SharePoint, Criticism, and a Rigid Microsoft Wizard
June 28, 2009
I am not sure what a Fierce Media is, but it ran a story that frightened me. Addled geese are easily startled as you know. I think of the poem in which a young girl who dies comes alive when she chases geese “who cried in goose, ‘Alas’. The headline for the SharePoint “brown study” was: “SharePoint Director Remains Bloodied but Unbowed.”
Here are some selected fang-like phrases from the Fierce write up:
- “Often-maligned content management tool”
- “Microsoft claims 100 million [SharePoint] licenses, but even if that number is exaggerated…”
- “Coopetition” to “fill in the [SharePoint] gaps”
- “When it comes to document management, Finn [Microsoft wizard] says that might not have as comprehensive an offering as say EMC Documentum…”
- “Finn admits that they are lacking in this area, but says channel partners make up for the gap.”
- “The whole issue of SharePoint governance is definitely a pain point…”
You get the idea. Fierce Media certainly makes me think that SharePoint has more rough edges that smooth, slick edges.
For me the most interesting parts of the story were this statement:
Finn understands that Microsoft is a target, but he defends his product (just as you would expect) and he points out that they were offering MySites, a collaboration environment, in SharePoint 2003 before Facebook even existed, but it didn’t get any attention because it was so ahead of its time. Perhaps so, but he’s certainly satisfied with his market share and he can always point to that. With that kind of presence, everyone has to take SharePoint seriously, and frankly it would be crazy to ignore it.
And, second, there was zero reference to enterprise search. Search is a big deal, and I did not find one single mention of the free SharePoint search, the search tool that runs out of gas at 50 million documents, and the highly publicized Microsoft Fast ESP solution. After spending $1.23 billion, starting a special Web site, and creating a Web log for the product prior to Mr. Ballmer’s stream of commentary about the importance of search, I expected something about SharePoint search. I came away from the write up with more concerns than before.
Stephen Arnold, June 28, 2009
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