This video will create some diverging opinions and controversy, just as my presentation “SharePoint Pros & Cons” did when I delivered it in Denmark. This on-camera interview was conducted in Copenhagen immediately after my presentation (at IntraTeam). Granted I was severely jet-lagged and suffering from exhaustion when I did the interview, but I stand my words and assessment: SharePoint (MOSS 2007) is a fantastic solution, but it is not the best solution for every scenario, and every organization. Anyone who argues this should throw-away the Kool-Aid.

As I stress in my comments, SharePoint is ultimately what you make of it, and you can do some amazing things with it, at any organization. However, success with MOSS is a function of time and money. The out-of-the-box solution is not appropriate for all business scenarios in all companies. But it is an excellent solution for a small to medium size business, or as a department-level solution in a larger enterprise. Given the cost and complexity involved with customization, I don't believe it makes sense to use it as a large, enterprise intranet be-all solution for larger organizations; its possible to make it so, but what is the opportunity cost versus other portal or ECM solutions?

Feel free to comment and weigh-in with your opinions, but no flame mail please (I will just embarrass you for doing so). If you're a Microsoft employee or partner, then please disclose that you rely on SharePoint to make a living. Ditto if you're a Microsoft customer or independent consultant.

Keep in mind, I too am a SharePoint user, but we (Prescient Digital Media) also uses other CMSs, portals & social media solutions too. We are strictly technology-neutral with no reseller agreements. I have no agenda or ax to grind; I merely seek to inform my readers and clients about the strengths and weaknesses of the superb, but not perfect solution that is MOSS 2007.

ADDITIONAL READING:

Advice for SharePoint customers

SharePoint overview (pros & cons, MOSS)

The SharePoint Plan (MOSS)

SharePoint governance & intranet ownership (MOSS 2007)

SharePoint requires proper architecture & governance

Why you should or shouldn’t choose Microsoft Sharepoint

Planning for SharePoint success

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(PHILADELPHIA, PA – J. Boye) Insights from CMS Watch founder, and co-author of the CMS Watch Report, Tony Byrne.

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

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Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007 (MOSS) is becoming the dominant intranet technology platform with nearly half of all large to medium-size organizations using it (or the previous version) to power some or all of an intranet’s components.

Here are some stats:

• 55% of organizations have implemented or are considering implementing SharePoint (Global Intranet Trends 2009 report - 227 participant organizations)

• 46% of those companies using social media on the intranet are using SharePoint(Intranet 2.0 Global Survey – 430+ participant organizations)

• Only 47% of organizations have a defined governance model (Intranet 2.0 Global Survey)

• 70% use at the department level; only 38% use it at the enterprise level (AIIM)

Many communications professionals have asked, “Is SharePoint good for my company intranet?”

SharePoint for Communicators is a webinar answers the question with advice on how to proceed.

In this five-week online workshop, we’ll examine MOSS as a technology platform, and as a communications platform for managing content including news and social media. MOSS is not known as a strong solution for a large-size enterprise intranet. But it is good starting platform in a Microsoft environment, and is very good for team and group collaboration. This workshop will consider all of the pros and cons of MOSS, with expert opinion and advice for non-techie business users and communicators. Included in this Webinar will be:

1. Introduction to MOSS—An overview of the technology in non-techie language.

2. Pros and cons of MOSS for communicators—The good, bad and the things Microsoft won’t always tell you.

3. MOSS for content management—The elements and functionality of the content management system and how it compares to other systems.

4. Planning & Governance—MOSS can in fact create more problems without the necessary planning and governance. We’ll tell you what you need to prepare.

5. Plug-ins and alternatives to MOSS—MOSS is a very complex platform, but there are many additional modules and plug-ins that can enhance it greatly… We’ll also compare MOSS to other alternative solutions.

Webinars are asynchronous-you participate when it’s convenient for you. A new text-based lecture is posted each Monday morning, but you can take advantage of it whenever you have the time. Be sure to watch the video demo of the webinar format to determine if it’s right for your professional development needs.

Register for SharePoint for Communicators webinar

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(AARHUS, DENMARK: jboye08) You’ve seen American Idol, and perhaps even the brutally awful version from Canada, Denmark, the UK and others… and now there’s Web Idol, for CMS vendors.

 

A fast-paced, entertaining set of competitive demos alla American Idol. Five CMS vendors present 7-minute demos showing the best features of their CMS systems. Five succinct, comparative presentations are judged by an expert panel of judges that offer pithy commentary. However, like Idol, the audience vote for the winner!
 

This year’s judges:

• Claudia Urschbach (UK)
• Erik Hartman (HOL)
• Tony Byrne (USA)

 

eZ systems is the defending champ from both Web Idol 2006 and Web Idol 2007 and faced easy competition.

 

This year’s competitor’s:

 

• e-Spirit
• eZ Systems
• Hippo
• SDL Tridion
• Sitecore

 

The presentations:

 

1. Sitecore led-off and did competently in the 7-minutes provide for the demo. I like the insite editing alla Red Dot. The ciritcs were fair, but critical.

 

2. SDLTridion followed and was… confusing. I like the on-page AJAX driven editing without having to load multiple windows. I like the Tridion folks, but the critics were harsh.

