000 employees or more; 11% have 30,000 employees or more);

• of the tools and platforms being used by survey participants, a whopping 47% are using SharePoint (MOSS 2007) in some shape or form.

Intranet Sprawl

As IP technology has advanced corporate intranets have become more complex and interactive including human resource and purchasing applications, collaboration tools, business intelligence and real-time reporting tools. Some organizations without intranet governance and enterprise standards (for web page and content creation) have seen the birth of individual intranets for every department and work team. “Do-what-you-like” was the only rule and the corporate network became the wild west or ‘intranet sprawl’.

'Intranet sprawl' can be a poisonous side-effect of SharePoint Team Site and site collection use without the proper “rules” for deploying and managing sites. However, its not merely a SharePoint problem. At one point at the turn of the millennium, IBM's network was choked with approximately 10,000 intranet sites before they undertook a governance process and federation (consolidation campaign) that saved the company untold millions (IBM claims its saved more than a $1 billion).

Perhaps more so than most, SharePoint (MOSS 2007 or WSS) requires a governance model. I categorize intranet governance by four broad approaches or models:

• Decentralized (no single owner; do-what-you-like)

• Centralized a single owner or department controls it all; highly bureaucratic; common in small organizations)

• Collaborative (shared ownership via committee)

• Hybrid, centralized (single owner, with collaborative accountability, decentralized content ownership)

Learn more about planning and governance for the corporate intranet, with a specific focus on MOSS 2007, during our free webinar Planning for SharePoint Success (April 13).

Technorati Profile

“The Web content management market is mature and expanding,” says Gartner’s latest MarketScope for Web Content Management (MacComascaigh, Gilbert, Bell, Shegda, Andrews). “Vendor consolidation has fallen (slowed)… functions such as workflow, ease of use and multi-site management are no longer differentiating factors; they are the norm.”

 

Findings:

 

• Open source solutions (OSS, represents only 3% of the total WCM market) are increasingly stable, robust and growing in market share
• Web 2.0 phenomenon is driving WCM innovation
• Change management and user adoption will need to be applied to both internal and external users
• The total WCM market, at $750 million per year, will grow at an annual rate of 15% through 2012 (representing 25% of the total ECM market)

 

Recommendations for implementing a new WCM system (CMS):

 

• Develop specific business goals and link these to business objectives
• Understand the cultural shift represented by Web 2.0
• Interoperability (multiple systems working together or migrating from one to another) needs to be considered, as does rationalization of multiple WCMs
• Hosted SaaS solutions are not growing as fast due to business and technical reasons
• Total cost (TCO) of OSS solutions should take into account initial price tag

 

Highest rated vendors (strong positive):

 

• Interwoven
• Ektron

 

Lowest rated vendors (caution advisories):

 

• IBM (Lotus)
• Mediasurface

 

Also of note:

 

• Vignette gets a positive rating but with caution due their financial performance (also read Vignette still in transition)
• Microsoft SharePoint (MOSS) is listed as a very average “promising” with lots of caveats and listed weaknesses (see What the experts say about SharePoint (MOSS)
• Gartner estimates a typical replace of a WCM system to be around 5 years

 

My analysis:

 

Gartner’s MarketScope is somewhat different from the average Magic Quadrant in that the qualifying vendors must have $10 million in licensing revenue to qualify, and there is no magic quadrant but rather a 5-point rating scale:

 

• Strong negative

• Caution
• Promising
• Positive
• Strong positive

 

While there are hundreds of WCM solutions (thousands, really) only 17 qualify.

 

The report is concise and solid intelligence for a representative snapshot look at the current marketplace. This report is a good starting point to understanding the market, but is not an adequate tool for helping an organization select a CMS. If you have significant experience with WCM (CMS) and have very detailed and documented requirements and plans for WCM, then a better report is the CMS Watch Web CMS Report 2009. If you don’t have a solid understanding of the market and solutions, and what to watch out for then you better consider Prescient’s CMS Blueprint service.

