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
And here I was thinking that you’d highlight the previous sentence to the one you did! 😉
Glad that you found it “well-balanced” … I was aiming for that.
M.
Michael,
Flip flops or note :-d, I think we have an awesome productset in the Information Worker space and dito client projects to prove it.
The amount of attention and enthusiasm that MOSS 2007 gets is great.
It is well-balanced, but did you catch Michael’s final statement?
“If your business or organization has the financial wherewithal to embrace Microsoft’s Office 2007 system, plus the people to manage and maintain the resultant infrastructure, SharePoint is good move.”
It’s a good recommendation and I appreciate the candor, but it does say a lot about what it takes to fully implement and utilize Sharepoint Portal.
@ CHarles,
Yes I did read the whole article.
Not sure if “the financial wherewithal’ is any different for other (remotely) similar solutions. My guess is not. Think of the fact that Microsoft Office System provides a lot of functionality which today may be deliovered through”Best fo Breed’ solutions (BI, ECM, etc).
Integrating and operating Best of Breed solutions alongside your collaboration infrastructure is cheaper ? easier to integrate ? easier to operate and maintain ? I for sure don’t think so. I am not saying Microsoft Office System replaces all BoB stuff but I settle woth the 80/20 rule …?
Disclaimer : this does not aply to all companies of all sizes 😉
The point I thought Michael was trying to make is that for all the great new features, you can’t just implement Sharepoint Portal in a vacuum. It takes a sizable investment in many other products to really make use of all the features.
You bundle Office together for the desktop. Why not do the same on the server side? Give us a DVD set that has everything together, integrated into a single installer that takes care of setting up the entire thing, soup to nuts. That would go a long way toward showing your SMB/SME customers that this is a solution for them.
@Charles,
You have a point there. However different poarts of Office System compete on different levels.
I do think the number of parts will decrease over time but never to 1 product.
Remeber the Windows XP and mediaplayer discussions with the EU ? and that’s just part of the problem
It doesn’t have to be one product, it just has to appear as one. It should install as a single entity and be able to be managed as a single entity. Enterprise software is a completely different animal than consumer. In this case it would be an install option from a DVD, not something bundled with the OS and so tightly coupled it can’t be removed. I just hope that someone, somewhere, finally gets the fact that 99% of the businesses have fewer than 500 employees and we don’t have endless budgets for staff and hardware.
@ Charles,
We had this conversation before and I agree with most of what you are saying.
Sure installation / operation should be easy. One of the challenges is that Office System with SharePint as one of its cornerstones (if the thé cornerstone) has so many capabilities and different organsiations / departments may want different ones that there simply is and will not be a ‘one fits all’ solutions.
The solutiondirection for SMBs lies in the Web 2.0 / hosted direction. If they don’t have the skills / resources to run it inhouse this will be a solid solution in the near future is my guess.
We do however see a lot of adoption of Office System in the SMB market in The Netherlands and have a huge partner eco system doing projects in this area. Clients like it and don’t necessarily see it as more of a burden than they view their current platform(s) …
I am not in the ‘bundling knowledge’ with regards to our products, but what you are requesting for is a Small Business Server with everything on it ..? Who knows. I do see a market for it