I'm one who's pushing sharepoint [portal services] at my company, and with no regrets. There are certainly cables attached... but I don't think it goes beyond Windows & Office. Sure there are those that dream of integration with MS project & other tangential tools, but that stuff is unlikely to catch on. Just because you can use MS project server customized with VBA, etc. etc. etc. doesn't mean many people do it... and those that do don't succeed for long (after the creator leaves). A commitment to sharepoint is simply no more than a commitment to windows & office, which I'm comfortable with. The reality of business is that software cost is not your biggest expense, it's the person using it. There's a ton of value in a suite of tools that you don't have to train people on, or convince them to use.

BTW - & I'm not drinking MS kool-aid here. I actually prefer LAMP-based SOA's for enterprise apps. It's just that keeping knowledge workers productive is a different problem best done with different tools.

Just beware of the licensing issues involved in allowing customers and clients to share in the points stored on your company windows boxes.

"Sharepoint is its new operating system" - this is an absolutely ridiculous and erroneous claim. It is just one product from MSFT and hardly serves as an OS. It is a portal and serves entirely different needs than an OS! Also there are certainly alternative portal choices such as free and open source DNN if that meets your needs and which comes with it's own set of issues. ANY software package, once heavily used and depended upon internally is hard to convert from mostly due to politics and inertia rather than technical reasons. There is nothing in Sharepoint that makes it particularly difficult to convert from moreso than any other portal would other than perhaps using unique features that it has that an alternative might not have. You can hardly fault a product for having features that folks use. Sharepoint is no different here than most software products. Sharepoint also has mechanisms where most any legacy type system can be incorporated within the portal so it is fairly easy to integrate anything into Sharepoint without having custom parts. Don't bash Sharepoint just so you can bash Microsoft without any valid reason. There are other aspects perhaps worth bashing MSFT but this is not one of them especially since they do give you so much with the Sharepoint Services for free and only charge for the additional features. That is not the definition of a Trojan by any stretch. They don't FORCE you to buy the darn thing and presumably folks that did purchase have made the choice for business reasons so you are basically insulting the IT departments that have selected Sharepoint. And no I don't do Sharepoint consulting but you are obviously prejudiced w/o justification on this product...Dave

the problem with your comment, Dave, is that it directly contradicts what Steve Ballmer says about Sharepoint. He is on the record (follow the link) saying that Sharepoint should be considered the next-generation operating system.

As for your lock-in comment, I'm sorry, but what you say is wrong. It's true that locking your content with Sharepoint is no different from locking it into an Oracle, IBM, Documentum, etc. proprietary repository. But it's a HUGE difference from putting it into a JSR-170 (read: standards based) repository. In Alfresco, Apache Jackrabbit, etc. it's as easy to get content out of the repository as it is to get it into the repository. It really does matter.

Yes, there are natural forces that make inertia come into play in favor of any vendor, open source or not. But there's a big difference from inertia backed by proprietary repositories and inertia based on customer preference to not change once they've made a decision.

Sorry, apparently he did say something to that effect but anyone that understands computer architecture should know what Balmer really meant was a platform or layer as he even then corrected himself by changing the wording as well as the context or universe of what he was describing and certainly should not have been understood to mean an OS in the normal sense of the word which the media seemed to have jumped on for lack of understanding or sensationalism. This is what the link said discussing Ballmer's apparent statement and hardly describes a new OS: "SharePoint is the definitive OS or platform for the middle tier," Ballmer explained. It is the "missing link" (my words, not his) between personal productivity and line-of-business applications."

Sharepoint is hardly the main player in their product line and what company should be blamed for making their products synergistic anyway? In fact, they should be damned if they did not.

Besides, the best way to lock in customers is not the way that Microsoft licenses but rather the way that SAS Institute does it and that is to not ever actually sell software but rather to only license or lease it year to year. That way you can't just stop paying for it and gradually convert to something else as you are able. You can't just let old applications die on the vine. You are forced to convert them which often is too expensive or formidable. Annual lease type of licensing is what Microsoft and most other software vendors secretly strive for in my opinion - an annual license not a forever sale. If you have a forever license and quit paying for updates, you may not get the latest version but at least if the customer wants to convert they can keep using what they have already paid for, don;t care about updates and can run a stable legacy system while using newly purchased software for new applications so as to often circumvent conversion altogether.