 

3. Open-source CMS Hippo was next-up. More focused, I like the drag-and-drop AJAX interface under user management. I don’t like the lack of in-site editing – it’s the 21^st century. To quote Tony Byrne, “…like a hippo it’s (the CMS) potentially fatal to humans.” Overall, the judges appear to like Hippo best… thus far.

 

4. eZ ran in 4^th. The two-time defending champ and open-source CMS led with a very smart demo site that included advertising and lots of multimedia, and even Google maps. I like the integration of commenting and Web 2.0 with the in-site (in-context) editing. The judges seem confused and uncommitted.

 

5. e-Spirit in the anchor position had a very competent, but lightning-fast confusing demo. The presenter was very quick and the system seems quite capable… but drab. The speed of the demo confused me greatly… I couldn’t follow what he was doing or why. Unlike the other vendors, e-Spirit finishes early… but I’m confused. I shall not be casting my vote for e-Spirit. The judges also seem confused.

 

Tony was a very good judge with some very good remarks, analysis, and quite funny. Erik and Claudia however looked and sounded lost… Where have all the good judges gone?

 

VOTING

 

Remember, like Idol, this is not comparative analysis of which CMS is best, it’s a popularity contest based on a lightning fast demo. The winner is voted on by the audience. I voted for eZ Systems. I like the AJAX, multimedia and Web 2.0. The demo site was nice and progressive.

 

The audience cast their votes…. And the winner is…Denmark-based Sitecore (1st time winner).

(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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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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“Looking for greater flexibility and support for more ad hoc processes, employees have responded with a more bottom-up approach, in some cases circumventing official information systems,” say CMS Watch Founder Tony Byrne and contributing analyst Jarod Gingras, the principal authors of The Enterprise Social Software Report 2008.

 

 

CMS Watch's social media vendors matrix.

 

In other words, if your organization hasn’t embraced and standardized social software, your employees will begin installing it and using it without your permission. I know of what client that only found out recently that 15% of their employee base had voluntarily joined a dedicated company Facebook site. At BT, 4,000 employees formed their own “BT Facebook” site. BT took note and in response built their own social networking site called MyBT (see The power of Intranet 2.0).

 

If your organization hasn’t already developed an Intranet 2.0 plan (social media plan), you would do well to develop one before employees develop their own. This plan ideally contains the business case for moving to Intranet 2.0. Byrne and Gingras cite a number of business benefits to implementing enterprise social software:

 

Hard benefits:

 

• Reduce expenses
• Increase productivity
• Increase customer retention

Soft benefits:

 

• Improve internal communication
• Improve internal collaboration
• Improve employee morale and retention

I cited a number of positive ROI examples, or link to others, in Intranet 2.0: A must-have.

 

While a plan is a must, an even more difficult task may be the selection of the actual software that will power your Intranet 2.0 – there are now hundreds of solutions on the market. The Enterprise Social Software Report dissects the capabilities of 20 different social software (social media) solutions for Intranet 2.0 (or Web 2.0) including those from:

 

• IBM (Lotus Connections)
• SharePoint
• Connectbeam
• Facebook
• Google (Blogger)
• MediaWiki
• Socialtext
• and others

Each of these solutions are reviewed for their business service uses including:

 

• Blog
• Wiki
• Social Ranking
• Project Tracking & Participation
• Multimedia
• Info Filtering
• File Sharing
• Web Conferencing
• Discussion Forums
• Presence / Instant Messaging (IM)
• People Finding (e.g. social networking)

All of this is rated according to various Administration & System Services (e.g. security, analytics, etc.) and various corporate scenarios (e.g. Enterprise Collaboration, Project Collaboration, etc.).

 

Some interesting notes regarding the two big solutions, SharePoint and Lotus Connections / Quickr:

 

• Lotus Connections / Quickr: strong social networking, strong presence and IM tools, excellent integration with Notes and emerging Outlook connectors, and an innovative Blackberry application; “underwhelming blog/wiki” and requires WebSphere Portal for roles and group modules – best for Enterprise Networking; poor for Project Collaboration.
• Microsoft SharePoint (MOSS 2007): broad range of third-party plug-ins, lightweight portal services including bundled applications and lightweight document and records management services into social applications, search works well in an all-SharePoint environment; almost all native services are weak compared to competitors, near complete absence of social networking, social tagging & Bookmarking, and surprisingly weak integration with Outlook – best for Project Collaboration (e.g. team sites); poor for Enterprise deployments.

In short, Lotus is a better enterprise solution; SharePoint is a better project or team solution.

 

Regardless, 20 different products are reviewed in detail (from 10 – 25 pages per product review) and it’s a worthwhile read if you are looking at implementing social media or Intranet 2.0 software. Buy CMS Watch’s Enterprise Social Media Report 2008 (they offer a 30-day, 100% money-back guarantee).

 

If you’re looking to move to Intranet 2.0, but don’t exactly know how, then have a look at our Intranet 2.0 Blueprint service, or call me at 416.986.2226.

 

ADDITIONAL READING:

Intranet 2.0: A must-have

Enterprise 2.0 vs. Intranet 2.0

Embracing Enterprise 2.0

 

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