The rise of the social in SharePoint 2010

As FierceContentManagement editor Ron Miller discussed recently, the social feature set of SharePoint 2010 has caused quite a stir--both positive and negative--since it was publicly announced last month.

Options Abound

SharePoint is only one of many suites/platforms that our clients use for content and collaboration, and while SharePoint (in the form of MOSS 2003 and 2007) tends not to be the ONLY solution in place in all but the rarest of cases, it continues to be a foundational building block for Basic Content Services and a standard component of the architecture of most organizations.

Given that MOSS 2007 was the first release of SharePoint that was deemed a sane choice by the vast majority of clients I have spoken with, it is not a tremendous surprise that MOSS 2010 is only now beginning to add on what many would consider "core" and expected functionality.

The Evolution

The rise of SharePoint has been a long, slow and painful process. For those who have forgotten, the journey from MOSS 2003 to 2007 was time-consuming and expensive, with the major overhaul of the underlying components and overall platform. For those clients who have gone for extensive customization with MOSS 2007, be prepared for another round of hurt in 2010. There are simply too many moving parts for this to be an easy upgrade. To paraphrase an interview of Bill English from Microsoft: "As an IT Professional, with SharePoint, you don't have to worry about job security--2010 is bigger and more complex, and will be used by many companies for some time." That is a testament to market uptake on the one hand, but also to an ungodly amount of complexity that is in no way serving the BUSINESSES that are supposed to be taking advantage of SharePoint. Complexity = cost = waste = a barrier to business.

On the upgrade of social functionality front--Microsoft is always going to lag behind their smaller and more agile competitors. It's simply the nature of the development cycle for Microsoft. Features that were "locked in" for design two years ago are finally going to ship in 2010.

These improvements are all evolutionary, and yes, in many ways puzzling that they were not "baked in" to the overall platform much earlier. But let's not forget that SharePoint 2010 began as a series of separate and not at all integrated projects back at the turn of the century. To dismantle, re-integrate and then add value on top of the former silos has been a tremendous effort. Frankly it's somewhat surprising they have pulled it off at all.

Microsoft, in continuing to raise the bar for the entry-level in content management, collaboration, social networking, records management, and more, is clearly a good thing for the industry and for the state of maturity in the market. After all, without SharePoint, most organizations would still have no idea what any of these capabilities are, let alone be using them in any way. And while Microsoft raises the tide the entire ecosystem of both small startups and the more established "enterprise players" clearly benefit as well.

The fact that "core" functionalities such as tagging, streams, and records management are finally being addressed signifies a major step in Microsoft's maturity, which should make the entry for "normal people" (those who are not like the growing throngs of Enterprise 2.0 zealots, myself included) into "corporate social computing" that much less jarring. Anything that can be done to integrate the user experience more tightly, avoid having to jump into separate systems for tagging, or declare records, or determine how to pipe in your own feeds from multiple sources is going to drive usage, and (one would hope) the productive use of these systems.

Second Attempt at Social = First Useful (Social) Version

The social feature upgrade announced as part of the overhaul of SharePoint 2010 is, I'm sure, a welcome addition to those MOSS buyers who have not yet rounded out their implementations with third-party add-ons.

Frankly, while I don't have hard statistics on this, the vast majority of SharePoint use is essentially the same as Filesharing 2.0, which is to say that they have put a browser-based front-end onto what used to be their shared folders/network drives, and that's it.

In some ways that is depressing (after having covered content and collaboration systems for over 15 years). In other ways, the most likely way to drive towards a 2.0 environment is to crack open the door and get people using any system that they can start getting comfortable with, and then build upon that initial success.

Whether the "social features" are adopted in the first wave or not, the fact that useful social capabilities will now be "baked in" demonstrates that not only is Microsoft dedicated to taking what they call "social computing" seriously in the enterprise (vs. Enterprise 2.0 for most startups in this space), but that maturity of the market at large is beginning to pick up steam. Still a long way to go to "mainstreet" adoption, but ironically, even given the economic recession, adoption of "social" functionality and systems is increasing. Turns out that "social collaboration" serves business well.

The Expanding Ecosystem

The SharePoint ecosystem is large enough that any third party partners only need a small sliver of the overall market to deliver value to their own clients, and to survive and perhaps even grow along with the adoption curve of MOSS. But every time a major revision of MOSS comes along, there is always the chance that the third party companies are going to get blown out of the water by the inclusion of their functionality into the MOSS core.

For companies looking to invest in MOSS, but who aren't willing to wait the normal three year cycle for the faster moving features such as microblogging (which didn't exist as a term until a year ago), the saner upgrade path is likely to be MOSS at the core, with minimal customization (think configuration), including extending via third party webparts and the like. This approach makes the separation of responsibilities between the core and extensions cleaner, and makes the likelihood of pain in upgrading an overly customized environment that much lower as well.

In short, the continuing realization by Microsoft that there is money to be made (over $1 Billion a year), and software to be sold, means that SharePoint will continue to evolve even if at a slower pace than many of us would prefer. As such, it would be ridiculous to not consider SharePoint as a potential solution set, as it has tremendous momentum and capabilities, whether natively or via the partner ecosystem to simply write-off.

Needless to say, 2010 will be an interesting year in the "social computing" realm--both for the release of SharePoint 2010 and the continuing innovations from startups and more established players alike.

Dan Keldsen is a Principal and Strategic Advisor at Information Architected, providing analysis, consulting, and education on process, innovation, content, knowledge, and search. Prior to forming Information Architected, he was Director and co-founder of the Market Intelligence unit of AIIM International (2007-2008). Prior to joining AIIM, he was with Delphi Group as a Senior Analyst, Consultant, and Chief Technology Officer (1994-2004) until its acquisition by Perot Systems (2004-2007).