Microsoft SharePoint: Almost to the Podium
August 18, 2008
I don’t pay much attention to Adobe. The outfit lost me when it went nowhere with Framemaker (ideal for long technical reports) and put steroids in InDesign, a tool for people with a Master of Fine Arts degree. I use FoxIt, abandoning the bloated Acrobat. I get along okay with GIMP because the upgrades to Photoshop take too much time for me to figure out. Fiddling with weird little controls is fine for a 16 year old, not so fine for a 64 year old with lousy eye sight.
I did read JD/Adobe, a Web log by an Adobe guru, and I urge you to read the article as well. Titled “NBCOlympics.com aftereffects”, Mr. John Dowdell does a very good job of summarizing some of the knows about the Microsoft / NBC Olympics service. You will want to save the article. I think others will respond to it in the near future. The story is here.
For me, the most interesting point in the write up is this comment:
Microsoft was heard as saying “we’re bringing Olympics to the world”, and only later people realized this was a US-only deal. Linux users were cut out, as were Mac/PPC owners. Then 10% of US broadband folks were cut out atop that. Microsoft would have drawn less criticism were they a little more realistic in setting expectations.
Another critical view of the coverage appears in LiveSide.net’s Web log. That article is here.
When I read this, three thoughts went through my mind:
- The shading of the universality of the Silverlight-based service bothered me. The reality of what was available versus what was suggested to be available illustrates the schism between engineers and marketers in the Microsoft organization.
- The exclusion of Mac and Linux owners is, for me, at odds with Microsoft’s relatively recent emphasis upon “playing well with others.” My Macs sat deaf and blind to the Olympic events I wanted to see. As a result, as a consumer, I was angry. I like table tennis, and I wasn’t going to get up at 4 am and watch to see if the events would be broadcast on “regular” TV. I want table tennis Olympics style my way.
- The strategic implications of the Microsoft information in Mr. Dowdell’s write are significant if he is on the money. Why? SharePoint is positioned as collaboration, content management, search, and the next Microsoft enterprise operating system or some such wild vision. The reality is that SharePoint cannot be equally adept at each of these quite different functionalities. Just as the Olympics programs were not available on the platforms named by Mr. Dowdell, SharePoint will not be the universal slicing and dicing machine the marketers suggest.
I want to pick up the thread of this idea in a subsequent addled goose post. For the moment, please, read Mr. Dowdell’s essay and look at the comments.
Stephen Arnold, August 18, 2008
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One Response to “Microsoft SharePoint: Almost to the Podium”
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“only later people realized this was a US-only deal. Linux users were cut out, as were Mac/PPC owners.”
Can you imagine how many lawsuits NBC would get into if they made it a world-wide coverage? TV stations in other nations who paid to get the the broadcast right would angrily find out they lost ratings because of NBC’s free online coverage. Also how do to insert commercial in there if the audience is from all over the world.
As for Linux, let’s face it: Linux users should have abandoned the ship long time ago when the market share remains under 1%.
PPC MACs. If Apple themselves decide to stop frying egg with that overheat PPC, I guess it’s OK for anyone else to skip it too.
But then coming from JD/ADOBE, you’d expect that kinda nitpicking when Flash is muscled away on the summer grand stage.