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Stepping Outside the SharePoint Wheel

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On the web, I use Google for search, and Facebook, Delicious, and Twitter for social. I have a WordPress blog. I have two web sites – one hosted in the Linux stack and one in ASP.NET.  

Why do I use several  tools and not do everything in one service? Why not use Live.com or a similar aggregating service? There are two reasons – personal preference and wanting to use applications that are stupid simple.

Facebook makes social easy. I don’t like that it’s a closed network, however. So I supplement with other tools. Delicious makes sharing bookmarks easy, so I’ve used it for several years now. Meanwhile, WordPress just keeps getting better. Is SharePoint getting better? Or is just getting more complex?

SharePoint probably is getting better at some things than others, depending on your use case scenarios. Which is really my point here – Why use SharePoint for everything when preference and usage scenarios demand better options?

There’s a whole world of applications out there beyond SharePoint. Need an enterprise portal solution with good document and records management? Consider using Liferay with Alfresco. Just need to power a few marketing sites? Drupal’s probably a good choice.

I’ve implemented dozens of SharePoint portals and web sites over the past three years. Here are the most common reasons given for using SharePoint:

1. We already own it.

   Because of how Microsoft’s licensing works, many companies end up buying SharePoint licenses bundled with other software. I can’t help but wonder how much of the success of SharePoint is a reflection of Microsoft’s licensing strategy.

2. We want one platform for everything.

   Can I be politically incorrect here and say this is just dumb? Unless you’re talking about the Web – you know, HTTP, HTML – there is no “one platform”. I’m sorry but I thought it was the job of IT and Information Officers to know how to make systems and platforms interoperate. You don’t want one platform. You want one vendor to make it easy for you. Newsflash: This isn't about making your job easy. It should be about what's right for the business.

3. We just want everything to work out of the box.

   If you do social networking at all, then you’ve probably seen this acronym: ROFL. It means Rolling On Floor Laughing. If it worked out of the box, then why are you hiring a small army of consultants to help you implement it?

Because I’ve worked with a Microsoft Gold Certified partner for the past three years, suggesting anything other than SharePoint was strictly verboten. Even when I knew in my heart of hearts that SharePoint wasn’t the right fit. Is that some kind of consulting malpractice on my part? Probably not because in my experience IT Managers and CIOs are colluding (or deluding) on this SharePoint-can-do-everything fantasy. In other words, they wouldn’t have heard me anyway. Can you hear me?

Comments

Submitted by November 24, 2010 - 1:21 PM

Our clients increasingly consider SharePoint an enteprise-class app server ... more than as a destination per se, or even as a development platform. Newsgator SocialSites designed to provide social computing capabilities for it that are consumer-competitive but scalable, secure, globalized, etc.... In terms of my own work habits (as CEO of Newsgator), that means I'm working via SocialSites with SharePoint behind it via my iPad, Blackberry, and on the web ... a ton. It's the primary means by which my company and our key constituents get our work done. But I also still use LInkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook -- though I bring feeds that are relevant from all those into our internal system to enable fast sharing and conversation around impt external content... But I don't really think of SharePoint as a place -- I just know it's behind the scenes powering search, authenticating users, enforcing relevant privacy for communities, etc...

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Submitted by Daniel Antion November 24, 2010 - 4:20 PM

We bought SharePoint as a 'less expensive' ECM solution. We use it for collaboration and a few 'systems' in an attempt to achieve two goals. One, we like to keep people in SharePoint so they get used to it. That way, ECM doesn't seem like a foreign process. Two, we want to get our mony's worth. SharePoint is less expensive but, properly licnensed, backed-up and supported, it's not cheap. If I can hang a few more cars on that train, it helps my budget. It also keeps me and my technical resources familiar with the platform.

I look for opportunities to use SharePoint, and I respond to requests like "can we do this in SharePoint?" but I would never mandate SharePoint if it wasn't a good solution. We still write code (not even .net code) to handle most applications, and if you read my post a few weeks ago, social isn't much of an issue for us. Personally, I have two blogs (blogger) and I use Linkdin, Twitter, FB (although I wonder about that).

I shutter at some of the solutions I see people building on/in SharePoint because I know there are better options. You raised some good points in this post. I think people will be happier with SharePoint over the long term, if they dont ask too much from it up front.

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Submitted by Gil Goodrich November 29, 2010 - 2:59 PM

I agree with the points highlighted in this post... There isn't a single solution. Like Daniel, I am horrified by some of the things folks are building with SharePoint. As SharePoint evolves and becomes 'better' I think there are a suite of companion tools (think 'LightSwitch') that will evolve and become relevant. One we're using today (Ironspeed), hooks up to an existing database and builds the majority of our SharePoint applications for us. Just makes dealing with SharePoint (security, lists, etc) much easier.

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Submitted by Radu Gavrila December 08, 2010 - 4:35 PM

Vanessa, I think that you are taking a developer's view to the issue at hand, not a worker bee one. It may be no big deal for you to switch between platforms, maintain 15 different passwords with 3 levels of complexity and security clearance and remember the features of all these systems while harnessing the power of each one of them. Oh, let's not forget, they all "improve" over time in terms of feature sets and interfaces.

After teaching IT and End User classes to corporate clients big and small for about 11 years now, I think that consolidating as much as possible of an information worker's every day activity onto one platform has more benefits than drawbacks. Most corporate information workers execute repetitive activities and need a way to streamline and improve efficiency. Obviously, that's not a novel concept to you, I've known you long enough and have seen your work in this very area, improving efficiency, workflow, etc.

I think that we're at a point in our business culture where there are so many choices (within one program even, let alone among multiple applications and even platforms), that the corporate user is screaming for tools to get simplified and consolidated.

Whether or not the platform is SharePoint, that's up for debate.

Cheers.
Radu.

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This post and comment(s) reflect the personal perspectives of community members, and not necessarily those of their employers or of AIIM International