Point being is that you are not locked in beyond your own intertia or politics if you have perpetual rights to use a piece of software which I believe is granted in Sharepoint's case as is the case with most MSFT and other software vendor products.

- Dave

Matt,

Please allow me to correct an important point you've made:

Quote: > "That could be a beneficial connection for Office, as Microsoft struggles to convince some business to upgrade to Office 2007 when their current Office setup works fine." <

Please recognize that customers can easily continue to use Office 2003 with the new version of SharePoint, but there are real substantial reasons for users to make the switch. Probably the biggest step forward MS made with WSSv3/MOSS 2007 is to include a workflow engine that works well across all content types AND that they now embed Metadata perfectly into the user interface of the Office 2007 suite of products. This is a huge step forward towards increasing operational efficiencies.

When you point out that standards are important, I agree. Whether a JSR 170 system is significantly better suited to hold digital assets over the general WebDAV version control system, like the one SharePoint includes, I don't think so. If a customer ever feels the need to migrate their data to another system it always seems to be a challenge. But that would a one-time project. The benefits from using a higher-level solution like SharePoint pay back for customers every day.

I agree btw with you: the open source world has a lot of attractive components, which together could easily match the SharePoint offering. What's missing is that someone commits to integrate these components seamlessly with the main creative and data entry tools and connects it all through a central workflow engine. Don’t focus on Microsoft potentially knocking down on the Open Source success. Rather, maybe you guys at Alfresco can deliver a proper Open Source-based competitor? ;-)

Best
Jennifer, http://www.finalcandidate.com/en/tandp/Pages/default.aspx

The same old bundling strategy. Isn't that monopoly abuse? Like the current government will ever lift a finger...

One other point to make here, is that the notion of collaborative asset development in Microsoft's approach happens with the bulk of the collaborative emphasis on file-management. File management is very useful and helps solve the current pain of "making sense" of all those different files. With their latest release, Sharepoint has now also bolted on some collaborative content types like wiki and blogging (though limited). The problem with this trajectory is that content will end up living in different applications. I'll need to launch word and powerpoint, or go looking in a wiki or in a blog when I need an answer for something. We heard these "point solution" problems a lot in developing Clearspace--which is a single application that unifies collaborative content types like blogs, wiki-documents and discussions by topic.

A true team space needs to be approached as such. It's a space where the content will be created, people can build a reputation, and that content doesn't hide in tons of different, disconnect applications. Microsoft's approach is expensive both financially and in terms of time spend poking around painfully trying to find people or answers.

Of course, we're pretty biased. :)

I'm not really sure why this comes as a surprise, or why there are so many defenders. Microsoft has always created software that is designed to get you to buy more of their software. That's there whole "interoperability strategy"...interoperable with themselves and nobody else.

The thing with Sharepoint is that they give it to you "for free" with their server offering, but you need a whole host of other applications to really make it useful. I think that's where the viral component comes into play.

Lastly, Microsoft has a very deserved reputation of locking in customers that should give anyone pause before implementing one of their solutions. Sharepoint is absolutely no exception.

So what I am hearing here is that an American corporation is producing a product that offers a very wide range of functionality, in a seemless, easy to use way and the inneropability with their other products is outstanding and that the latest version (that improves upon the former version a great deal) can offer an even more feature rich experience if the user upgrades their other apps?

Those BASTARDS!!!!! Producing a quality product that offers extended functionality through their other stand alone products and they charge money for that additional functionality and they use a database to store the documents rather than a file directory so the migration to another product is difficult because they have used the technically preferable method of document storage.

I can't beleive this. And they expect the customer to do their due diligence when selecting their product because any enterprise that is of any kind of size cannot afford to be switching out their document management system (being that it's at the heart of the entire enterprise) for any reason including how easy the application provides migration to a competitor's product.

Oh my god, we need to stop these evil BASTARDS!!! Oh wait, this is sorta starting to sound like a good product to me and isn't the whole point of an American company is to make money? And the best, most admirable way to do so is provide a good, easy to use product that provides value to the user?

Oh crap, I'm confused....but you are right THEY SUCK!!!

And may I conclude this by saying....BAAAAAHHHHHHHH (Thats a sheep bay, get it???)