Irwin Lazar: Building the SharePoint Ecosystem

Irwin Lazar posted a very positive view on MOSS 2007 on Collaboration Loop. The core attributes Microsoft addresses : platform and ecosystem … I couldn’t agree more:

… Over the past few months I’ve struggled to get my arms around Microsoft Office SharePoint, Microsoft’s “über” platform for asynchronous collaboration.

Is SharePoint a Web 2.0 platform? Is SharePoint a content management system? Is SharePoint a workflow manager? Is SharePoint a social computing platform? Or is SharePoint a portal to other applications?

Well…the answer to all of these questions is a conditional “yes.” SharePoint does have the capabilities to function in all these roles. SharePoint supports Web 2.0 capabilities such as blogs and wikis, as well as user customizable data to enable searches based on meta tags. …

… As enterprises create their SharePoint strategy it makes sense to look beyond the core capabilities of SharePoint when those capabilities don’t meet your needs. Microsoft’s ecosystem for bringing best-of-breed services into the SharePoint ecosystem continues to grow, meaning that rather than viewing SharePoint as the be-all-end-all of enterprise collaboration, it is instead wiser to view SharePoint as the platform that can support both internal capabilities as well as leverage external best-of-breed products to fully meet enterprise requirements. …

Source: Building the SharePoint Ecosystem
Date Published: Thu, 15 Nov 2007