Intranet Blog

Sharepoint to be the new Windows?

Toby Ward — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 08:52:00 -0800

(BANFF, AB) I think Sharepoint is definitely the category killer for portals and content management systems and the intersection of both kinds of products. But I’m not a real fan of the product. I think its too simplistic and becoming too broad (but it works for some, but not for all organizations). So broad in fact that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has admitted that he sees Sharepoint as the new operating system (OS) for the middle tier.

One of my team (thanks Julian) came across this column on Info World (see

Sharepoint: Microsoft's new operating system):

I've been beating on the Sharepoint drum for nearly two years now, but this is the first time I've seen anyone outside the ECM industry think along the same lines. Sharepoint is very clearly the future of Microsoft. And, not coincidentally, it is the future of how Microsoft locks customers into its software (benevolently or malevolently - you choose).

Mary Jo Foley writes:

My favorite question during the Q&A session at the end of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's Convergence conference keynote address on March 15 sounded deceptively simple...."With all the hoopla here at the conference around SharePoint Server, is it correct to think of SharePoint as almost like an OS (operating system)"?

Bingo.

Microsoft officials increasingly are talking up "Software + Services," as opposed to "Software as a Service" in explaining Microsoft's future. So how does Microsoft keep the growing family of business services it is introducing tethered to on-premise software?

SharePoint Server is the answer. Not Windows. Not Windows Server. Not Office. SharePoint.

Ballmer told the Convergence questioner he was dead-on in his thinking.

"SharePoint is the definitive OS or platform for the middle tier," Ballmer explained. It is the "missing link" (my words, not his) between personal productivity and line-of-business applications.

I like to think of Sharepoint as the tool used to make the document formats debate irrelevant. Open the formats, but close the document/content network, and we're back at the beginning, with many years of milking monopoly rents.

There is no future for Documentum. Vignette. Interwoven. Filenet. Etc. But there is a future for Sharepoint, and for the open source competition. (Open source ECM has become highly strategic to a growing number of Global 2000 companies.) Sharepoint is exploding into the enterprise - $0 to $1B in just four years.

The only thing that will stop it, and thereby keep enterprise content where it belongs - in enterprise hands - is open source.

Interesting that this columnist thinks that the likes of Vignette, FileNet, etc. are working on borrowed time. I couldn’t agree more. Either the company serves a niche or it’s Microsoft, IBM or Oracle. Vignette can’t compete with Microsoft in the long-term trying to be everything to everyone.

Speaking of Microsoft, I’m now on Windows Vista… and words alone can’t express how much I despise it!!!! I’m only biding my time now until I find the time to remove it and all my files to reinstall Windows XP. Vista is NOT more Apple-like – it’s far more complicated and extraordinarily difficult to use. Oh, it’s certainly a lot more pretty, but it’s painfully unfriendly.

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Intranet predictions for 2007

Toby Ward — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 18:05:00 -0800

I’m not a big fan of predictions and soothsaying, but I still read those that are well thought.

Tony Byrne has developed his Predictions for 2007 which include:

Google de-googles its appliance
AJAX UI backlash
Web managers embracing the delete key
Falling seat prices
Rediscovery of workflow
Portal platforms will diversify

I agree with most of Tony’s predictions, but I think there are bigger ones at play. I know I said I don’t do these predictions but since my company is called ‘Prescient’ I feel compelled to become a hypocrite.

The year 2007 will see:

Microsoft crank-up the marketing of Sharepoint leading to more and more customers buying without seriously examining alternative solutions
Standalone portal products will continue to be considerably out-done by CMS solutions
More vendors delivering a complete all-in-one solution that includes robust content management, search and portal functionality
Continued market consolidation with many more CMS vendors being bought, merged or disappearing
Dramatic growth in open source implementation and increased profile and functionality for bigger name solutions such as Zope, Alfresco, OpenCMS, and Plone
More and more organizations will convert PDF and MS-Word forms to online submission forms with a mixture of in-house and outsourced solutions
The search engine market will experience less growth than previous years as more organizations realize their current engine suffices and instead focus on content tagging, categorizing, process and policies
Discussion and focus on Knowledge Management (KM) will continue to decline as more organizations instead narrow their attention to specific tools such as Web 2.0 applications
More organizations will implement blogs and wikis, but they will still be part of a minority group; social bookmarking and podcasting will still remain little more than a fad on the intranet

Agree? Disagree? What other predictions will come true? Post your comment or question below.

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Microsoft’s planned evolution of the intranet

Toby Ward — Sun, 15 Jan 2006 22:40:00 -0800

It’s long been touted that the corporate portal is the true future of the intranet. From Microsoft’s perspective, the future is Sharepoint.

