Sharepoint: Secretariat or Trojan Horse
When you gaze at Sharepoint as of right now … which horse do you see? Secretariat or the Trojan Horse? I guess it depends what side of the walls of Troy you sit on … but lets ponder a bit anyway.
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1. Sharepoint as Secretariat
Being a runner, I get misty just watching the raw power of Secretariat on film. That horse had to love running. Such power. Is MSFT’s Sharepoint similar? The article makes Sharepoint sound like it. To the point you aren’t awarding the triple crown … you do it twice - collaboration, portal, search, enterprise content management (ECM), business process management and business intelligence. Just like “Big Red” MSFT is trying to make a stance that the sum of their parts is better than other combinations (or niche plays). But is that relevant here? Do you need the parts fused? Does that drive notable business value? If it were possible to have such a seamless environment it would be a a notable impact to most businesses … HOWEVER … while Sharepoint has a compelling story here I am still leary if this Sharepoint angle is the only and/or best. Let’s take a few examples. 2. Collaboration - What Working? Blogs, Wikis, Dashboards When you study the landscape of multiple companies you see that the efficient collaborators are really driven by a few features. They document most of their work in Wiki’s. They share thoughts and insights internally/externally via blogs and then they provide a summary view of that activity from a dashboard. These are all things Sharepoint can do (but so can any coding environment) but not so good in its vanilla form. Personally, Fujitsu researched a variety of 3rd party WIKI solutions for Sharepoint due to their gap in functionality. Same story with Blogs. So in this area the rollup of Sharepoint is really a Trojan Horse in my view. It isn’t the best solution out in the market and the integration in other areas doesn’t trump it. You would be better off building a solution on Google (checkout the early release of Google Sites, Jive Software, or Confluence for example) 3. Portal. Sizzle or Steak? The Business Data Catalog (BDC) webparts in sharepoint is an excellent example of how MSFT is positioning portal. You get a webpart and point these wizbangs at a data source and wham - instant access. Not so fast McFly. In tactical deployments right now it isn’t working so hot. Most of the time you have to rebuild the BDC connections from scratch getting very close to a service feeding a datagrid (translation its just like custom development in effort and cost). Still, for the delivery of admin screens and simple transactions on custom solutions I do think the Sharepoint listparts can expedite delivery and work well. So I will say this is one area that does intrigue me about Sharepoint still. Thier listparts and BDCs hold promise. More horseflesh than wood here. 4. ECM/BPM - Does Storing Documents Make You A ECM Player? If you are trying to manage your digital assets (ECM), Sharepoint is an option but in reality there are strong reasons to think harder before leaping here. For starters ask yourself what is the INDUSTRY standard of BPM features. You have on demand solutions like Salesforce.com, Open Source Alternatives like Alfresco, and emerging angles like AMZN’s S3 that (with some investment) could evolve into far better solutions for managing your data (which is one of the core assets you own as a company) while costing you much less money (not a lock in implication). If you are still intrigued by the MSFT offering … move slowly. It would be better to spend your investment dollars right now on how to tag and structure the meta of your unstructured data right (the true value, getting search on documentation going) than choosing a repository to put it in (you have survived this long … right?). Relative to BPM, there is a solid workflow in Sharepoint that can drive your business but … similar to ECM … I think you have to decide at a macro level around BPM and not just do a rollup decision. Workflow automation (manual or systemic) is a core aspect of your business. There are reasons why major products like Feugo and Interstage have been investing in the space for years. A better plan here would be to understand the macro strategy around BPM for your org in 3-5 years and see if MSFT’s roadmap fits well enough. Both these aspects are Trojan horses in my view (although I am a fan of the workflow in Sharepoint and MSFT as a whole). |
(** I skipped BI above on purpose as the BDC, to me is the primary unique value statement there **)
In short, I think the core of Sharepoint is about team collaboration and in reality there are better cheaper answers in the market. Study what true collaboration enablement is in your ORG then jump for the shiny widget (which may be MSFT … but may not).
What do you think?
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– No running notes today … spent too much time typing off this article (have to move on the inspiration)
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Sharepoint has the advantage of a bundled install and a large corporate player as the owner. Sharepoint’s disadvantage is that it is not best of breed for everything that it does. IMO, wiki is significantly better at knowledge management and there are any number of better blogging and bulletin board solutions (even phpbb is better at BBS). Sharepoint is a pretty good ECM solution, but if you are already looking at wiki and and a blogging tool, you may as well use alfresco and leverage google searching
I am with you Bruce. Although I would call phpBB a ‘forum’ (but BBS is a nice way back term). In addition, I still wouldn’t call SP an ECM solution. It just doesn’t have the scope and depth of the niche players in that space yet.
Regardless, you and I are on the same page. If you focus on the core of collaboration (which is what alot of corporations think they are getting w/ Sharepoint) there probably are options that should be heavily weighed.