Small Business Intranets, There's More Than SharePoint

Many organizations cannot afford $50 to 150 per user for a top flight intranet. Enterprise content management systems (ECMSs) and portals such as SharePoint, and the like, traditionally cost a pretty penny up front, and a shocking amount in annual licensing, support, maintenance and staffing. The costs of these systems have naturally created a niche for small market solutions that have grown and evolved considerably in the past 10 years.

There’s More than SharePoint
“SharePoint is most certainly overkill in most cases,” says Michael Jones, Marketing Coordinator for The ADWEB Agency that produces Intranet DASHBOARD, an Australian-based intranet solution. “It's like using a commercial harvester to prune your roses, or implementing SAP at your local convenience store. SharePoint is effectively a development platform which companies can use to create an intranet, but unless they have complex custom requirements (and a large development budget), SharePoint isn't the right tool to use.”


SharePoint has become the measuring stick, and the whipping boy, by which most all other intranet technology platforms are compared. Microsoft has invested so much into SharePoint (literally billions of dollars), and markets it at so many levels, it is, in effect, a blanket solution that attempts to be everything to everyone:

Web content management
Enterprise content management
Portal
Development platform
Business intelligence
Social networking
Enterprise search
Etc.

Small surprise then it is deployed in about two-thirds of Western World organizations that have an intranet, even in small businesses (SMBs), but not at a price.

“Proprietary portal applications and intranet solutions are overkill for small organizations, not just because of the initial costs, but often ongoing maintenance costs; medium businesses may be able to afford, software costs, setup and support, but is the portal putting money back into the company,” says Gifford Watkins, President of Atlantic Webfitters, an Atlantic Canada implementation vendor of open source CMS, DotNetNuke (DNN).

DNN is not a pure, nor as robust an alternative to SharePoint, but it is a gradually more popular choice for many small, and medium size businesses who require web content management (WCMS). DNN allows SMBs to get their feet wet for less than SharePoint (SP) yet shares a common architecture: Microsoft's (MS) SQL Server, MS ASP.net and Microsoft's IIS are the foundations for both SharePoint (SP) and DNN. However, the similarities chiefly end there as DNN doesn’t have the bells-and-whistles sported by SP, nor is it a true portal or ECMS.

The biggest difference is price: the price tag of an SP intranet for 100 employees is often in the US$ 10,000 to $30,000 range; Atlantic Webfitters typically deploys DNN for under $5,000, and sometimes for under $2,000.

Commercial Alternatives
“SharePoint and other enterprise level CMS solutions can be a daunting task for SMBs, requiring in-house expertise, resources, development and consultants,” says Rachel Lai, Marketing Manager of Vancouver-based Intranet Connections which offers a hosted, proprietary solution with unlimited users that starts at $8,500. “Often these type of enterprise platforms require a lengthy development and deployment cycle and we often hear from our SMBs that their SharePoint project essentially withered and died before it got off the ground.”

While it is possible to deploy SP and other CMS solutions in a few weeks time, a customized SP or ECMS solution can typically require 9-12 months for planning and implementation. Solutions such as Intranet Connections can be deployed in a matter of days.

“Going with a turnkey, out-of-the-box intranet solution like Intranet Connections can allow SMBs rapid intranet implementation so that they can move on to other pressing projects and focus on what’s important in getting an intranet launched, such as "how can we best use this great new tool to communicate and collaborate with our employees,” adds Lai.

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Sample home page using Intranet Connections


Tim Dorey, CEO of Vialect, admits that his company’s hosted intranet solution, Noodle, is not too dissimilar from other commercial solutions, but adds that his competitive advantage is speed and customer service.

“It sounds cliché but customer service is as important as our software,” says Dorey. “Our customers love our support and the fact they speak with real people and not call centers. When our clients call they can talk to our developers, trainers or myself.”



Dorey is also quick to point out the obvious: SharePoint does very well in serving its audience, which is typically bigger and wealthier than the SMBs that comprise Noodle’s target audience.

“SharePoint has its place just like many of the CMS on the market but both require time and money commitments,” adds Dorey. “To get the most from SharePoint your SMB needs to know exactly what they need. In many cases it’s difficult to get a SMB to clarify exactly what they need.”

Sometimes, in fact, big business has looked to these smaller vendors to power their enterprise intranet. Both Shell and Panasonic use Intranet Dashboard (iD) as their corporate intranet solution, and yet iD is priced at only $2 per user, per month, for businesses with 250-500 users. At 1000 users, iD’s price falls to $1 per user per month.

