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.
Showing posts with label Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server. Show all posts
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Monday, March 31, 2008
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.
...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.
Friday, March 28, 2008
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'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.
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.
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