Intranet 2.0 Global Survey Results

“Once a nice-to-have or a future wish, Intranet 2.0 tools such as blogs, wikis and other vehicles have become mainstream, and are present in nearly 50% of organizations (regardless of size) in North America, Europe, and Australia and New Zealand,” says Toby Ward, the study author, and President, Prescient Digital Media.

To download a free, summarized version of the free report Intranet 2.0: Social Media Becomes Mainstream on the Corporate Intranet report or please visit:

http://www.prescientdigital.com/articles/download-summary-report-of-intranet-2-0-global-survey

To purchase the full, 44-page Intranet 2.0: Social Media Becomes Mainstream on the Corporate Intranet report of analysis & recommendations or please visit:

http://www.prescientdigital.com/articles/purchase-intranet-2-0-global-survey-report

Read about the results Intranet 2.0 becomes mainstream 

Technorati Profile

“SharePoint has handled it very well (external website and extranet).”

Overview

• Business to business company founded in 1883

• Services: heat transfer, separation, fluid handling (heat exchanges, etc.).

• Revenue: $2.7 billion Euros in annual sales.

• Employees: 10,500 in 60 countries

• Public website luanched in SharePoint in May 2008

• Extranet planned for June 1, 2009

• Intranet pre-study started for launch in 2010

Public website (www.alfalaval.com)

• 3000 pages

• 25 languages

• 60 country sites

• Pre-study: 1-year (planning, etc.)

• Implementation: 1-year (launched May 2008)

• Project team of 5 people

• 50% of money on external dollars; 50% internal time and resources

Implementation strategy

• Standard SharePoint

• Limited external application integration

• One platform for public website, extranet and intranet

  • Strategic direction

  • Operatonal efficiency

  • Functional development

  • Governance and resources (single governance structure for all sites)

Challenge / problem: Variation system

• Custom development to allow for

• Submit variation to slected country sites

• Reject/Accept a submitted variation

• Submit variation' doesn't work for web parts

• Reuse of language versions not possible

Challenge: separating language/locale

• Only one language version

  • Spanish in Spain, Chile, Colombia, etc.

  • English in UK, India, US

• Many languages are supported – but its not supported to have one language for the CONTENT and another rfor the authoring environment

Challenge: Image management

• Where is a particular image used? What pages?

• Different versions of the same photo are not grouped together by type

• Overly basic / simplistic

Challenge: creating forms (complicated for authors)

Challenge: formatting is difficult with standard editor (reusable cotnent doesn't work with the RadEditor)

Integrator: Fishbone Systems AB

Analysis: well this blows out of the water the notion that SharePoint shouldn't be used as an external website platform. The Alfa Laval site is impressive – with 60 sites in 25 languages. Microsoft would do well to add this to their case studies alongside Hawiian Airlines.

Visit the website: www.alfalaval.com

Technorati Profile

Key recommenations:

• Don't assume that because its used for the intranet, it will be good for the Internet

• Compare with alternatives

• Manage expectations

• Keep it simple

• Have a strategic plan

• Get to know your IT

• Focus both on micro and macro governance

• Stay updated with service packs

• Follow best practices

• Pay attention to release information

Notable client quote: “Only after implementation did we start to learn about what the system could do. In hindsight we should have utilized the integration with office Word. Also, we are beginnning to rebuild our templates, as we didn't hink through the advanced features SharePoint offers the first time.”

Other learnings:

• “It's free!” - WSS is free, MOSS 2007 can be very expensive (particularly customization)

• Training is required and costs money, as does maintenance

• All Microsoft parnters are not created equal

Notable client quote: “I didn't know you could disable My Sites. Our integrator told us it wasn't possible. But you have done it already?”

Notable quote: “We are using Sharepoint 2003 and need to upgrade. But we've decided to skip MOSS 2007, and go for 2010 instead once that gets out.”

Technorati Profile

Tony Byrne, CMS Watch:

• SharePoint is part product, part platform, part ecosystem – a collection of technologies that have varying degrees of finish

• Under-reported and under-appreciated dimension of SharePoint: built solidly on (almost) latest .NET platform

• Be cautious of developer/integrator enthusiasm

• Keep Implementation of SharePoint Simple (KISS)

• Embrace configuration, some customization and integration, avoid extension (e.g. building custom applications, etc.)

• The latest marketing from Microsoft is “to really finish or complete MOSS you should look to external partners.”

• Oxcite, 3^rd party open source blog tool for .NET (not SharePoint)

• Just because a firm is a Microsoft partner, doesn't mean they have SharePoint expertise

Cautions:

• Some MS partners / vendors are in over their heads

• Not all are experts in all SP services

• Temptation to over-engineer

• Experienced integrators are in high-demand

Caveats:

• Test performance, reliability, and security features carefully

• Contrast software with "consulting-ware" (developed once for a client and re-sold)

• Remember: its not just another module, but another vendor

• Many partners fervently hope that MS will buy them, but Redmond typically recreates rather than acquires

• This can be very inconvenient for you down the road with MS upgrades SharePoint

Technorati Profile