Small Intranets Become Social
Following hot on the heels of the bigger platforms many small market solutions have heard the stampede of socially inclined users and have answered by integrating social media tools into their platform: blogs, wikis, social networking, even Twitter-like micro-blogging.

However, it’s a myth that big business is paving the way for social media adoption on the corporate intranet (intranet 2.0); the little guys are more prone to use social media. The results of the Intranet 2.0 Global Study (2010, Prescient Digital Media) found that 56% of organizations with fewer than 100 employees have blogs on the corporate intranet, almost 10% higher than all other organizations combined.

“Two years ago we started adding social networking features that are resonating with customers and indirectly improving the success rates of the deployments,” says Dorey who deploys a 50 user solution for only $2,950 with hosting at $250 per month. “The addition of the social networking pieces like Twitter-like status updates, personal profiles and co-worker lists are advantageous. Noodle also monitors Corporate Wisdom, Corporate Wisdom monitors the content a user creates and reviews providing (reporting with) a live percentage (per user) that tells administrators who are the champions of the site and maybe more importantly who is not.”

Open Source solution DotNetNuke is replete with social media features including social networking, blogs, wikis, even real-time instant messaging and knowledge centers, even a user-driven folksonomy for tagging content with keywords.

Intranet Connections (IC) has become a “social intranet” offering that is now branded as “turnkey intranet 2.0 software” and includes out-of-the-box social features such as employee profiles, blogs, live chat, employee comments and ratings, discussion forums, and even an application that allows employees to share recipes.

No longer is the small business intranet merely a shared drive or an online mash of shared documents; small business intranets are increasingly dynamic, progressively more social, and transformative: evolving from static, corporate-driven newsletters into dynamic social communities.

About the Author
Toby Ward, a former journalist and a regular e-business columnist and speaker, is the CEO and Founder of Prescient Digital Media. His white paper “The Social Intranet” is a free download at www.PrescientDigital.com.

SharePoint alternatives seek to fill in the gaps

BUSINESS SOFTWARE FOR THE MIDMARKET
SharePoint alternatives seek to fill in the gaps
Christina Torode, Senior News Writer
12.18.2008

When it comes to departmental file sharing or collaborative workspaces, Microsoft's SharePoint has legions of fans in midsized companies. But for those not interested in paying for SharePoint (the basic version is free), or who find some features immature in the latest version, there are SharePoint alternatives.

The reason for SharePoint adoption is clear: Many organizations (and non-IT departments) began grassroots deployments after they upgraded to Windows Server and got a basic SharePoint feature set for free. There were also products in the SharePoint family available for a fee, including SharePoint Portal Server 2003, which many organizations used as a steppingstone to Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007 (MOSS 2007). MOSS 2007 is a major upgrade from SharePoint Server 2003, with a lot more functionality.

The move to MOSS 2007 seems to be natural once users install Office 2007. A Forrester Research Inc. survey conducted in March of 233 IT decision makers using Office 2007 showed that 24% said they had immediate plans to move to MOSS 2007 and 41% expected to install it within six months. And in yet-to-be-published research, Information Architected Inc. found that of 400 respondents surveyed, the majority of the midmarket companies already had MOSS 2007 installed. Midmarket companies accounted for 35% of the respondents, and among this group, half said price was not an inhibitor for MOSS deployments. Although nearly half -- 46% -- said the price was higher than they expected.


SharePoint add-ons:
A sampling
Microsoft typically leaves plenty of room for partners and competitors to fill in the gaps when it releases a new technology. Startups have grown out of developing applications and tools for Microsoft's server and desktop management products, and behemoths have built security add-ons for the Windows OS for years.

This tradition is continuing with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007). Below is a sampling of the many SharePoint add-ons now available.

NewsGator Social Sites 2.5 is a social computing enhancement that lets users create community discussions around documents within SharePoint.

MOSS Faceted Search is a free set of Web parts that refine search results by category.

Colligo for SharePoint lets users drag and drop emails and attachments into document libraries and gives mobile workers offline access to SharePoint.

Site Administrator for SharePoint from Quest Software Inc. comes with 30 standard reports and allows IT to manage permissions and set policies in SharePoint.




"When we asked [the survey respondents] if the cost of MOSS was in line with their expectations or more than they expected, 50% said the cost was pretty much in line with their expectations," said Carl Frappaolo, co-founder and principle of Boston-based Information Architected.

Microsoft estimates MOSS pricing at $4,424 for a server license and $94 per client access license in the U.S.