For those that missed the news (which is really no longer news anymore since the first word last year), MS is merging MS Content Management Server (CMS) and SharePoint into a single group. While the products may likely be kept separate (though MS has made no announcement on this yet), it will be seamlessly integrated form the user perspective – with a single user interface (see More on Microsoft’s plans).

This is no average product announcement or program for MS. MS is reputedly spending US$300 million on this project with a full-time team of nearly one thousand people. Big plans for the future of the corporate intranet.

Arpan Shah is an MS honcho who blogs about the future of Microsoft SharePoint & CMS. In a recent blog entry (see Microsoft CMS Futures) Shah highlights the future plans for the merging of these two products into a single group or as he puts it, an “integrated set of technologies built on top of WSS (Windows SharePoint Services)” “We're careful not to say SPS "12" or CMS 2007, because packaging and licensing decisions have not been made,” says Shah. “While these technologies will be technically integrated (same development, deployment and end-user experience), we have not made decisions on how these will be packaged.”

The real bonus to users is new functionality… details (abridged) from Shah:

Content Contributor(gets better)
In Office "12", there are two primary ways for someone to author content just like in CMS 2002: via the web browser and by using a rich client, like Word. From a web browser perspective, the edit control is richer than the out-of-the-box control in CMS 2002. It has features like spell-checking, table formatting, styling and the ability for content contributors to author and use "reusable" HTML fragments - a commonly requested feature. Is it better than the Telerik control? I'm not sure how the Telerik control will progress in the Office "12" timeframe.

Rich Client Authoring - this is a much more flexible feature in the Office "12" timeframe. Out of the box, we will convert a variety of file formats to HTML (docx, wordml, xml) and provide the flexibility for customers and partners to develop their own converters. So, for example, if someone develops a PDF converter, they can enable content contributors to convert a PDF to an HTML page… Imagine a scenario where you collaborate on a case study and then want to publish it - you can now do that all very seamlessly. Another added benefit is that the system tracks where it's been published from and if it's changed from the source. So, for example, if you go to a page that has been authored using Word, for example, it will tell you that it's been published from word and will allow you to republish from the original doc OR change the page directly. Now every time you go back to the web page, it will tell you it's different from the word doc.

Template Designer(new role)
In CMS 2002, developers develop templates using Visual Studio. In Office "12", we've effectively introduced a new role allowing non-developers to create "templates" (known as Page Layouts in Office "12") using FrontPage "12". Template designers can add controls, web parts and placeholder controls (known as field controls).

Developer (more focused)
Developers develop the custom field controls (think custom placeholder controls), controls (server or user controls) and web parts. They don't have to worry about design anymore.

IT Pro (gets better)
We've added several great features making it easier for the IT Pro. For starters, there are no client installs needed for any of the roles. The edit control is a DHTML control unlike CMS 2002 which is an active-x control. Also, site manager functionality is now web-based. So if you want to add a new administrator, they don't have to install site manager.

We've also done a lot of work with deployment. Through a web-based UI, IT Pros can schedule deployments. You can schedule deployments, publish to multiple web server farms if you wanted to and you can provide your content contributors to effectively "instantly deploy" certain pages. For example, if there's a specific article that needs to get published "now", you can set that up. It's an out of the box feature.

Workflow (gets much better)
In CMS 2002, we have 1-2 step approval that is implicit based on channel security settings. There are several samples available on http://www.gotdotnet.com and several great partners that provide integrated workflow functionality. In fact, Skelta provides free workflow "lite".

In Office "12", workflow is extensible. Parameterized workflow templates are available out of the box. So if you want to create a mult-step serial or parallel workflow, you can just use one of the out-of-the-box workflow templates. Additionally, you can create your own workflow with FrontPage "12". This workflow functionality is built on top of Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) for which WSS "v3" is the host.

Integrated Search
Office "12" Enterprise Search will be integrated with CMS functionality in Office "12". We're making a lot of investments in search and this will be available out of the box.

Multi-lingual Publishing
One of the customer asks from our global customers was out-of-the-box multilingual support. CMS 2002 supports unicode and is very extensible. Customers created localized versions of the web author console. In Office "12", we provide more out of the box multi-lingual publishing capabilities.

Besides support unicode and being built on the WSS multi-lingual infrastructure (different sites in different languages), we're going to have a feature that allows you to have multiple sites in different languages. For example, if you have a section of your site called Press Releases and you want to have Press Releases in different languages (Spanish and French), you can define a source and multiple targets. By defining a source and multiple targets, the system will keep the pages in sync between the source and the different targets. This works one way (source -> target) and respects workflow on the different targets. So for example, if I add a new press release in the English section (source), after it's approved, it will create the same pages in the Spanish and French sections.

