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 Server 2007. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007. 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 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.
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Monday, August 20, 2007
Open Text To Build Law Firm-Focused Content Management System On Microsoft SharePoint > Information Management > Intelligent Enterprise: Better Insight for Business Decisions
Open Text To Build Law Firm-Focused Content Management System On Microsoft SharePoint > Information Management > Intelligent Enterprise: Better Insight for Business Decisions
Open Text To Build Law Firm-Focused Content Management System On Microsoft SharePoint
The new product, available next year, would would combine Open Text's expertise in lifecycle management of legal documents with the collaboration and content management capabilities of SharePoint.
By Antone Gonsalves
Open Text on Monday said it would offer law firms a content management system based entirely on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.
The new product, unveiled at the ILTA legal conference in Orlando, Fla., would combine Open Text's expertise in lifecycle management of legal documents with the collaboration and content management capabilities of SharePoint. Open Text currently sells its own product for the legal market called LegalKEY.
SharePoint is used by law firms for broadly used intranet, extranet and collaboration capabilities, while Open Text technologies have been tailored to specific law firm processes, Open Text officials said. Under the combined offering, SharePoint could become a firm's central content repository, and lawyers and staff could use its interface to access Open Text's practice-centric views of content and virtual file cabinets.
The integrated product is expected to help firms manage new business and potential conflicts of interest, establish ethical walls separating client cases, and provide records management and archiving that meets compliance requirements. In addition, users can perform federated searches across matters, and automatically assign metadata to allow correct classification of documents and pre-population of relevant content. The single point of content management through SharePoint also means that firms can apply retention schedules across repositories in a consistent and centralized manner.
Open Text two years ago launched an initiative to combine Microsoft productivity tools with its enterprise content management software and vertical-market expertise. Earlier this year, Open Text launched software integrated with SharePoint for managing U.S. Department of Defense-certified records. The company also launched a joint SharePoint-Open Text product that life sciences companies could use to manage documents that meet U.S. Food and Drug Administration requirements.
The latest integrated product is scheduled to be fully available to law firms by early next year. Pricing was not disclosed.
Open Text To Build Law Firm-Focused Content Management System On Microsoft SharePoint
The new product, available next year, would would combine Open Text's expertise in lifecycle management of legal documents with the collaboration and content management capabilities of SharePoint.
By Antone Gonsalves
Open Text on Monday said it would offer law firms a content management system based entirely on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.
The new product, unveiled at the ILTA legal conference in Orlando, Fla., would combine Open Text's expertise in lifecycle management of legal documents with the collaboration and content management capabilities of SharePoint. Open Text currently sells its own product for the legal market called LegalKEY.
SharePoint is used by law firms for broadly used intranet, extranet and collaboration capabilities, while Open Text technologies have been tailored to specific law firm processes, Open Text officials said. Under the combined offering, SharePoint could become a firm's central content repository, and lawyers and staff could use its interface to access Open Text's practice-centric views of content and virtual file cabinets.
The integrated product is expected to help firms manage new business and potential conflicts of interest, establish ethical walls separating client cases, and provide records management and archiving that meets compliance requirements. In addition, users can perform federated searches across matters, and automatically assign metadata to allow correct classification of documents and pre-population of relevant content. The single point of content management through SharePoint also means that firms can apply retention schedules across repositories in a consistent and centralized manner.
Open Text two years ago launched an initiative to combine Microsoft productivity tools with its enterprise content management software and vertical-market expertise. Earlier this year, Open Text launched software integrated with SharePoint for managing U.S. Department of Defense-certified records. The company also launched a joint SharePoint-Open Text product that life sciences companies could use to manage documents that meet U.S. Food and Drug Administration requirements.
The latest integrated product is scheduled to be fully available to law firms by early next year. Pricing was not disclosed.
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
Autonomy bietet Suchtechnologie für Microsofts Sharepoint Server 2007
Autonomy bietet Suchtechnologie für Microsofts Sharepoint Server 2007
Autonomy, ein Unternehmen der Suchtechnologie für Großunternehmen, stellt den IDOL-Server jetzt für Kunden von Microsofts SharePoint Server 2007 zur Verfügung. Mit über 500 erweiterten Funktionen als SharePoint Web Parts bietet IDOL jetzt eine flexible Grundlage für die unternehmensweite Verarbeitung strukturierter und unstrukturierter Daten. Die Technologie von Autonomy verfügt über ein konzeptionelles und textuelles Verständnis für jegliche Art von elektronischen Daten und ermöglicht damit die Suche nach Informationen in Texten, E-Mails, Audio- oder Videodateien.
Autonomy, ein Unternehmen der Suchtechnologie für Großunternehmen, stellt den IDOL-Server jetzt für Kunden von Microsofts SharePoint Server 2007 zur Verfügung. Mit über 500 erweiterten Funktionen als SharePoint Web Parts bietet IDOL jetzt eine flexible Grundlage für die unternehmensweite Verarbeitung strukturierter und unstrukturierter Daten. Die Technologie von Autonomy verfügt über ein konzeptionelles und textuelles Verständnis für jegliche Art von elektronischen Daten und ermöglicht damit die Suche nach Informationen in Texten, E-Mails, Audio- oder Videodateien.
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