SharePoint in the Enterprise

Where does Microsoft's ECM tool fit within the overall context of an organization's ECM strategy?

May/June 2008
— Russ Edelman


It should not surprise you to hear that Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 has proven to be the biggest phenomena in enterprise content management, bar none. While some may argue that it is not fully baked, organizations around the world are aggressively implementing SharePoint 2007 for global projects and doing so with large volumes of content.

The observations in this article come from both first-hand experience and conversations with many people who are affected by SharePoint’s unstoppable growth. Evan Richman, Microsoft’s global ECM product manager for SharePoint, comments, “The popularity of SharePoint has even surprised Microsoft. It is clear that SharePoint represents the first truly collaborative ECM platform and, as such, offers a unique value proposition in the marketplace. Traditional ECM solutions are designed to address specific business needs that impact a small percentage of information assets with a low percentage of the workforce participating. In comparison, SharePoint 2007 has been designed to drive broad information worker participation in ECM. It enables organizations to manage previously unmanaged content, thus maximizing the value of an organization’s information assets while supporting broadening compliance challenges.”

Understandably, Richman’s perspective may be interpreted as one with a slight bit of bias. However, Gartner research vice president Toby Bell reinforces Richman’s comments, “SharePoint has risen to become the top search term across Gartner and is generating huge inquiries from our clients.” Bell added, “What is uniquely different about SharePoint 2007 in comparison to its predecessors and other ECM systems is that the business community has become highly vocal and active in pursuing SharePointbased solutions.”

As an additional point of validation, Doculabs’ ECM industry guru, Jeetu Patel, has had similar experiences as the Doculabs team counsels global organizations with their ECM strategies. Patel added, “Earlier versions of SharePoint were dismissed as departmental solutions. In comparison, SharePoint 2007 is now being incorporated into the fabric of international organizations’ ECM infrastructure. These strategies are being driven by either pure SharePoint-based solutions or co-existence strategies that allow SharePoint and legacy ECM systems to live harmoniously together.”

Two Fundamental Paths with SharePoint 2007
Patel’s comments suggest the two primary paths that are being followed by most organizations regarding SharePoint. The first path is followed by organizations that have no existing ECM systems in place. The second path is traveled by organizations that do employ existing ECM systems. In each case there are distinct advantages and disadvantages that must be recognized and addressed. However, regardless of the path chosen, there are also a number of common issues that must be considered in order to achieve the desired outcome. These are summarized in the table on page 48.

Path 1 – SharePoint Only
Despite every ECM practitioners’ hopes, ECM technologies are still not employed and actively used in most organizations around the world. However, the introduction of SharePoint 2007 has served as a powerful catalyst of awareness for the benefits of ECM and this message has been acknowledged by a much broader community than in the past. In fact, despite the competitive concerns introduced to all of the existing ECM vendors, most would be quick to point out that SharePoint has moved ECM to center stage as a strategic investment.

Given the raised awareness of SharePoint 2007, many companies are now considering or implementing the tool as a first step into the world of ECM. While the move into ECM is applauded, it is important that those organizations have a clear understanding of the challenges as well as the benefits. Beyond the summary in the table, there are a number of important factors that should be taken into account when SharePoint is the only ECM platform deployed.

Strategic Initial Successes – While this point isn’t specific to SharePoint, it is appropriate to highlight as many organizations implement SharePoint in a broad capacity during initial deployment. Such a broad approach creates a higher probability of partial or complete failure. Why? First, SharePoint offers a broad set of capabilities. If the functionality is not clearly understood, users are confused and the value is diminished. Second, SharePoint is very easy to initially install and configure. However, when broader requirements must be considered, more planning is typically necessary to ensure that the system is properly optimized. Third, a strong communications strategy is necessary to ensure that users understand the capabilities; that the project’s success is carefully tracked; and that problems are immediately resolved.

WSS vs. MOSS – Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) is the free version of SharePoint that accompanies every version of Windows Server 2003 and greater. It provides a rich set of capabilities for departments or smaller organizations and, as mentioned above, can be installed and configured with relative ease. In comparison, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) is the paid-for-version of SharePoint and offers a much richer set of capabilities for the enterprise. Consequently, understanding the differences and which platform is right for your organization will become very important. In some cases, organizations have elected to use a hybrid of WSS and MOSS. When this path is chosen, take the time to understand the implications of a joint approach.

Governance and Standards – SharePoint’s popularity, to a large degree, has been driven by business people who were able to immediately stand up the product and begin using it. While this grassroots movement is a clear indication of the product’s popularity and value, it also has the potential to introduce challenges around standardization and governance. When deploying Share- Point, it will be important to solidify a governance and standards strategy and that strategy should be designed to evolve as the use of the product evolves.

