Over on the Lotus Quickr blog I found an interesting overview of points in which Lotus Quickr is supposed to have an advantage over Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 or 2007 Office System in general (or at least I think Stuart is trying to make those comparisons).

The analysis is incomplete in some cases and wrong in others. Let’s go through them one by one :

… The top 10 advantages of Lotus Quickr!

Well actually, top 11…

If you are an end-user considering your organisation’s options regarding team collaboration software, or else are working to convice your costomers of the merits of Lotus Quickr over other competitive solutions out there, then you may find this list of reasons to use Quickr of assistance.  

After all, it’s good to Share Points of interest like this, isn’t it 😉

The Top 10 11 Reasons to Use Lotus Quickr! 

1. Share content and collaborate from anywhere
Lotus Quickr client connectors integrate into multiple desktop applications

Multiple desktop applications. I assume Stuart means other applications besides Microsoft Office ? What other desktop applications would that be ?

Besides that my take on this is that MOSS is a platform to which all of the major ECM vendors integrate through browsers and in some cases also through their native desktop clients.

I look forward to the list of desktop applications …

 2. “No” to proprietary tools
Support for multiple HW/SW environments, open standards

Proprietary would be Windows Client and Windows Server I assume. This is true SharePoint only runs on Windows Server and related hardware platforms. Although this maybe an important fact to some organisations, the majority runs Windows Server and Windows Client already. Ofcourse this could change in the future, but up’ till now it has not proven to be a major advantage Lotus has over Microsoft. Look for example at the number of organisations running Lotus notes Domino on wintel vs other platforms. Other platform only represent a small percentage. 

3. No rip-and-replace
No need to replace your workstations to upgrade to Microsoft Vista and Microsoft Office 2007

Hang on where did this come from ? “Rip and Replace” ?? Who claims that running Windows Vista and Office 2007 is required when you need ‘Quickr-like’ functionality ? Do you know that Office 2007 does not really require Vista ?Remember SharePoint 2003 and WSS 2.0, the platform that was available prior to Vista and Office 2007 ? Or better have you ever read the document ‘FairGoodBetterBest‘ which describes the level of integration between MOSS 2007 and the current and previous versions of Office ?

4. Batteries are included
All components (RDB, LDAP, etc.) are in the box – and can scale

I assume this relates to the need of a database (SQL Server in the case of Microsoft) and a directory (AD in the case of Microsoft. Again, in itself its true Microsoft does require these components but the majority of organsiations already run one or more databases, have more than one user directory and often AD. SO the argument is true in splendid isolation but not in the real world …

5. Real-time integration
Web-based real-time presence and chat, integrate with Web conferences

Quickr is not the RTC platform of Lotus, that’s SameTime last time I checked. SameTime is the platform that provides presence, IM and Webconferencing capability.

For Microsoft that’s Office Communications Server 2007 and we all know what that does: the same …

6. Real offline access
Take an entire team space offline to work with presentation, logic, and data

This is something Microsoft can not do, at least not out of the box. For offline capability you either use Outlook (for documents and lists) or Groove (teamsites). Neither retain the look and feel. I could argue whether retaining the look and feel is crucial, but ok …

7. Real extranet collaboration
You just need email addresses of your partners to collaborate, not a call to IT

Assuming you have done the extranet setup with regards to security, etc than this is also the case for SharePoint. The difference would be anonymous access vs authenticated access. In the latter case you need a way to provision AD, as AD is required.

Microsoft runs multiple extranet setup with SharePoint for example our extranet for partners.

The alternate solution to ad-hoc collaboration information sharing would be Microsoft Office Groove as this also integrates with SharePoint a solution could also be a combination of both. It all depends on the scenario.

8. Bridge your islands of data
Bring structure and organization to your places with nested sites, and replication

Why exactly is this a differentiator ?

9. Interactive dashboards
Display interactive AJAX-based components on one page

Why exactly is this a differentiator ?

10. Extensibility & Flexibility
Easily build custom applications

Have you seen the Applications for SharePoint ? This is functionality ‘out-of-the-box’, but more than that it shows the capability and easy with which you can enable functionality on this platform.

11. Designed for the future
Manage content, not just Microsoft Office documents
Web 2.0 collaboration, not just an extension of Microsoft Office
Transparently access diverse repositories
End-to-end content management with IBM’s best-of-breed Content Management solutions

Let’s assume for a moment that Microsoft also has the future in mind when building and evolving SharePoint. Of you’ve paid any attention at all looking at the evolution in the last 3 SharePoint versions you understand what I mean.

– Manage content, not just Office Documents also goes for SharePoint : http://blogs.msdn.com/ifilter/default.aspx

– What’s Web 2.0 collaboration ? Finding colleagues, their profiles, their contact details ? Their organsiation structure ? It’s all in the MySite setup of SharePoint. I would agree that microsoft still has a lot of work to do and not being able to include Knowledge Network is a pity. Nevertheless I am not sure what edge Quickr in this case.

– Transparently assess diverse repositories

?

– The end to end ECM .. with IBM’s best of breed CM solutions
Yes, which one do you mean exactly, as IBM has several…