Bearing with the Hassles of SharePoint
February 23, 2012
Forrester’s latest report on SharePoint 2010 remarks that the platform’s strengths outweigh its weaknesses, providing enough business value to overcome the hassles. Toby Ward comments on the Forrester report in, “If You Can Afford It, SharePoint May be Worth the Hassles.”
Ward disagrees, recommending each organization evaluate whether or not SharePoint is the right solution for their situation:
While the power and feature set of SP 2010 is undeniable, it turns out it is more expensive, more complicated and fails to live up to a number of key expectations. It is, however, a vast improvement over 2007, and is particularly more so for business users such as corporate communications, marketing and HR, who rely more heavily on enterprise content management, collaboration, and portal features.
In his pro/con list, Ward remarks that a major weak point of SharePoint 2010 is its mobile access problems on a variety of platforms. One solution that provides excellent mobile access is Fabasoft Mindbreeze.
Read more about how their Fabasoft Mindbreeze Mobile solution compliments an existing enterprise infrastructure:
Fabasoft Mindbreeze Mobile makes company data available on all mobile devices . . . You can act independently and freely – yet always securely. Irrespective of what format the data is in. Full functionality: the display of the search results is homogenous to the tried and tested web client in terms of clear design and intuitive navigation . . . Existing access rights to company-internal documents and data remain maintained in the view via the mobile client. The user only receives information for which he/she has access rights.
While some organizations may suffer through the idiosyncracies of SharePoint, there are third-party solutions that work with SharePoint to greatly improve the user experience. Fabasoft Mindbreeze is a strong contender, and a great place to start if your organization wants to improve its enterprise usability.
Emily Rae Aldridge, February 23, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Protected: Spend a Saturday in the Big Easy Discussing SharePoint
February 22, 2012
Is SharePoint Being Shunned?
February 22, 2012
SharePoint’s widespread adoption is a fact that no one contests, but The Running Librarian asks us to consider, “Are Employees Rejecting SharePoint?” SharePoint might be up and running in an organization, but is it really being used, embraced by the work force?
The Running Librarian has this to say:
Sam (Marshall) suggests that a major reason for the failure of SharePoint is that the way individuals interact with SharePoint is different from a traditional intranet. On SharePoint there is an expectation that users will be active participants rather then just passive users. Sam also points out that SharePoint is inherently complicated.
The combination of an inherently complicated infrastructure and a requirement that users be active participants is just too demanding for most users. An enterprise solution must be more easily adoptable and inherently natural to the end user in order to be successful.
Fabasoft Mindbreeze makes an effort to provide an enterprise solution that is efficient and sophisticated but also easily adoptable and intuitive for the end user. Mindbreeze routinely receives accolades for their products including, “Mindbreeze Named to KMWorld’s 100 Companies That Matter In Knowledge Management.” The press release highlighted just some of the solution’s strengths.
Fabasoft Mindbreeze enables corporate information access. Only one search query is needed to clearly display search results and related information, even for complex topics. Each item from the hit list can be opened in preview mode which, in addition to document content and the most important meta data (author, date of creation, subject and topic etc) shows all e-mail attachments. The existing access rights are checked for each query, ensuring individual adherence to corporate access restrictions.
If your organization is struggling with SharePoint, try adding Fabasoft Mindbreeze to see if both efficiency and user satisfaction can be improved.
Emily Rae Aldridge, February 22, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
2012 PLM Innovation Congress Demonstrates Global Focus on New Strategies
February 22, 2012
As technology continues to grow and the world’s economies struggle to survive the need for companies around the globe to become more efficient in every stage of development increases. Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) claims to do just that by offering products and platforms that incorporate every stage of development, streamlining the process and saving significant amounts. A recent article, Aras Sponsors PLM Innovation Congress 2012, on Virtual Strategy Magazine, reports of PLM giant, Aras’, sponsorship of the 2012 PLM Innovation Congress, one of the world’s premier gatherings of PLM knowledge.
As the article explains of Aras and the Innovation Congress,
“Aras, the leading enterprise open source Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) software solution provider, today announced that the company will sponsor the 2012 PLM Innovation Congress in Munich, Germany. Attendees at the PLM Innovation Congress will have the opportunity to see the Aras Innovator® suite and learn first-hand about the power of Aras’s advanced PLM platform from Aras corporate community members in several presentations and exhibits.”
While PLM innovations are raining from the sky it seems to many companies forget to focus on the problem of data. PLM helps solve many problematic issues found in the design and production process but will ultimately fail if PLM does not incorporate the practice of finding, accessing and sharing data. Product data access should be the focus of any PLM platform adopted and with leaders like Inforbix companies can eliminate waste and continue to innovate.
Catherine Lamsfuss, February 22, 2012
Protected: SharePoint Users Break Security Breaches
February 21, 2012
CIOs Focusing on Enterprise and Reducing IT in 2012
February 21, 2012
As we move six weeks into 2012, we wonder what companies are focusing on this year when it comes to technology. Gartner, an information technology research and advisory company, took on the task of polling over 2000 CIOs to answer that question. The results were discussed in Technology is ‘Amplifying’ the Enterprise, but Diminishing IT.”
Budget is still in the forefront this year and “the continued poor economy is causing many global IT budgets to remain relatively flat for the foreseeable future.” Mark McDonald, group vice president for Gartner Executive Programs and Gartner Fellow, explains that:
“Technology’s role in the enterprise is increasing, but this does not mean, that the role of the IT organization is increasing… CIOs concentrating on IT as a force of operational automation, integration and control are losing ground to executives who see technology as a business amplifier and source of innovation.”