Integrated Office "12" SharePoint ServersI briefly mentioned that we are investing in ECM, Portal, Collab, Search, BI and Forms features in Office "12" SharePoint Servers. Again, these investments will be -technically- integrated providing the same development, deployment and end-user experiences. So from a technology standpoint, the next version of CMS functionality will be integrated with a whole set of other technologies allowing you to deploy an end-to-end solution. For example, ECM consists of Document Management and Records Management functionality as well.

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Kiosk access for non-desk workers

Toby Ward — Tue, 30 Aug 2005 20:51:00 -0700

Intranet access continues to be a major, major intranet challenge for most organizations with manufacturing or remote employees. Remote, manufacturing and retail employees very rarely have access to a computer. Therefore in some organizations a huge chunk of employees do not have access to the intranet.

If a large chunk of your potential audience cannot access the intranet, the intranet’s value to your company is severely limited.

For those in this position, there are three principal options:

1-    Virtual Private Networks (VPN) – can be expensive

2-    Internet-based portal – inexpensive but security often a concern

3-    Central kiosks – moderately expensive, moderate security concern

I really don’t want to spend too much time on VPNs as this is my least favorite of the options – though it serves its purpose well – and there’s tons available for reading on VPN by just doing a simple search. Besides, it’s more of the “executive” solution most often related to senior management or senior sales staff who are afforded a laptop when away from the office.

Internet-based access via a .com site that requires a user id and password is becoming more and more de rigeur.

In most western countries, access to the Internet is available to a majority of the population. Some like Canada, the U.S., Japan, Korea and Scandanavian countries enjoy penetration rates in the 70^th percentile. So why not just put your intranet on the Internet?

Alaska Airlines have put their intranet on the public Internet – that’s right, a .com website. Knowing that most of their employees work ‘on the road’ they got smart and put it on the public Internet (of course, secure areas are password protected and reside behind their firewall). Employees have ubiquitous access from any connected computer and it also shows the world, “We have nothing to hide! Come check us out.” (Visit the Alaska Airlines intranet at www.AlaskasWorld.com.

The U.S. Army, Navy and Marine Corps also have followed suit with similar .com intranet portals – and so too have many others.

Kiosks have also become highly effective tools for remote access users where the intranet has become an essential business tool.

“Organizations are continuing to do away with hard copies in favor of a digital medium, porting company and employee information onto their intranet,” says Paul Chin, a writer and former intranet manager at a prominent aerospace manufacturer. “But this leaves employees without a PC in the dark. It's unfair to deny them access to these resources simply because of circumstance. This creates a gap between the digital haves and have-nots."

In writing “Providing Equal Access: Implementing Information Kiosks” Chin argues that there are a lot of choices when buying a kiosk and you don’t necessarily have to break the bank:

“You have a lot of choices when it comes to kiosks. But it's not necessary to buy and install high-end, freestanding kiosks such as those found in public settings like retail stores, tourism offices, self-service government offices, where presentation plays an important role. For internal corporate use, the most cost effective way to offer PC-less employees basic access to the Internet, e-mail, and intranet, is by using inexpensive network appliances (sometimes referred to as network PCs) with little-to-no local processing power and storage, or a secured desktop computer. Shared printers can also be provided within proximity of the kiosk stations.

In order to set up a truly dedicated kiosk, you should consider the installation of third-party kiosk security and configuration software such as SiteKioskor NetStop Pro. They will enable you to configure browser behavior, mange what users will have access to, and specify the actions they're allowed to perform on the kiosk stations.”

In establishing in-house kiosks Chin recommends eight key priorities:

1. Network Membership – integrate with existing corporate network (firewall, proxy servers, etc.)

2. Browser Access – lock down kiosk browser options

3. Preventing Software Installations – lock down any software downloads or plug-in installations

4. Access to Kiosk Hardware – decide whether or not you want to allow use of CD-Roms, USB ports, etc.

5. Protecting the Underlying Operating System –NEVER allow access the underlying O/S.

6. Implement a Timeout – configured to automatically log users off after a pre-determined period of inactivity (e.g. 20 minutes)

7. Number of Kiosks – how many do you need? (e.g. one per 50 – 100 employees)

8. Location of the Kiosks – never place in high traffic areas, near heavy machinery, or in overly noisy areas

One other thing: this is the intranet and anonymity is not an option.

What percentage of your employees have access? What are you doing to increase it?