Microsoft's strategy with SharePoint is to undercut competing enterprise content management (ECM) products that are perceived as complex and expensive, with a product that promises ease of use, flexibility and a less costly enterprise-scale feature set. One key benefit is its tight integration with other Microsoft products such as Exchange Server, Office Communications Server, Office Live Meeting and Live Workspace. Simplicity allows business departments to create their own team workspaces.

"Basic functions like workspaces typically come first and getting governance around that, then people tend to explore other areas [of SharePoint] based on pain points or risk factors," said Rob Koplowitz, an analyst at Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester.

MOSS' capabilities range from basic collaboration to portal creation and business intelligence content management. Yet MOSS' breadth is both too much and not enough for some midmarket users.

While the portal capabilities in MOSS are mature, for example, some companies are holding off on what they perceive as less-developed features in the suite, such as social networking, enterprise search and Web content management capabilities. These companies are waiting until Microsoft releases the next version, Koplowitz said.

Another potential drawback is a dearth in skill sets, as well as a lack of SharePoint documentation coming from Microsoft, said John Bissa, a partner and Web development team leader at accounting firm Plante & Moran PLLC in Southfield, Mich. On the surface, SharePoint is easy to get off the ground, but he said he's finding that people quickly get in over their heads.

"There's a lot of bad SharePoint [deployments] out there because there are more people deploying it than those who know how to use it," he said.

The alternatives

Although SharePoint appears to be on a lot of CIOs' agendas, midmarket businesses have plenty of other choices.

There's integration with enterprise content management systems. IBM offers integration between FileNet ECM and MOSS 2007, for example. Fellow competitor Oracle Corp. has made it possible for users to access Oracle Universal Content Management files from the SharePoint interface.


There's a lot of bad SharePoint [deployments] out there because there are more people deploying it than those who know how to use it. John Bissa
partner and Web development team leader, Plante & Moran PLLC


There are also third-party add-ons (see related story, above right).

Lotus Notes and Domino's collaboration and content management capabilities are often stacked up as a SharePoint alternative, as are Lotus Quickr and Novell's SiteScape for workspaces. There is also Oracle's WebCenter suite for portals and Web application development and its Beehive online workplace.

Open Text Corp., with its ECM suite, is another company that both competes and integrates with SharePoint.

Competing products and vendors in the Web 2.0 space include Jive Software's Clearspace business social community software, which has customers in the midsized market, and Atlassian Software Systems Pty Ltd. and Socialtext Inc. These started out as wikis but are broadening their community-based collaborative offerings.

For open source alternatives, Alfresco Software Inc. has its ECM platform and Drupal is free software that lets you build community workspaces and portals.

Yet for all these options, SharePoint may be the 800-pound gorilla -- at least for now.

"Competitors are trying to do similar things [as SharePoint], but they really only have point solutions in comparison," said Peter O'Kelly, a Boston-based independent industry analyst.

Let us know what you think about the story; email: Christina Torode, Senior News Writer.

Courion Survey: Most Corporations Ignore Microsoft SharePoint Security and Data Risks

Courion Survey: Most Corporations Ignore Microsoft SharePoint Security and Data Risks
Courion Corporation

87% of Companies Cite SharePoint as a Source of Concern for Sensitive Data Leaks; Two Thirds Do Not Have Tools to Monitor and Control SharePoint Usage FRAMINGHAM, Mass., Nov. 18 /PRNewswire/ --

WHAT: Courion(R) Corporation, leaders in access management and compliance, releases survey results revealing that while many organizations are adopting collaborative work environments such as Microsoft SharePoint to improve productivity, they are not effectively addressing the considerable security and compliance risks associated with these environments.

DETAILS: A survey of more than 150 business managers reveals that companies are largely unaware of what is happening within Microsoft SharePoint Environments. They do not know if sensitive data is being shared in these sites, who is using these sites, who has access to them and who needs access. And in many cases, companies do not even have acceptable use policies in place for SharePoint, nor is there anyone in the organization responsible for ensuring SharePoint security and compliance.

Key survey results include:


-- The majority of respondents (86.7%) cite SharePoint as a point of
concern for data theft.
-- More than one-third (33.8%) of respondents do not have a policy defining
acceptable usage for SharePoint.
-- More than 36% of companies do not currently monitor their SharePoint
usage.
-- Nearly two-thirds (62.7%) do not currently have tools in place to
monitor SharePoint usage, access or policy compliance

Courion recommends that organizations establish risk-based governance and controls in these environments to ensure long term security and compliance with business policy and industry regulations. System administrators and security personnel need to be able to answer the following questions:


-- What SharePoint sites are on our network and who owns them?
-- Who has access to these sites and what Permissions do they have?
-- Are sites with sensitive data being managed using best practices
consistent with the organization's security policies?
-- How can I fix sites that are exposing the organization to security
problems?