 

Additional notes on vendors:

 

• Interwoven – Though due for a major tech upgrade, I like how Interwoven has evolved in the past couple of years. The updated, AJAX-powered U; the campaign management functions, etc. This is a very powerful system, but overkill for an intranet… it’s sweet spot is the external, product marketing website.
• EPiServer – the Swedish-based vendor is a real up-and-comer – and it’s average contract value is below $10,000 which gives all the others a run for its money.
• IBM (Lotus) – despite its caution rating, this is still a reasonable solution… if you’re a Lotus shop and/or use WebSphere. Outside that, there are far too many good-looking alternatives.
• Microsoft – I think it’s generous to label SharePoint (MOSS) as WCM. It really is a portal / development platform that is really quite weak bang-for-the-buck for WCM. Garter cites its weaknesses particularly “ease of content reuse, multisite management, workflow and enterprise-level federation capabilities such as replication and multi-farm synchronization.” MOSS is a good enterprise portal solution in a small to medium-size organization.

 

What is absent:

 

The Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) specification or standard was ignored in this report.  CMIS defines a model or framework ensuring that content can be used by one or more Enterprise Content Management repositories or systems. Frankly, I wouldn’t buy a WCM (CMS) if the selling vendor hasn’t agreed to implement this standard.

 

ALSO SEE:

CMS Blueprint service for selecting a WCM (CMS)

 

CMS Watch Web CMS Report 2009:

• See the list of 42 vendors covered
• Scan the table of contents (pdf)
• Review a free, 67-page sample excerpt
• Buy and read the report now

 

ALSO READ:

Content Management Proves Costly Without Planning

SharePoint overview (pros & cons, MOSS)

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(AARHUS, DENMARK: jboye08) “SharePoint is good at a number of things,” says one SharePoint expert, addressing a group of SharePoint users and followers here in Aarhus. “But it’s bad at just as many.”

 

There continues to be much discussion, debate, interest, enthusiasm, and caution about SharePoint (MOSS 2007). Such is the case here at jboye08 where I’m addressing the conference on the subject of Intranet 2.0 (today) and eHealth 2.0 (tomorrow).

 

Gartner nails the analysis in its spring report Five Best Practices for Deploying SharePoint:

 

·          “Though it covers a broad spectrum of capabilities, MOSS 2007 is not yet a full enterprise content management (ECM) system. Organizations requiring advanced content management capabilities and process-centric applications will need to augment their capabilities with partner offerings, or deploy MOSS 2007 alongside an ECM system rather than as a replacement for it.”

 

Our own Jed Cawthorne, our resident MOSS expert at Prescient Digital Media, offers his own conclusions on his blog, ECM Stuff:

 

• It might be the product for you, but how do you know unless you analyse your requirements
• A phased implementation appears to be more successful, add bells and whistles later
• Sharepoint in itself is not a 'strategy' - it can be part of ECM, Intranet or collaboration elements of your overall Information Management strategy
• Contrary to MS marketing hype, Sharepoint does not actually do everything brilliantly
• A Sharepoint deployment, like any other technology implementation will ultimately fail if not aligned with strategy, and if not properly planned with comensurate governance in place

 

I should disclose at this point that perhaps it might appear that I’m not a fan of SharePoint – or that I oppose it. Not at all; in fact, we use SharePoint for our own intranet and are upgrading to MOSS 2007. As well, we have many clients that use WSS and MOSS. However, I do think however that SharePoint is being used by too many organizations, including clients, that aren’t well served by it.

I believe there are two telling quotes, both by Shawn Shell and Alan Pelz-Sharpe, the co-authors of the CMS Watch The Sharepoint Report 2008 (TSR) (the best analysis report on MOSS that I’ve seen) that best sum-up MOSS:

 

• “SharePoint does a lot of things, but it does very few things very well.” Shawn Shell (see The pros and cons of SharePoint).

 

• “MOSS is very good in smaller, workgroup environments (it’s not traditionally very good for 5,000 or 10,000 concurrent users),” Alan Pelz-Sharpe (see SharePoint overview (pros & cons, MOSS).

 

Also…

 

• “Without proper architecture and governance, I can guarantee you that SharePoint will fail,” says Bob Mixon, President of Mixon Consulting, addressing the annual Enterprise 3 conference in San Diego (see SharePoint requires proper architecture & governance ).