3rd Party Product Usage – Despite SharePoint’s extensive capabilities, we are regularly reminded that the product does not solve every problem. By design, Microsoft recognized that it would be able to provide a broad and deep level of functionality; however, it would not be able to incorporate every feature request into the offering. As a result, the voids that were left open have been and continue to be filled by 3rd party vendors. With Share- Point 2007, there is an active community of 3rd party vendors; a benefit for the vendors and their customers. However, careful thought should be given regarding the use of certified partners and the balance of 3rd party products versus customizations. In some cases, organizations would have to rely upon a large number of 3rd party vendors for discreet pieces of functionality. In those cases, companies have trended towards relying upon a smaller number of 3rd party vendors for substantive functionality (imaging, search, co-existence) and then developing a few customizations for the simpler requests. This lessens the dependency upon a larger number of the 3rd party vendors.

Path 2 – Coexistence
Given the readership of this publication, most of you will probably need SharePoint to coexist with an existing system. That said, the issues raised regarding Path 1 remain applicable as you stride down the coexistence path—with a few extra issues. The coexistence path is actually comprised of two intertwined sub-paths. First, there is often a genuine need for SharePoint to exist with the existing ECM systems. Second, some coexistence strategies are temporary in nature with the ultimate goal of migrating some or all existing ECM systems to SharePoint. In either case, there are a collection of considerations that should be anticipated when planning an effective coexistence strategy (the items below are common, but do not comprise an exhaustive list).

“Surfacing” Existing ECM Repositories – The notion of “surfacing” an existing ECM repository in SharePoint has become widely accepted as a common approach for allowing users to retrieve files from the existing ECM system through a SharePoint interface. However, surfacing capabilities will vary considerably depending upon the techniques selected. In some capacities, most or all of the functionality will be made available in a secured fashion from the existing ECM system. In other cases, surfacing is nothing more than a read-only view into the existing ECM system that allows for the display of search results and the file. Of course there are variants between the two extremes.

For example, SeeUnity is dedicated to providing this capability as well as migration tools that allow for content to be migrated from the existing ECM systems into SharePoint. Dan Anderson, co-founder and vice president of SeeUnity comments, “Our dualprong approach has allowed companies to leverage the capabilities of the existing ECM systems without having to rush through the migration. This allows for their clients to control a migration to SharePoint, if that is the desired objective.” With prior versions of SharePoint, existing ECM vendors didn’t pay much attention to a co-existence strategy. However, with SharePoint 2007’s unprecedented success, they quickly saw the writing on the wall and either partnered with companies like SeeUnity or developed their own surfacing solution. Now, many ECM vendors see SharePoint as the front end to their backend and they do so through surfacing.

Functionality Coexistence between SharePoint and Existing ECM Systems – Two factors are impacted by this consideration. First, because SharePoint still has some gaps in its capabilities in comparison to existing ECM products, you must take appropriate steps to address the disparities in functionality. For example, a few ECM systems allow for version level security and SharePoint has a broader security model that allows for security at the major and minor levels. If users have become accustomed to a different security model, you’ll need to ensure that SharePoint security will be sufficient and that there are differences between the two models.

Second, content from either SharePoint or the existing ECM system (or both) often needs to be referenced in the other product’s workflow or some other module. For example, a press release in SharePoint may need to rely upon a workflow within the existing ECM system. To accommodate this the respective products must be integrated to support such requirements. As more of the existing ECM vendors fully recognize the emergence of SharePoint, they are aggressively building these types of integrations. It is also worth noting that one of the common integration points being employed is that of the existing ECM repository being used for records management.

Migrations to SharePoint – As referenced earlier, co-existence typically includes some type of migration of content from the existing ECM system to SharePoint. For those unfamiliar with migrating between ECM systems, be prepared for an experience that is more involved than you might imagine. Factors that need to be considered include the timing and sequencing of the migration, metadata mapping when there are variances between the metadata, and the stratification of content in SharePoint to accommodate site structures as compared to one or a few centralized repositories. This does not take any of the testing and training into account that accompanies migrations.

To wrap up, it will be important to discern fact from fiction as you speak to people about SharePoint 2007. With SharePoint’s popularity, many new people have entered the fray. In general, this is good. However, it also introduces a challenge or two. First, if the only exposure they’ve had to ECM is SharePoint, they may be out of touch with the many nuances and issues associated with a successful ECM project. Part of this problem is that they look at SharePoint as pure infrastructure as compared to a complete ECM solution. Additionally, everyone is claiming to be a SharePoint expert these days; with certifications and without. Make sure you go through a diligent qualification process to understand the extent of their capabilities and to determine if they have development expertise against the SharePoint object model as compared to administration/configuration experience. It makes a difference!

--Russ Edelman(russ.edelman@corridorconsulting.com) is president and CEO of Corridor Consulting (www.corridorconsulting.com ). A frequent speaker and industry expert, Russ is also chair of AIIM’s Emerging Technology Advisory Group.