To download a copy of the survey report, please visit: http://www.courion.com/solutions/sharepoint.aspx

To arrange an interview with experts who can discuss SharePoint security and compliance issues, contact:


Brenda Menard
Davies Murphy Group
bmenard@daviesmurphy.com
781-418-2435

SharePoint Proving a Goldmine for Microsoft Partners

About 80 percent of businesses are expected to be using SharePoint by 2010, according to Gartner. That means for the Microsoft channel community, SharePoint is a potential goldmine, a repeat revenue generator, and customer relationship builder – if you get it right.

Microsoft SharePoint gets search, file sharing features

Add-ons let users search on document images and securely extend file creation and sharing across corporate boundaries.
John Fontana (Network World) 30/09/2008 09:11:00

Data capture vendor Captaris and security software developer Epok had developed add-ons to Microsoft's SharePoint Server 2007 that let users search on document images and securely extend file creation and sharing across corporate boundaries.

Captaris, best known for its RightFax software for distributing faxes, recently introduced the TIFF iFilter for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

The iFilter takes an image, scans it using optical character recognition (OCR) technology, and then stores it in SharePoint along with all its meta data. The resulting file is then available for discovery by SharePoint's search engine.

IFilter components are used by Microsoft Indexing Service and other Microsoft Search-based products, such as SharePoint Portal Server, Windows SharePoint Services, Exchange Full Text Search and SQL Server FTS.

Captaris, which is in the process of being acquired by OpenText, thinks paper-centric industries benefit the most from its TIFF iFilter such as insurance, governments, health care and financial services.

The iFilter supports Windows Server 2003 and 2008 and works on both 32- and 64-bit versions of the Windows OS, SharePoint Server, and SQL Server.

The Captaris TIFF iFilter comes in three editions: Standard (for two core systems), Pro (four core systems) and Enterprise (unlimited cores).

Standard is priced starting at US$299. Pro starts at $499, and Enterprise pricing will be announced before the end of the year.

SharePoint is Microsoft's fastest growing enterprise software in its history and the company counts 100 million licenses and more than a US$1 billion in revenue, according to figures released this summer. The platform also is attracting third-party vendors driven to plug some of the gaps in the platform.

Earlier versions of SharePoint had support for TIFF images, but it was dropped in the 2007 version of SharePoint. Microsoft released a Filter Pack for SharePoint in Dec. 2007, and specifically made apologies for the absence of the TIFF filter in the release.

Experts have also said that SharePoint has gaps in its access control story.

Epok in particular is attacking that need with an update to its cross-organization access management software called Epok Edition for SharePoint version 2.4. The platform extends user authentication to a company's partners.

The 2.4 version breaks the restriction that only a user within a SharePoint domain can use Microsoft Office to create, edit, and then save documents directly into SharePoint.

Epok extends that capability to any Office user in any domain as long as they have the needed access rights.

The upgrades also include a reporting system that can show such facts as who has access to a document and when the document expires. And a mouse over feature on user icons shows additional access details and expiration dates.

Epok can automatically enforce those expiration data on a user's access to certain documents while maintaining the user's overall access rights.

"SharePoint is creating a control problem and what we see is a huge demand wave for extranet access," says Nigel Simmons, vice president of product management.

Epok also takes maintenance of permissions for access controls out of the hands of IT and put them in the hands of business users.

In addition, the system can be configured to require users to view and/or acknowledge certain contractual obligations related to data such as non-disclosure agreements.

The Epok Edition for SharePoint version 2.4 is priced at US$25,000 per server.

Who will be the new king of CRM?

Who will be the new king of CRM?
By Geoff Nairn

Published: September 15 2008 14:29 | Last updated: September 15 2008 14:29

While the debate about hosted or on-premise customer relationship management software rages, Oracle claims to offer the best of both worlds. Its Oracle CRM On Demand Integration to Siebel CRM product synchronises customer data held in Oracle CRM On Demand – Oracle’s home-grown on-demand CRM offering – with Siebel CRM, which Oracle owns after acquiring Siebel Systems in 2005.

Siebel remains the undisputed king for traditional on-premises CRM but most of the growth in the CRM industry now comes from newer on-demand CRM providers such as Salesforce.com.


