Janus Boye had an interesting post recently where he incorporated 10 quotes about the enigmatic SharePoint. On one hand Microsoft's (NASDAQ: MSFT) content management offering is wildly popular, but it also has its share of critics. How do you reconcile the dramatically different views of this product? It's not an easy task, as Boye's post proved.

Boye has chosen a wide and, in my view, fair cross-section of quotes from Microsoft itself to partners, analysts, consultants and customers.

At the most extreme we have the quote from Real Story Group that "SharePoint is an ECM virus." Although it's hard to know exactly what RSG means by that without context, it seems pretty clear they aren't enamored with SharePoint.

What's most interesting to me about these quotes is that aside from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer whom you would expect to speak in glowing terms about his company's products, the other quotes are couched in caveats about complexity and planning (although, to be fair, that's probably true of all ECM products).

We can conclude from Boye's exercise that while SharePoint enjoys widespread adoption, it requires substantial investment, planning and oversight, and companies should keep this in mind when making purchasing decisions about it.

For more information:
- see the J Boye blog post

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