 

A number of experts and users (owners / licensees) have weighed-in on their expert opinions and analysis of SharePoint. To avoid any controversy and to protect the individuals who were freely expressing and sharing their opinions here at jboye08 in Aarhus, here are some of the more frank quotes:

 

• “The perception is that the search engine is terrible. I’m not 100% in agreement… the engine is pretty good, but the search interface can be weak (e.g. the engine does support wild card and Boolean searches, but usually the implemented interface does not).”

 

• “Personal sites (My Site functionalilty) is both interesting and scary at the same time.”

 

• “The complexity across farms is ridiculous. Make sure your consultant (MS partner or implementer) give you a list of those things that stop working across farms.”

 

Still more advice from Information Week writer Nicolas Hoover (thanks to our own Cathy Mcknight for bringing this to my attention, Can Microsoft Keep SharePoint Rolling?)

 

“The software's Swiss Army knife approach helps companies create more useful intranets, set up document sharing, offer blogs and wikis, and build a richer online company directory. This boundary-blurring nature is part of its appeal, and can even help in budgeting: IT teams that might not get the nod for document management software have been known to slip SharePoint into the Microsoft Office budget.

But SharePoint's feature sprawl can be part of the problem. By taking what comes bundled in SharePoint, companies can end up compromising on critical functions compared with best-of-breed tools. And SharePoint deployments easily can go wrong if IT teams just turn on additional modules without considering the business case, requirements, and training needed to make them part of a business process. SharePoint's all-in-one appeal may lessen as content management standards become more prevalent, making best-of-breed approaches more viable. Still, it's undeniable that SharePoint's on a roll because of intense demand to better manage and share an expanding glut of diverse content."

 

If you have MOSS, or are thinking of buying, Gartner offers the following recommendations:

 

• To ensure that SharePoint does not become another content silo, build or update your enterprisewide content management strategy to address collaborative and basic content management.
• Build a broad inventory of existing content management applications and repositories and assess the investment levels in those before bringing in another platform such as SharePoint.
• Define business requirements and the corresponding technical and functional needs, which may span collaborative and process-centric content applications. Map your content management products to them with an eye toward minimizing the redundancy in application development, IT operational or other costs.
• Examine the integration points required between MOSS 2007 and an ECM suite and assess the availability tools and technologies to ensure interoperability.
• Establish and enforce governance policies regarding when to use and when not to use SharePoint.

 

MOSS 2007 is a wonderful solution – but its ideal for smaller companies, and can be a “massive problem” for larger ones. I like it a lot, but I’m technology neutral and am frank about its strengths and weaknesses. I’ll continue to recommend MOSS for some, but not for others.

 

ADDITIONAL READING:

Advice for SharePoint customers

Sharepoint to be the new Windows?

The pros and cons of SharePoint (MOSS)

SharePoint overview (pros & cons, MOSS)

SharePoint requires proper architecture & governance

Can Microsoft Keep SharePoint Rolling?

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(AARHUS, DENMARK: jboye08) “MOSS is very good for very good in smaller, workgroup environments,” says Alan Pelz-Sharpe, analyst, CMS Watch and his presentation on Evaluating SharePoint. “It’s not traditionally very good for 5,000 or 10,000 concurrent users.”

 Content and Code's visual representation of the SharePoint Platform 

CMS Watch’s approach / focus to evaluating MOSS:

• Customers that are making a purchase today (or shortly)

• Independent, specific advice for end users and buyers

• We never work for vendors… and in fact can be (even) ‘rude’ or honest about some products

• We have a reputation of being anti-SharePoint; not true, we’re independent and in fact we’ve recommended MOSS to many

• Sometimes however MOSS has not always been accurately advertised; not they’re (MS) dishonest, but it (MOSS) not always the best fit for an organization

PROS:

• MOSS is really unusual: a lot of different dynamics

• Most people are fairly happy with SharePoint

• SharePoint is an end-user’s dream with some exceptions; users are usually very happy

• For building small collaborative environments, it’s nearly perfect (I’m exaggerating for affect)

• File sharing

• Team sites

• Well priced for small organizations

CONS:

• Those that aren’t happy with it are those that use MOSS where it’s not a good fit

• Those that aren’t typically happy are those that are in-charge of governance, legal, etc.