Improved world view
IBM has unveiled new software to help businesses make sense of their product data. InfoSphere Master Data Management Server for Product Information Server aims to provide a “single view” of all the information held on a product across geographic locations. Big Blue also added a global name recognition module for InfoSphere Information Server to improve name matching for businesses that operate in many countries.


Small and affordable
Dell is targeting small businesses in emerging markets with the four latest additions to its Vostro range of PCs launched in Beijing.

Affordability is the key selling point of the Vostro A860 and A840, two laptops that come with 15.6-inch or 14.1-inch HD screens, Celeron or Core 2 Duo processors and a choice of operating system – Ubuntu Linux or Windows Vista. There are also two desktop mini-towers, the Vostro 180 and A100 – interestingly the latter only comes with Ubuntu.

Virtual security gates
Internet security firm Check Software Technologies has introduced a virtual security gateway aimed at the growing number of businesses with virtualised IT environments.

VPN-1 Virtual Edition is optimised for VMware environments and provides similar levels of security for virtualised applications to those located on separate servers, the company claims. Pricing starts at $7,500 for five virtual machines.


Aid to compliance
Microsoft has teamed up with BearingPoint – KPMG Consulting as was – to offer a compliance product based on Microsoft’s SharePoint Server 2007. BearingPoint Enterprise Governance, Risk and Compliance helps organisations manage risk and compliance using alerts and analytical tools.

For example, if a key risk indicator is exceeded, e-mail alerts are triggered and employees guided through the necessary steps.


Red flag for danger
EMC aims to address the growing problem of identity theft with a solution comprising software and services. The catalyst for the new offering is the Facta regulations in the US which require organisations to put in place policies and procedures to address the risk of identity theft in a systematic fashion by detecting warning signs or “red flags”. EMC’s Facta Red Flags product is designed to help financial institutions and creditors meet the November 1 Facta deadline.


“Powered by Google”
Google has announced a new version of the Google Search Appliance, which integrates hardware and software is aimed at organisations that want to add a “powered by Google” sticker to their corporate intranet or website.

The appliance can index all of an organisation’s content, up to 10m documents, in a single box. It can also search the information held on leading content management systems such as EMC Documentum, IBM FileNet, OpenText Livelink and Microsoft SharePoint.

Siren call of open source
System management is the latest part of the software business to succumb to the advances of the open source movement. Fujitsu Siemens has announced that its Primergy servers can now be managed and monitored with the Nagios open source software suite.

Specialist outfit Netways has developed a downloadable plug-in that allows Nagios to monitor Fujitsu Siemens’ hardware for a wide range of variables such as network services, server resources and system temperature.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

Open Text to Acquire Document Management Provider Captaris

Open Text to Acquire Document Management Provider Captaris

Microsoft SharePoint macht Enterprise 2.0 geschäftstüchtig

Microsoft SharePoint macht Enterprise 2.0 geschäftstüchtig

Microsoft liefert mit dem Office SharePoint Server 2007 in der Praxis bewährte Technologien für soziale Online-Netzwerke, Blogs, Wikis, Foto- und Video-Portale und andere Web-Dienste, die insbesondere von der Interaktion mit ihren Anwendern leben. Längst fragen sich immer mehr Unternehmen, wie sie Ideen und Anwendungen des Web 2.0 nutzen können, um ihre gesamten Informations- und Kommunikationsprozesse grundlegend zu modernisieren und zu verbessern. Genau diese Frage steht im Mittelpunkt des SharePointCommunityCamps 09.2008. Die Anwenderkonferenz findet in diesem Jahr am 15. und 16. September 2008 im NH-Hotel am Flughafen Stuttgart statt.

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.

Learning to use SharePoint – could this be like learning to snowboard?

After a week of fantastic spring break skiing at Whistler in British Columbia, I returned to work and was reminded that training alone is not enough to help users successfully build their own SharePoint collaboration sites. It’s a bit like my friend Drew describes learning to snowboard, which he says is “easy to learn but difficult to master.” I’m now convinced that SharePoint has this same characteristic – easy to learn but very difficult to master. Why? ...

...Because most organizations end up with just enough time to train users on the basic features and functions of the tool, not on information architecture and design best practices so that they can optimally build sites. You know, the kind where people can actually find information instead of having it buried in the same useless folder hierarchy that existed on the file shares SharePoint is replacing. Training in the “how to” functions in MOSS 2007 is not enough – site builders, who in many organizations are not going to be IT folks but rather “regular” end users, also need to understand information design best practices.

