SharePoint Placemat
June 28, 2008
Microsoft SharePoint got to know one another several years ago. Via referral, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner wanted my team and me to run some tests on a SharePoint application. We got everything running, wrote our report, and the Gold Certified Partner was a quick pay.
After the project, one of my colleagues remarked, “SharePoint is really complex.” We put the idea aside until someone emailed us a SharePoint placement. A copy of this remarkable diagram is available if you want to look at it. You can find it in SharePointSearch.com here.
Here is a thumbnail of the full diagram, but I strongly urge you to download the diagram. Do you think it is a joke of some type? My colleagues and I saw something similar from a Microsoft partner in New Zealand a year ago, but this placemat is a triumph of sorts. The company preparing the diagram is Impac Systems Engineering.
The complexity of search in general and SharePoint in particular is an interesting topic. Search can be quite a challenge. One recent example is the inability of Internet Explorer to open a SharePoint document. You can read more here and download a fix here. Embedding search into a content and collaboration system with data management features may push the boundaries of software to their limits.
CleverWorkArounds.com has an essay called “Why Do SharePoint Projects Fail”. You can look at Part 5 here. I was unable to locate the other portions of this discussion, however. (Part 3 is here.) For me, there are three main points that address the issue of the almost-funny placemat diagram:
- The skills required to implement SharePoint include “IIS, Windows Server, TCP/IP & networks, SQL Server 2005 Advanced Administration, Firewalls, Proxies, Active Directory, Authentication, Security, IT Infrastructure Design, Hardware, Performance Monitoring, Capacity Planning, Workflow, IE, Firefox, Office Client tools, ASP.NET, HTML, JavaScript, AJAX, XSL, XSLT, Exchange/SMTP, Clustering, NLB, SANs, Backup Solutions, Single Sign on, Monitoring & Troubleshooting, Global Deployments, Dev, Test, Staging, Production – Staged deployments, ITIL, Vitalization.”
- “SharePoint is complex and the products it relies on are also complex. In the wrong infrastructure/architect hands, this can cause costly problems.”
- “… if there is not a certain degree of discipline around change management, configuration management, procedures, standards and guidelines to administrators, users, site owners and developers, bad things will happen.”
These points underscore the problem with “boil the ocean” systems. The fire needed to get water sufficiently hot to cook eggs can consume the pot, leading to a big mess.
Observations
I took another look at the placemat diagram and re read Part 3 and Part 5 of the essay “Why Do SharePoint Projects Fail?” Let me offer several observations from my dirt floor cabin in the hills of rural Kentucky:
First, SharePoint is a beast. Enterprise search is a monster. What will the progeny of these two behemoths be like? My opinion is that it will be tough to see through the red ink flooding some SharePoint projects. Toss in a hugely complex system such as Fast Search & Transfer’s Enterprise Search Platform, and you have a very interesting challenge to resolve.
Second, complexity is a Miracle Grow for consultants. SharePoint is complex, and it will probably only get more complicated. In my experience, Microsoft software becomes efflorescent quickly.
Finally, SharePoint attempts to deliver what may be a system that will be out of step with cloud-based services. SharePoint as a hosted or cloud-based service is generating some buzz. However, will the latency present in most on-premises installations be an issue when delivered as a service? My view is that latency, more than issues of security or data confidentiality, will bog down the SaaS implementation of SharePoint.
SharePoint is hugely successful. I heard that there are more than 65,000 licenses in North America alone. The SharePoint market is a tempting one for companies like Google to consider as one ripe for an alternative.
Stephen Arnold, June 27, 2008
Comments
8 Responses to “SharePoint Placemat”
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Thanks for the mention. To read the full series simply go to my homepage http://www.cleverworkarounds.com and all of the articles are listed as a series
65 000 license, how many of those are actually in use?
Andreas
Andreas, I honestly don’t know. I think SharePoint is a tough system to track. The demos and the resellers make it look great. After a bit of work with the system, the bloom goes off the rose.
Stephen Arnold, June 28, 2008
Paul, thanks for the links. I appreciate it.
Stephen Arnold, June 28, 2008
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[…] Microsoft Fast ESP has not yet delivered a fully integrated product. At the FastForward 09 conference, Microsoft announced a road map. In the future a solution to the 50 million document glass ceiling will be available. Today integration and quite a bit of work is needed to implement the system. In addition, there has been a revolving door for executives and a constant realignment of technical resources for the many “flavors” of search at Microsoft: Powerset, Fast, Vista and Windows 7, SQL Server, etc. The confusion in product lines and brands are visible symptoms of a fragmented, heterogeneous technical approach to search. Customers are pulled because of the low cost of initial acquisition of SharePoint, an amalgamation of legacy, third party, and new code. But the complexities of the system may overwhelm some licensees appetite for taming the unruly herd of components. Nevertheless, there are 100 million SharePoint licenses in organizations today, so SharePoint and its to approach search are going to be issues in most organizations. Here’s a diagram of SharePoint with its search component (in itself quite complex) from Impac Systems. My article in Beyond Search provides more information at http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/2008/06/28/sharepoint-placemat/ […]