I’m repeatedly cornered to discuss SharePoint and a common discussion that occurs is the wide spread usage of SharePoint as an “Enterprise Platform” or “Enterprise Portal”.
SharePoint in Organisations (state and local government, private enterprises, etc.) are moving towards a Microsoft Platform in droves and migrating their SAP, Oracle, BEA, IBM, OpenText and EMC enterprise stacks. I’m exaggerating slightly as this is the Organisations I’m exposed to, but hear me out.
How did this happen?
Well, I don’t even think Microsoft knew this was going to happen before releasing MOSS 2007. They made all the right moves, hearing the noise that the other vendors were making around “Enterprise Content Management” with the different areas: Document Management, Records Management, Web Content Management, Business Intelligence, Digital Asset Management etc.
Microsoft looked at their current technology stack and figured that they could start playing in this field more aggressively. With a combination of SharePoint 2003, Microsoft Content Management Server 2003, SQL 2005 and client tools like Office 2003 and InfoPath 2003 they created the Office Platform.
In my opinion and a lot of others SharePoint is “a jack of all trades and a master of none”, much like most of the other vendors who played the same card. SharePoint is extremely strong in the collaboration area from an End User perspective, but is weak for example in Records Management, Business Intelligence and Digital Asset Management.
The days of purchasing a product for a specific area have clearly gone which is a shame because you pick one of the Enterprise Platforms and suffer in the weaker areas. Much like my 6 part series on Leveraging the SharePoint Platform, I will be writing an update for “Leveraging the SharePoint 4.0/2010 Platform” shortly.
What should we expect from 2010?
Well, don’t expect Microsoft to just polish what’s already there. No Organisation is going to pay the licensing for a polished version of what they’ve already purchased…”that should be a service pack”. They’ve had to grab more areas of the Enterprise Platform space to encourage people to upgrade or jump on the platform.
They’ll be plenty of areas that will be new and most of which would have come from the sales teams getting requests from major clients raising gaps in the product. They’ll be plenty of areas that will be there to tie in more of the Microsoft technology stack and encourage upgrading other products such as moving to Office 2010 and Windows 7.
On the SharePointDevWiki.com I’ve created two areas to cover the new areas WSS 4.0 and SharePoint 2010.
What have they improved?
But remember, whilst you’re either at SPC09 or consuming the content that although all the new features are going to be very exciting, there are serious issues and feature gaps in current functionality.
Just today I’ve been working with Quota Templates. Until very recently, when the Administration Toolkit was available (nearly 2 years after MOSS 2007 was released) it was not possible to push out a change to all Site Collections using a Quota Template that you had modified. It’s functionality like this that seriously needs polishing up! I could go on…
On the SharePointDevWiki.com I have started some “Have they improved” wiki pages and when the NDA drops I’ll open up that wiki space for everyone to contribute too.
I’ve also created what has changed in WSS 4.0 and SharePoint 2010.
SharePoint does “everything”
Often I will say tongue in cheek that “SharePoint cures cancer”, sometimes I see people thinking with this amount of confidence that they can do anything in it!
They’ll be some serious back steps on areas where they’ve pushed too hard and will allow room for other vendors to play in that space. Microsoft seriously can’t expect to build SharePoint all on itself, it’s a platform and they should leave areas for ISV’s to fill.
I’m a bit flabbergasted about SharePoint Workspace stepping on Colligio’s toes and the new BCS editor in SharePoint Designer taking on BDC Meta Man. Great work from both vendors for raising the bar again before they even get to a release, for instance with the web version of BDC Meta Man!
The MOSS 2007 horror stories
As I said earlier, I don’t think Microsoft expected the growth they had. There are so many cogs in the platform and so many ways to change them that it can turn into a nightmare to keep operational.
I’ve spent a major part of the last two years clearing up SharePoint environments that have been poorly implemented by internal teams and integrators. I don’t necessarily think it’s all their fault, mainly because the guidance didn’t come out until nearly a year after the product was shipped and still isn’t adequate in my opinion. Microsoft themselves didn’t really know what the best approach was.
I’m hoping that with this major release, documentation and guidance is treated more seriously so we don’t see the same mess again at the end of 2010! When people start to ask me on whether they should jump to 2010 at RTM or wait for SP1, I think the maturity of the documentation is going to make a big inroad into this decision.
I love SharePoint anyway
No matter what client I go on, I always end up having to pause to think “actually, what is SharePoint going to do”. Yes it has plenty of flaws, but it keeps me busy and challenges me everyday.
Most of the time there’s a way to get it to do what you want, some of the time there is no way but “the dirty” unsupported way. I’m hoping Microsoft have reduced the amount of “dirtiness” we require to get it rocking how we want.
SharePoint can consume a lot of hours getting it to do what you want or what you “expect” of it. Sometimes you’ll wonder why you work with the platform and other times you’ll be thanking the stars you stuck with it!
Collaborate on SharePointDevWiki.com
I encourage you all to get on the SharePointDevWiki.com after the SPC09 keynote and start to collaborate on the wiki in those areas, commenting on new and existing features. Have a think about what things you’d like to see improved…what burns your hours and turns your hair gray!