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SharePoint still struggling to define itself

April 3, 2009 — 12:12pm ET | By Ron Miller

While I was at AIIM this week, one of my goals was to get a better understanding of Microsoft SharePoint. It seems to be everywhere, yet has a mixed reputation. To this end, I met with Microsoft's Justin Chandoo who gave me a demo of the software. I have to say, on the face of it, it has a familiar look and feel for Office users. It seemed simple to set up sites and make connections between project calendars and Outlook calendars. You could customize it and for the most part I was impressed.

But I was watching a simple demo--I was not trying to create a site for hundreds or thousands of users. I don't have deal with governance across multiple sites, a problem that Information Architected found many enterprise customers reported having. I didn't have to build complex or lengthy lists of items. As a system grows increasingly complex, as is the case with most enterprise installations, that's where the real test comes in and of course, there was no way for Justin to show that to me in the context of a conference demo.

It's interesting that in today's One on One with Joe Bachana from consulting form DPCI, when I asked him about SharePoint, he had this to say:

"...As far as WCMS capabilities of SharePoint, they are not terrible--the product can be used for that purpose and we have done extensive R&D around this. However, we haven’t gotten a single customer to jump over to using SharePoint as a WCMS. Which is interesting to me, since so many companies own SharePoint enterprise licenses as part of their global agreements with Microsoft. So, go figure!"

So, while I can see why companies might choose SharePoint, especially after this demo, I'm left wondering how well it works in practice. While I'm not in a position to answer that, talks with Bachana and other consultants suggest there are some issues when you start to work with it. But isn't that true of any enterprise software package we cover in this space?

Related Articles:
SharePoint's hard to define, but you can't ignore it
One on One with Arpan Shah of Microsoft SarePoint
Microsoft packages FAST search with SharePoint
Alfresco integrates SharePoint capability in new release

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Comments (4) | Post a comment

Comments

By Andy Fralick | Posted 3:52pm | April 3, 2009

This is beyond ridiculous. It's like companies clinging to buggy whips when they are driving cars. The technology is out there....has been out there...as matured to where the Library of Congress runs off SharePoint...as well as it being an intregal part of the NASDAQ. This mainly stems, I believe from 1) the inherent hate of Microsoft spawned by they tech press...who wouldn't even have a job if MS didn't exist and 2) LAZINESS on the part of companies. Laziness in planning, laziness in training, laziness in implementing. Look at the conficker issue...which is a non-issue if you'd applied a patch 6 months ago. Too LAZY to do the job and do it right.....

By rmiller | Posted 11:28am | April 4, 2009

Thank you for your comment, although I would prefer to keep the conversation civil, thanks.

While there are many companies using Sharepoint, there are are a myriad of known issues that you can't simply sweep under the rug. Read the AIIM/Information Architected study. This is not a conspiracy to get Microsoft, it's real documented issues implementing SharePoint, so while there may be plenty of successful examples, there are a long list of failures too.

It's a little too simplistic to blame the user for the problems with SharePoint. That suggests that Microsoft has nothing to do with it and if you talk to people on the ground who have used, you'll find there are plenty of issues under the hood.

By kMeeks | Posted 11:04am | April 9, 2009

Great review of AIIM. To your point about SharePoint customization, there is a technology developed by NextPage that integrates with SharePoint that enables companies to create and enforce policies, giving companies the ability to track documents from the network to the end point, including to email, cell phones, USB drives and personal desktops.

By SAbrahim | Posted 10:23am | July 1, 2009

For all the hype about SharePoint, the product is actually quite limited in functionality, features, and flexibility. There are dozens of SharePoint alternatives on the market. Most are more robust than their Microsoft counterpart, and all are certainly less expensive. Also, like Ron Miller eluded to, SharePoint is not for SMBs, but more for enterprises and big corporations with hundreds or thousands of users.
For a great resource site, check out www.sharepointalternative.com. It has reviews and comparisons for SharePoint and its alternatives.

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