Here are just a few concepts that can improve the end-user designed sites I have reviewed:

- Tab Navigation: Sub-sites can be more easily organized and visible by leveraging the out of the box tab navigation that comes with SharePoint. On one end user-designed site I reviewed recently, the site designer had multiple sub-sites but they were only visible in the left hand navigation, which, due to a lengthy list of libraries, etc., required a lot of vertical scrolling to find. Grouping the sites on meaningful tabs (and sub-tabs) would have created a much more usable site.

- Consistent Use of Metadata: In a series of sites in the same site collection (designed for the same group of end users), metadata should be consistently applied. On this same site, some document libraries used a field called Keywords to categorize documents and others used a more functional term to categorize documents using the exact same values. All libraries should have used the functional term.

- Limited Use of Folders: I’ve mentioned this in earlier posts, but folders are not the only way or often not the best way to organize information in a document library. On many sites that I’ve reviewed in the past, I’ve seen folders with no documents, folders with one document, and folder hierarchies that are impossible to decipher (often, even for the original designer!). SharePoint training really must include best practices for content organization or we’re going to have SharePoint sites that are as difficult to understand and navigate as the file shares they are designed to replace.

- Consistent Page Layouts: One of my clients described navigating the SharePoint sites in her organization as an “adventure.” Every site uses a different structure – for example, some sites have Announcements web parts in the upper left, some in the upper right, some show 10 items and take up way too much screen real estate and some show just the 3 to 5 most recent items. I shudder to think about how an external partner who works with multiple groups in this organization will react when it seems like they are working with 10 companies, not one! Just because you CAN change the organization of the web parts on your site around doesn’t mean you should! Organizations need to build a collection of templates that work for their business and encourage users with design privileges to understand the value of the templates for their end users – creating a balance between “creativity and productivity,” with an emphasis on the latter.

SharePoint is a fantastic end user tool. The “no code” capabilities are a great way to empower end users to create their own collaboration sites, without requiring IT intervention. But, IT can’t just provide basic skills training in the features of SharePoint without also helping site designers learn to master the best practices of site design. Drew tells me that any downhill skier can probably learn to snowboard almost as well as they ski but they have to really devote 3-5 solid days to master the techniques enough to fully enjoy the experience. They clearly can’t be an expert in 3-5 days, but they can certainly have more than just the basics. I think that’s how we have to look at SharePoint training – all site builders need to learn the basic skills first, but then they absolutely have to dedicate enough time to learn the best practices for site design and information architectures or their sites will just not be usable.

Microsoft SharePoint taking business by storm

Versatile Microsoft server may not be perfect, but it is attracting interest as tool to address anything from collaboration to process management

Microsoft's SharePoint Server is on a billion dollar juggernaut to potentially become the next must-have technology, offering companies tools for building everything from collaborative applications to Internet sites and potentially handing Microsoft its next cash cow.

I have not seen anything like this since the early days of [Lotus] Notes," says Mike Gotta, an analyst with the Burton Group. In those days, corporate users were enamored with a shiny new technology that seemed to have infinite uses. "The talk [around SharePoint] is getting strategic now and people are talking about it as a middleware decision," Gotta says.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 is the fastest growing product in the company's history and seems to have as many uses as a Swiss Army knife. Its six focus areas are collaboration, portal, search, enterprise content management (ECM), business process management and business intelligence.(Compare collaboration products.)

Just last month, Microsoft added a hosted alternative to fuel adoption. There is a "perfect storm," observers say, around SharePoint in terms of the popularity of Web-based computing, demand for less-expensive ECM and portal tools, collaboration technology and integration around Microsoft's Office suite.

The attention is a wake up call for competitors, especially IBM/Lotus, as SharePoint could pull customers to other Microsoft software because it is closely integrated with Microsoft's unified communications stack, its e-mail server, Office and Office applications including back-end file sharing repositories for Excel, Word and PowerPoint.

SharePoint was first introduced in 2001 to less than lukewarm reviews as SharePoint Portal Server. In 2003, a stripped down version was offered for free as part of Windows Server 2003 R2, which made it easy for users to test drive the software and soon end-user created team worksites began popping up all over corporate networks.

In 2008, SharePoint has evolved into the prototypical Microsoft tool – good enough for small-to-midsize businesses, adaptable to large enterprises, and, most important, plenty of financial opportunities for third-party independent software vendors and systems integrators.

Partners involved in everything from directory management to archiving to single sign-on are reporting that SharePoint is improving their own revenue.

