Michael Sampson : "What I really think of SharePoint 2007" ;-)

Let’s face it. Michael has earned his ‘headline’. Over on his blog he referred to an article he recently wrote for Messaging News. I added the bold to make it loud and clear … All kidding aside a good and well balanced analysis / article; thanks Michael.

… Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is Microsoft’s strategic server product for many things, with collaborationinducing and collaborationsupporting functionality a key thread. SharePoint has undergone significant revision since its 2003 incarnation. So much so, in fact, that some people say that the two products are different in everything but name. I have never been a huge fan of SharePoint, due to (a) technical limitations in the previous version, (b) the long list of other Microsoft products that you have to buy in order to get SharePoint to work properly, and (c) lingering worries that customers will face the same flip-flops in product direction and functionality from Microsoft as has been witnessed in the Exchange product. I have to acknowledge that Microsoft has done a good job with this version of SharePoint, and the centrality of it across Microsoft’s portfolio is stunning. It’s impossible to do justice to all that SharePoint has become in a few short words. So, rather than trying to be exhaustive or boring by merely reeling off a long laundry list of new feature points (e.g., “item-level security”, “folders in lists”, “minor and major versioning”, etc.), I’m going to discuss the four most interesting capabilities from a collaboration viewpoint.

Read the whole article : Messaging News