SharePoint's hard to define, but you can't ignore Microsoft as an ECM player

Ron - Curious times, eh?

All roads lead to SharePoint of course, just beware of the potholes, one-way streets, and bad traffic. Or is that just my perception based on living in Boston?

SharePoint is fascinating - the discussions we're having with clients are even those who are relatively happy with SharePoint acknowledge there are many holes in the offering. End result is broad but shallow adoption, or narrow and deep, depending on which way they've run with it.

Best,
Dan

Thanks for commenting, Dan. My growing fascination with SharePoint has a lot to do with the good work you and Carl Frappaolo are doing at Information Architected around this subject. Glad to have your seminars, blog posts and survey as a reality check against the hype.

Thanks again,
Ron

MOSS/Sharepoint has a long way to go before its ready for enterprise WCM. Particularly in the ecommerce arena. I just completed a comprehensive vendor comparison to select a enterprise ecommerce WCM system, and MOSS was a solid also-ran in the mid-market offerings (much less enterprise level). Strikes against it were still behaves more like document management system than a CMS, more of a developer platform than a out-of-the-jar solution, without a partner module or workaround it generates non-standard HTML (like everything else Microsoft), and it has the highest fee structure in its class (since website instances must be licensed separately).

Hi Ron,

Thanks for shining a light on the 'under-the-radar' success of MOSS as an ECM.

One problem of perception and why folks don't know how to define MOSS is that MOSS is really more than an ECM in many ways... For example, Excel Services -- this is an area that many ECM have no answer to.

Some vendors are catching onto the power of this paradigm -- Excel programming accounts for a massive amount of reusable business logic in the world.

By tying spreadsheet logic to docs, and leveraging the latent knowledge work locked up in spreadsheet files, MOSS has a leg up on most.

However, we're not all jumping on another Microsoft-powered bandwagon just yet.

One alternative we hear about in this space is from Extentech (extentech.com). Extentech comes at the ECM market from a spreadsheet angle.

Extentech has a free web spreadsheet and docs site in sheetster.com and ExtenXLS 360 Spreadsheet Server is a content system for developers that need the power of collaborative web spreadsheets, but demand a cross-platform, open source solution.

Being Java and open source does not hurt as folks become increasingly wary of the lockin that SharePoint and even Google Docs represent.

Sharepoint is an interesting product that is perfect for their channel. Once implemented within a company, it provides a natural path for partners to deliver add-on phases. The product enables collaboration of all sorts throughout the company and if positioned properly within the business units, it will be embraced to deliver all sorts of benefits.

Where I see the challenge it faces is within it's own identity. While Gartner and others place it in the ECM category, there still seems to be so much confusion in the Marketplace. Is it a CMS, is it for Intranets or is it for Documents? The result is that so many companies end up using it so many different ways.

Clear up that issue and adoption will increase at a faster clip.

I also believe that if MOSS can figure out how to stand alone as a CMS that it's another inroad that can be used to its advantage. Implement it as CMS now and scale to the full capabilities of MOSS later. A win-win for Microsoft and for it's partners.

Though I am a neophyte in the world of SharePoint, it seems to be the case that SharePoint provides numerous extensible possibilities. As such, wouldn't it make sense that efforts from third party vendors, independent developers, and ongoing efforts from Microsoft can all contribute towards evolving SharePoint into a more comprehensive ECM solution?

Then again, perhaps it makes sense to analyze various components of an ECM (as opposed to evaluating it bitwise) and identify those areas in which SharePoint is like an ECM and those areas in which it isn't like an ECM.