In March, Bill Gates, Microsoft's chief software architect, said SharePoint had passed 100 million licenses sold, had attracted 17,000 user companies, and eclipsed $1 billion in sales for his company.

Many critics dispute the licensing number but not the message that SharePoint is on fire.

SharePoint, however, isn't without issues that users should consider, including the fact that it does not scale well given the way it stores data in SQL Server, a concern Microsoft is working to answer in the next version likely to ship in 2009.

Or that its social networking tools are considered rudimentary, that SharePoint's portal capabilities still don't measure up to enterprise-class platforms and that the server takes customizations to make it truly sing.

"I think there is going to be some buyer's remorse," Gotta says.

SharePoint does many things, but scaling is not one of them. SharePoint stores everything in SQL Server in what amounts to one universal table, which leads to lots of on-the-wire traffic and a Microsoft recommendation of only 2,000 items per list. By contrast, IBM WebSphere permits hundreds of millions of items per list.

The social networking tools are uninspiring and Microsoft is partnering with NewsGator (feed reader) and Atlassian (wiki) to cover bases, which will lead to inevitable feature clashes as SharePoint evolves.

"Compared to what is out there today, Microsoft's Web 2.0 tools look old and very static and are clunky and difficult to use," says Oliver Young, an analyst with Forrester.

But Young says those limitations and others are speed bumps not show-stoppers.

"I'm not sure I've seen anything that has taken off this big, this quickly. SharePoint 2007 has just blown up," he says.

Late last year, an IDC survey of 300 users found 61% were deploying SharePoint enterprise-wide, and that 28% of those using SharePoint in departments now are expected to expand usage to the enterprise within the next 12 months.

Current users can attest to that transition saying they have persevered from SharePoint's early days to what is now a tactical platform.

In 2006, Brad Marshall, corporate IT director for Bowen Family Homes in Duluth, Ga., backed into SharePoint as part of a hosting deal centered on Microsoft Exchange. Marshall did not like what he had originally seen in Windows SharePoint Services, which offered team workspaces and file sharing for free as part of Windows Server 2003.

But having SharePoint Portal 2003 hosted eliminated some technological limitations and development chores and eventually resulted in a business process workflow application for selling homes that cut up to two days the time it took to do the same process using the old paper-based system.

"We have it down today where in a push we could get it done in less than an hour," Marshall says. The company has built eight to 10 applications on SharePoint, including vacation and performance-review programs.

But Marshall says customizing SharePoint is mandatory and he has used tools from CorasWorks to make that easier.

"If it was just regular, out-of-the-box SharePoint we might not be using it today to be honest," he says.

What's also becoming important are add-ons from partners.

"One of the things we find is people bought SharePoint and they have not figured out the power that is there," says Brian Kellner, vice president of product development for NewsGator. "We help make that more obvious and simple."

Others are building on features that users will need when they begin to harvest that power, such as Symantec with its archiving system, Enterprise Vault.

"In the last year IT has become more aware and more concerned in having a managed approach to SharePoint," says Dave Scott, group product manager for Symantec.

Microsoft for its part compares the popularity of SharePoint with an application that has helped define its success.

"We see tremendous momentum just like Office in the early days when people said this is a new way to work," says Tom Rizzo, director of SharePoint. Consulting firm Accenture has built a Facebook-like SharePoint application to find experts, Ford Motor Co. uses SharePoint for its dealer portal, and the Marines have deployed collaborative applications to aid their efforts in Iraq.

Rizzo says SharePoint has so many entry points for users that Microsoft calls it a business productivity server. He says the next version will show investments in social computing and new features he would not disclose.

"The beauty of SharePoint is that it hits a number of sweet spots," Rizzo says.

It also hits competitors between the eyes.

"I think the most interesting trend to watch for this year and next is how IBM/Lotus reacts to this SharePoint phenomenon," says Harry Wong, CEO and founder of Casahl Technology, which has been helping users migrate either to or from Microsoft and Lotus messaging platforms for years.

Wong says SharePoint is proving to be a powerful leading punch for Microsoft to sell IBM/Lotus users on migration to Exchange and Microsoft's entire slate of collaboration tools.

IBM/Lotus is countering with a similar product called Quickr, and just like Microsoft with Windows SharePoint Services, is giving users a free version to get started.