World’s Biggest Intranet

Home Intranet Access

$152 million U.S. Army Intranet Contract (back issue)

Toby Ward — Tue, 30 Aug 2005 19:46:00 -0700

Already outmaneuvered by the massive US$9 billion U.S. Navy-Marine Corp Intranet project (read my most recent blog on the NMCI) the U.S. Army has announced a more austere intranet contract of $152 million.

The aerospace giant Lockeeed Martin (they now call themselves a “technology systems integrator”) was awarded the contract the Army Knowledge Online enterprise Web portal (or AKO) and will subcontract to Computer Sciences Corp. and Science Applications International Corp.

When I think of Lockheed Martin I don’t necessarily think ‘intranet consultants’. What leaps to mind are visions of missiles, fighters and covert sales teams in dark trench coats and metal briefcases (LM’s most recent press release:

U.S. NAVY AWARDS LOCKHEED MARTIN-LED TEAM MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR CONTRACT TO DEMONSTRATE KEY TECHNOLOGIES FOR BALLISTIC MISSILE SYSTEM).

The three amigos will provide “systems operations and maintenance, network communications, hardware and software integration, and around-the-clock help desk support for both the Non-Classified IP Router Network and the Secret IP Router Network,” according to GCN.com (“Army intranet portal to be managed by Lockheed Martin”).

On the surface it seems like a relatively small project compared to the gushing billions spent on NMCI (how many of us are working with small $152 million intranet budgets?! Most of us, right?!?). However, $152 million is for only ONE YEAR. There is an option for six additional years.... now we’re talking!

This is a big intranet. U.S. army ‘employees’ login to the intranet approximately 500,000 times per day.

Interestingly enough, this contract is labeled as a performance-based contract.

"Combining the great things that AKO has done in the past with the net-centric future that Army modularity will provide — this is a great opportunity for the Army," says Kevin Carroll, the Army's program executive officer for enterprise information systems, in an Army news release.

According to the army, AKO the project will see the integration of hundreds of applications and services “across a common enterprise portal.”

"AKO prides itself in service to soldiers supporting Army operations around the world. Through the hard work of countless IT pioneers, AKO has steadily grown to a world-class intranet service in a few short years, and our team looks forward to the continued evolution of technological advances to meet the needs of the Army—active duty, Guard, Reserve, civilians, retirees, family members and other users," said Greg Fritz, acting director of AKO, in a statement.

Want to see the U.S. Army intranet? Okay...

Actually, you can get to the main home page yourself as it is on the Internet at: http://www.army.mil/ako/.

World’s Biggest Intranet

Converging the intranet, extranet and Internet (back issue)

Toby Ward — Mon, 29 Aug 2005 21:35:00 -0700

Six years ago I wrote an article for Virtual Business Magazine where I espoused the need and likely convergence of the intranet, extranet and Internet. Now, an Internet lifetime later, more and more companies are deploying a single platform to manage the corporate, intranet, extranet and Internet Websites.

Single platform deployment for multiple audiences is not just for large corporations. More and more medium-size and even small size companies are using a single platform to run multiple sites for multiple audiences.
The San Diego Blood Bank is a case in point. It just announced it is deploying a single web content management platform from OpenText to manage its various internal and external websites.

“The solution will provide a central Web content management platform for the organization's website, and will also manage a planned intranet/extranet that will serve the more than 50 area hospitals that depend on the San Diego Blood Bank,” says the press release from OpenText (supplier of the platform). “The intranet/extranet will give hospitals information on blood supplies and automate blood orders, utilizing workflows and document management capabilities.”

”A key requirement for the San Diego Blood Bank is having one content repository to help ensure accurate information and timely updates to Web content, whether it's published to the website or the intranet/extranet. This is critical to meeting regulations on issues such as providing current information on blood donor requirements.”

See the Full Release

"The challenge in the next decade will be to leverage the Internet and existing IT investments to move beyond the isolated intranet, surrounded by its moat-like firewall," says Hewlett-Packard's William Murphy in Don Tapscott's best-selling book Blueprint for the Digital Economy.

"In this new era of e-business on the Internet, an isolated, centrally managed intranet is not sufficient. The same decentralized business models that have enabled the rapid adoption of intranet technology must be inter-networked beyond the firewall through the use of secure authorized access by authenticated individuals."

In other words, intrusive barriers such as firewalls will be altered or torn down in order to facilitate enhanced collaboration between internal and external groups while allowing for more seamless navigation between an organization's intranet, extranet and Internet sites.While a consensus is building for better integration of e-business technology, people and expertise across Internet, extranet and intranet platforms, there is no convergence blueprint forthcoming. Corporate demand for efficiency, savings and scales of economy will encourage further integration of traditionally separate platforms, but complete integration will continue to face barriers from those that emphasize security and usability.