What Is SharePoint?
July 18, 2008
A few publishers print tabloids and magazines. A hard copy of System Management News, July 15, 2008, arrived today. My lunch appointment was running late so I flipped through the newsprint tabloid and saw this headline, “Microsoft’s SharePoint Hits Sweet Spot as the Next Killer App.” The author of this apologia is Patrick Hynds, president of Critical Sites and a Microsoft Regional Director. Mr. Hynds is a good writer, and he does let his enthusiasm for SharePoint sparkle at every opportunity. The hard copy has a Web corollary at www.sysmannews.com. A digital version of Mr. Hynds’s analysis is here. I urge you to read the original.
The key point in the write up is that SharePoint is a “killer app”. For me, the most interesting point in the article was:
Let’s hope Microsoft doesn’t get too visionary for its own good and and expand SharePoint beyond the sweet spot it now occupies so well. It is all about collaboration and acceleration of information sharing.
The notion of a server as a killer application befuddles me. Actually, quite a bit about SiteServer, oh, I mean SharePoint makes me think about the fees consultants can assess. Without a doubt, SharePoint packs more buzz word goodness per byte than almost any other Microsoft application.
First, you have to figure out which SharePoint to license or use. The two versions are:
- WSS or Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.WSS includes Windows 2003 Server and Windows 2003 Small Business Server.
- MOSS or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.
There are numerous differences between the two platforms but both offer search, wikis, Web logs, and calendaring.
To get SharePoint to work, you will need other Microsoft server products. The two must haves are SQL Server and Exchange. Exchange is also described as a collaboration application, presumably because some executives still send email with attachments.
Rube Goldberg: Software Architect
Whenever I read cheerleaders’ scripts, I am impressed with how each each is to remember. The reality of being a cheerleader is different from the surface appearance and the facile nature of the chants. SharePoint is for me like a cheerleader and a catchy chant. “Push em back, push em back, way back.”
SharePoint slices, dices, chops, shreds, and cuts julienne potatoes, which I would not recognize if you showed me one now. To my simplistic mind, SharePoint is a layer of spackle that one uses to fill in the gaps among islands of Microsoft functions. A properly deployed and resourced SharePoint makes it possible to create a document, make it available to authorized users, and publish the document as a Web page. The search, the collaboration, the federating of email, local, and remote information, and the rest of the bells and whistles is a huge, sprawling favela (Brazilian slum).
Source: http://www.travelblog.org/Photos/171232.html
Underneath the layers of code is a content management system. But to make the CMS work, you have to buy other Microsoft servers, use Microsoft programming tools, and drink Microsoft KoolAid.
The problem is that SharePoint has great marketing and lousy plumbing.
Even Fancier Technology
The performance problem is a tough one. The perennial bottleneck is SQL Server. To get decent performance from SharePoint, the mantra was “scale up and out”. Loosely translated, the mantra means “buy more hardware, cluster your gear, and add nodes.”
The fix for 2008 or when the fix becomes available is to cache data; specifically, in memory data caching. The code name for this performance fix is Velocity. The caching approach boosts performance, but it creates other challenges; for example, synchronizing data.
When this technology becomes available, will SharePoint be easier to configure, manage, and troubleshoot? In my opinion, no. But consultants who can will be in demand.
What’s Going On?
My hunch is that Microsoft is beavering away on scaling and performance like workers in the the Tunnel of Eupalinos. Workers did not know where they were digging; they just kept digging, trusting that someone knew the destination. Here’s a rundown of Microsoft’s tunneling efforts:
- SharePoint is a content management system, but customers want collaboration, search, and Exchange type functions. So Microsoft engineers working on SharePoint pile on the functions and end up with two products, confusing most enterprise customers.
- Microsoft’s Live.com team has to goose its applications, so it focuses on virtualization, containerized data centers, and meta dashboards to manage the sprawl
- Microsoft’s other server teams have to make their products sexy, so these teams add functions that overlap with SharePoint, Exchange, and various administrative tools.
- SQLServer, because it is a Codd-style relational database works like a Codd-style RDBMS; namely, it is bound by writes and inputs and outputs.
The consequences of these fragmented and largely uncoordinated engineering efforts include brutal costs due to hardware for the scale up and scale out model and huge bundles of professional services. The SharePoint environment is hugely complex when used across geographically dispersed organizations.
My View
The number of SharePoint installations is in the the tens of thousands. SharePoint is not an application. It is different versions of middleware that includes a wide range of diverse functions.
SharePoint is a killer for sure. It can kill budgets and kill a career when the SharePoint installation is up, running, stable, and blindingly fast. I think that day lies far in the future. SharePoint is a consultants’ pay day. In my opinion it is not a killer app, nor will it become one with any “velocity.”
Stephen Arnold, July 18, 2008
Comments
One Response to “What Is SharePoint?”
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
You’d think an entry like Sharepoint into post-consumer-land (i.e. beyond Office) would translate into a competitve “enterprise” product. I believe Microsoft has
staying power for non-cloud applications because companies I am familiar with
do not trust with their content on servers not their own. I think your piece is about
the post-educational market. Microsoft and Apple used to compete for the education market and now Google is a player as you have demonstrated in earlier pieces.
The popularity of Sharepoint is probably generational. The trend looks open-source but pricey nonetheless – and (still) outside the experience of companies below a certain threshold.