To be successful, Wong says Lotus has to sell customers on Quickr vs. SharePoint; on Lotus Notes 8 and its Outlook-like interface and integration with Lotus Sametime and Connections; and convince bigger Domino shops the J2EE version of Quickr will provide the scale that SharePoint lacks

"IBM/Lotus has the weapons to defend against Microsoft SharePoint if IBM/Lotus acts quickly and aggressively," he says.
As the battle emerges, it might begin to look like the messaging wars the two fought in the 1990s, but given the breadth of the technology the prize could be much bigger.

Microsoft Sharepoint wird strategische Plattform und bedrängt IBM - Produkte + Technik - Software - computerwoche.de

Microsoft Sharepoint wird strategische Plattform und bedrängt IBM - Produkte + Technik - Software - computerwoche.de

Microsoft Sharepoint wird strategische Plattform und bedrängt IBM
Seite 1 von 628.03.2008

Mit "Sharepoint Server" liefert Microsoft Unternehmen ein Werkzeug für viele Zwecke, vom Erzeugen kollaborativer Applikationen bis zum Bau von Internet-Sites. Das Produkt dümpelte lange Zeit vor sich hin, könnte sich aber zu einer der wichtigsten Lösungen des Konzerns entwickeln.


Zwar ist Sharepoint nicht neu, doch erst mit der Version 2007 scheint das Produkt so richtig abzuheben. "Ich habe nichts Vergleichbares gesehen, seitdem Lotus Notes auf den Markt gekommen ist", so Mike Gotta, Analyst beim Beratungs- und Marktforschungsunternehmen Burton Group gegenüber der amerikanischen CW-Schwesterzeitschrift "Network World". Als das heutige IBM-Produkt vor vielen Jahren auf den Markt kam, schienen die Möglichkeiten der neuen Technik grenzenlos. Geht es nach dem Analysten, dann zeigen sich Firmen heute vom Microsoft-System begeistert: "Unternehmen messen Sharepoint eine strategische Bedeutung bei und nehmen das Produkt als Middleware wahr", so der Analyst weiter.

FT.com / Companies / IT - Microsoft line extended to small business

FT.com / Companies / IT - Microsoft line extended to small business

Microsoft line extended to small business
By Richard Waters in San Francisco

Published: March 3 2008 05:03 | Last updated: March 3 2008 05:03

Microsoft will on Monday take the wraps off a new service designed to repel Google’s incursion into one of its core markets, selling software applications to small and medium-sized businesses.

The plan will involve delivering a service over the internet for small companies to do things such as manage corporate e-mail and let workers collaborate on documents, rather than requiring them to buy the software. Users of the new internet services will be charged a flat annual subscription fee per worker.

The move marks a response to Google’s launch a year ago of a set of online applications for business customers, for a fee of $50 a year for each worker. Google executives have suggested that even if companies don’t end up using their services, the presence of an alternative could still lead companies to negotiate lower prices from Microsoft.

Chris Capossela, head of Microsoft’s Office desktop applications and related server software businesses, dismissed the threat from this new low-priced competition. He refused to disclose what Microsoft would charge for its online services, but said: “We’re really not worried about cannibalisation.”

The new Microsoft services involve two of its main server products – the Exchange e-mail software and SharePoint, which is used to manage documents centrally and make it easier for workers to collaborate.

Internet-based versions of this software were made available to big companies last year. It will now be extended for a test period to the smaller companies that have traditionally formed the backbone of Microsoft’s business.

In spite of the experimentation with offering online versions of its server-based software, Microsoft has so far retained its traditional business model for its dominant Office suite of PC applications.

It is counting on the functionality of its software to counter Google. “Looking at their software, it’s incredibly basic,” said Mr Capossela. “It isn’t good enough for a 50-person company.”

He also said Google, which has been building a sales force to improve relations with business customers, had a long way to go before being taken seriously as a business software supplier.

“The reality is, it takes a very long time to build the credibility with [chief information officers],” he said.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

Emerce - Technologie nieuws: Google neemt Microsoft Sharepoint onder vuur

Emerce - Technologie nieuws: Google neemt Microsoft Sharepoint onder vuur

Google lanceert een dienst waarmee medewerkers van bedrijven online omgevingen kunnen maken om locatie-onafhankelijk met elkaar samen te werken. Daarmee neemt het Microsoft Sharepoint op de korrel. Het Nederlandse YesHello.com haakt in op de groeiende behoefte onder bedrijven om diensten online uit te besteden.

Microsoft Matches Google With SaaS for E-Mail/SharePoint

Microsoft Matches Google With SaaS for E-Mail/SharePoint

Responding to the threat from Google, and sensing a significant business opportunity, Microsoft has announced substantial plans for an Exchange and SharePoint software-as-a-service model.