• Before MOSS there was chaos… now the chaos is more visible with MOSS (and its bringing more visibility to this chaos)

• Enterprise content management (ECM) which demands strict controls (compared with Documentum, Oracle, FileNet and IBM)

• Very poor at index/search of non-MOSS info

• Search results can be unexpected out of the box

• Project / task tracking

• Social networking

• Discussion & collaboration and communication

• Trouble consuming its own RSS feeds (authentication issue)

• Pricey for larger organizations

Case study example (editor’s note: SharePoint sprawl):

• There’s a bank HQ’d in the UK and they have SharePoint… started using it as a test in 2006 and immediately upgraded to MOSS in 2007… and now have 23,000 instances of MOSS… and it’s a massive problem for the bank

• The way it was deployed and structured was deplorable… that’s the bank’s fault, not Microsoft’s

• “How to bring it under control? I’m not entirely certain…”

MOSS SharePoint history:

• Initially a countermove to the success of Lotus Notes

• When SharePoint was formally launched in 2003 MS had very low expectations

• The initial success was very high… MS was stunned and very pleased

• MS managers were stunned… “Why is it such a big success?”

• The success was in users deploying it as a light-weight portal

• MOSS launched in 2007 and updated to .NET 2.0 / 3.0 as a development platform

Recurring Threats:

• Separation between underlying “free” Windows platform and richer portal product with extra services, for a fee

• If you’re an MS enterprise client, you will get most MOSS services for free

• Traditional disconnect between SharePoint and .NET (mostly resolved in 2007) (e.g. MS is very large but very much like a college campus with many different groups and departments… that don’t necessarily talk to each other… and there are times that products get ‘out-of-sync’ with each other

• Endemic confusion about what resides in SharePoint and what does not (and licensing implications)

• MOSS is very good for very good in smaller, workgroup environments (it’s not traditionally very good for 5,000 or 10,000 concurrent users) (e.g. Oracle on the other hand focuses on larger enterprises and are traditionally  “terrible” at the workgroup level deployments)

• MOSS has to run on a MS technology stack (.NET, Windows Server, SQL server)

• “I’m not really convinced that there really is any business intelligence (in MOSS)… though MS says there is.”

Current SharePoint Product Universe:

WSS

• Foundation components, free with Windows

• Basic collaborative features

MOSS

• Fee based server product that extends WSS

• Advanced features like CMS, personalization, forms processing and Excel services

• Some enterprise features not included

SharePoint Search

• Search engine for MOSS

• Can crawl a number of different content sources, including Exchange (email)

• MOSS Standard can only index 500,000 pages

Forms Server

• Form rendering and processing (“One of the best features of MOSS… I love this. Really good value add.”)

• Used in conjunction with InfoPath to deliver electronic forms via the Web

• Still retain interactive attributes provided via InfoPath

Key functions:

• Functional capabilities:

• Enhanced search

• Business data catalog

• Excel services

• Forms services

• Shared services: farm-level services

• User import/management

• Search engaging configuration

• Basic usage reporting

• Profile-based site for individual users

• MySite

• Both profile and personalizable home page

• Somewhat controversial

• Actually provisions entire site collection

Things that can affect pricing:

• Extent of external connectors and licenses for “Internet Site” licenses

• “Enterprise vs. Standard CALs (licensing)”

• Search

• Forms

• Implementation costs

• Customization costs

• Systems integration

ALSO READ: The SharePoint Plan (MOSS)

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Bill Ives brought to my attention ECMHUB 2.0 “described as the world's largest mashup focusing on the ECM and KM industries and married it to web collaboration.”

While Tony Byrne and CMSWatch.com are good places to start for intelligence on enterprise content management (ECM), Ives explains the size and importance of ECMHUB 2.0 is:

 

Many people are still confuse about ECM and whether or not they need it. My presentation 2 weeks ago on CMS Trends Traps & Tips 2008 provides a decent summary and explanation (follow the link to the presentation on SlideShare.net)

 

Also Read Jed Cawthorne’s full article and comparison tables on CMS or ECM - What is the difference?

 

RELATED READING:

Buying or moving to a new CMS? Be very careful…

Analyzing Enterprise 2.0 software

 

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Only 12 enterprise portal vendors remain on Gartner’s latest magic quadrant for “horizontal portal products.”