The top ten priorities for 2012 are:
- Analytics and business intelligence.
- Mobile technologies.
- Cloud computing – SaaS, IaaS, PaaS
- Collaboration/workflow technologies.
- Legacy modernization.
- IT management.
- CRM
- ERP applications
- Security
- Virtualization.
We are not surprised to see mobile technology climbing towards the top. Software companies are regularly creating reliable and affordable mobile apps. Inforbix recently released an iPad app that allows users to search for CAD and product data on-the-go. We would not be surprised if mobile technology captured the top spot in 2013.
Jennifer Wensink, February 21, 2012
Using SharePoint Effectively: Simple Tips for your Users
February 21, 2012
As a follow up to the popular, “7 Ways to Use SharePoint Effectively,” the SharePoint Engine Blog published, “7 More Tips for SharePoint Success.” The brief list of tips are full of handy and effective ways to keep your business processes and business intelligence on track, mainly through simple, yet efficient document management features.
Some of the SharePoint Engine tips include opening up documents to collaborators and training all staff to do likewise. This will contribute to the sense of teamwork and get communication and ideas flowing. During training, include a how-to on restoring previous document versions to eliminate the time spent on re-writing or re-constructing content that has already been built. And add some flexibility to the work environment:
Allow for telecommuting for specific tasks, such as training. It’s easy to set up documents and other training materials that can be pulled from anywhere that gives you access to the web. This lets those who are sick at home stay up on work, cuts cost during training, and gives you an additional incentive by which to retain your top talent.
Building a sense of teamwork and collaboration among your users will improve the use and adoption of SharePoint capabilities, which will lead to idea development and collaboration in pursuit of your business goals. To get the most out of your SharePoint and enterprise search investments, look to Fabasoft Mindbreeze.
The new release of Mindbreeze displays a simple and easy to navigate search feature with index tabs that break down search results in specific groups and topics. With this feature, users can immediately see what documents contain their search term and in what context it is mentioned, meaning a fast search and find experience. Daniel Fallmann of Mindbreeze explains the search capabilities:
It is our goal to tame the information overload. Through semantics and relevance you don’t just get exact results, but also a better overview. If you are searching for files, for example, you will also find relevant documents and not just search result hits that contain the search term.
Check out the full suite of products at Mindbreeze to find the solution for your document collaboration needs.
Philip West, February 21, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Protected: FAST Search for SharePoint Needs to Be Babied
February 20, 2012
Five Fundamentals to Remember for your SharePoint Intranet Development
February 20, 2012
If you are considering a SharePoint intranet deployment in your organization, you may want to read James Robertson’s, “Don’t Ask Staff What Features They Want on a New SharePoint Intranet.” Robertson points out that staff may often be unfamiliar with SharePoint capabilities and unsure how to articulate what functions they need in the farm to enable new ways of working. Instead, Robertson provides five fundamental approaches for determining your new SharePoint intranet functionalities, one being how to understand staff needs through an effective intranet needs analysis.
Other fundamentals to remember include understanding the patterns of work in your organization, developing a common definition of what SharePoint is among all stakeholders, using other organization’s intranets as a guide for what works (and what does not), and starting with a simple, easy to navigate intranet.
And the take away point for your intranet planning,
Most of all, don’t fall into the trap of starting with SharePoint features, and working back to the project scope. Even with the best will the world, it’s easy to get caught up in technology discussions and decisions, losing sight of the overall objectives and outcomes.
Robertson’s points are all sound advice for embarking into the next phases or your organization’s development in the enterprise search environment. Asking the right questions will help ensure that limited project resources are spent on the key aspects rather than unnecessary functionalities that will only complicate the system.
A third party solution, like Fabasoft Mindbreeze, can also help you connect the dots in your SharePoint adoption. The Fabasoft Folio Connector integrates all your business information from the intranet, Cloud, internet, and knowledge portals in the corporate-wide search, while maintaining your strict access rights. With Mindbreeze, users can easily search and reuse information from documents, contacts, projects, Wiki articles, conference agendas, and more.
Philip West, February 20, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Japanese PLM Market is Growing
February 20, 2012
Product lifecycle management (PLM) is spreading rapidly across the globe. The Asian market has seen some of the quickest and most significant growth over the past few years. Recently, TransWorld News took a look at the Product Lifecycle Management Market in Japan 2010-2014 – Market Research Report and continued growth is expected.
Cloud computing has lead to increased adoption of PLM. The TransWorld News report focuses onJapan“and covers the vendor landscape of the PLM software market vendors and a corresponding detailed analysis of the top four vendors.”
“Our analysts forecast the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) market in Japan to grow at a CAGR of 4.75 percent over the period 2010–2014. One of the key factors contributing to this market growth is the need for reduced product development costs. The PLM market inJapanhas also been witnessing the emergence of rent-based PLM solutions inJapan. However, the emerging threat from increasing counterfeit and open source solutions could pose a challenge to the growth of this market.”
The key vendors that currently dominate the Japanese landscape are Dassault Systèmes SA, Siemens PLM Software, Autodesk Inc., and Parametric Technology Corp. However, watch for smaller companies to shake up the Asian market in the near future. Companies like Inforbix are finding their stride globally. With software that is innovative and affordable, they will be able to compete with the big boys. We look forward to watching them span the globe.
Jennifer Wensink, February 20, 2012
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
