SharePoint: A Six Pack of Servers
July 22, 2008
Mary-Jo Foley, author of Microsoft 2.0 and tireless Microsoft watcher, turns her sharp eye to the polymorphic Microsoft SharePoint Swiss Army knife system. Her “New Studies Highlight the Potential Downsides of SharePoint” is worth reading. You can find the July 21, 2008, essay here. I am fascinated when folks come to grips with the well-wrought SharePoint only to discover its darned complicated.
The most interesting point in Ms. Foley’s essay was:
SharePoint is a collection of six servers that provide document collaboration, portal creation, enterprise search, enterprise content management, electronic forms creation and management and business intelligence functions (analysis and publication of business information).
Okay, six servers, no problem if you have resources (a code word for money, time, patience, and the excitement of trying to find out where SharePoint puts files, scripts, security settings, etc.).
The point of Ms. Foley’s write up is a “new” Forrester study that reports–sit down so you don’t faint–keeping SharePoint customizations to a minimum is a useful tactic.
Ms. Foley cites Janus Boye’s new study. I’m more inclined to flow with Mr. Boye’s analysis. New York consulting firms, like New York lawyers and Canal Street watch dealers, make me nervous.
Now we know. SharePoint is complicated. Perfect for SharePoint consultants and Microsoft fans in information technology departments. SharePoint can be slightly less satisfying for users who want to use a system that is transparent, snappy, and easy to customize.
Complexity may be the fuel that ignites cloud computing, not scintillating salesmanship from Salesforce.com and others in this sector.
Stephen Arnold, July 22, 2008
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