 

The only changes are the subtraction of BEA, now part of Oracle, and the addition of Covisint and RedHat (though lest they be seen as ‘prescient’ I had included them in my Portal magic quadrant two years ago!). Also added to this year’s quadrant is the one to really watch: Liferay.

 

Some of Gartner’s findings include (most of which I highlighted two years ago):

 

• Mashups, lightweight composite applications based on Web-oriented architectures (WOAs), could emerge as alternatives to horizontal portal frameworks for creating enterprise Web environments
• Increased interest in Web 2.0
• By 2011, Gartner expects at least 10% of new enterprise portal projects in the Global 2000 to use open-source horizontal portal frameworks

 

Frankly, I’m surprised more organizations are not using portals. The Intranet 2.0 study reveals that only 10% of respondents (some 230 respondent organizations thus far) use a portal product to power their intranet. However, these solutions are complex, and pricey.

 

I will not be doing an update of the Prescient Portal magic quadrant just yet: there haven’t been enough significant changes… the only one is to remove BEA’s label under Oracle.

 

I do however note the following trends:

 

• Gartner is spot on: open-source will become more and more popular
• Liferay is the challenger to watch (Gartner thinks its RedHat)
• Plone could well find its way onto the quadrant but Python holds it back
• IBM is the portal leader and champion
• Microsoft SharePoint (MOSS 2007) is the darling
• Product consolidation is largely over as IBM, Oracle and Microsoft will own 95% of the total money put into portal solutions (but Vignette won’t last much longer and will be bought)
• Usability and price will be the principal weaknesses that scare buyers
• Web 2.0 functionality will continue to grow but not be a primary consideration for buyers

 

RELATED READING:

The Intranet Portal Blueprint

Pros and cons for enterprise intranet portals

Another portal bites the dust

ALSO:

Don’t forget: you cannot get the full results of the Intranet 2.0 study without taking the survey.  Please take 10 minutes to take the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey and you’ll get a copy of the full results including the good, bad and learned lessons – ESPECIALLY IMPORTANT TO PARTICIPATE IF YOU DON’T HAVE INTRANET 2.0 TOOLS.

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Prescient's Jed Cawthorne discusses the time and place for SharePoint (MOSS): Microsoft's SharePoint technologies have their sweet spots in that they definitely fulfill specific requirements for certain use cases within the bigger picture of varied information management scenarios. However, MOSS is not a panacea. It is not the solution to every information management related business problem, and despite what others may tell you, it's certainly not a 'one size fits all' technical solution to all those annoying business issues. More on SharePoint (MOSS 2007) >>

We humans are social creatures. With rare exception, we strive to relate, converse and connect with others. Social networking promotes online communities of interests and activities that promote connections between users in a more open and robust manner than simple e-mail.

While best represented by the quintessential MySpace and Facebook, social networking has made significant strides into the corporate intranet where employee networking is becoming a valuable asset to leading organizations that covet the new breed of employee. This young, web savvy employee cohort desires – if not demands – a more social and dynamic work environment that uses the best possible Web 2.0 (Intranet 2.0) technology.

Though e-mail still occupies an important stronghold in the nascent world of Intranet 2.0, social and employee networking communications is best embodied by instant messaging, discussion forums, and RSS technology. While these technologies build upon the value of the archetypal killer application that is e-mail, the real value delivered by employee networking is the group communications dynamic where a single employee can communicate both actively and passively with other similar or ‘connected’ employees or the entire employee population as a whole.

Sabre Town: Sabre's employee networking intranet site

Sabre, the company that runs most of the world’s airline flight reservation systems among other systems, is an impressive leader in employee networking. With nearly 10,000 employees spread around the globe (55% work outside of the U.S. where they are headquartered), Sabre is a progressive company that has Intranet 2.0 with spectacular results.

Recognizing their own unique needs as a global, distributed workforce, Sabre embarked to build their own employee networking intranet from scratch. Using another nascent technology, Ruby on Rails, Sabre built an impressive employee networking platform called Sabre Town. Sabre Town represents the company’s need to build more meaningful connections with this geographically diverse employee population.

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Want to learn more about what others are doing? Take the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey and get the full results including the good, bad and learned lessons.

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Read the complete Sabre employee networking case study article