1. Integrators and resellers take advantage of clients who lack the expertise, time, and management acumen to get a job done in a cost effective manner during normal work hours
2. Partners, integrators and resellers sell what generates money. Investing in research and development is a PowerPoint or Keynote slide, not a business practice. Clients pay for the resellers and integrators to solve a problem. If the solution works, the integrator or reseller will resell the solution, emphasizing that it is an invention.
3. Integrators and resellers are trying to avoid the “pay to play” model enforced by a number of software giants. A good way to determine if the outfit requires integrators or resellers to pony6 up hard cash for the privilege of selling enterprise software is too look for print advertising in various trade publications.
4. Integrators and resellers use a tie up as an occasion for a news release. A good example is the “Oracle Endeca Getting Started Partner Guide.”

At a recent briefing I gave in New York, I had an occasion to talk to a very energetic investment type. I picked up three signals about the Microsoft SharePoint reseller and partner ecosystem. Like most information floating around after 6 pm in Manhattan, I suspect there is mostly baloney in the observations. But I wanted to snag them before they slipped from my flawed short term memory bank:

First, it seems that Microsoft is not putting much wood behind Fast Search & Transfer technology. I believe the phrase the MBA squirrel used was “end of life.” If true, the $1.2 billion and messy Fast situation may be in the midst of a rethink. What will Microsoft do? With the juicy search companies gobbled up, Microsoft may have to pull some rabbits out of its many hats. Open source, non US search and content processing vendors, making a cake from its own search ingredients, leveraging Powerset and other technologies?

Second, some Microsoft partners are starting to “go off the reservation.” In the free blog, I do not want to mention names. I learned that one prominent Microsoft Certified Partner had quietly embraced non Microsoft technologies. The “quietly” suggests to me that Microsoft could choke off a flow of sales leads if the shift caused big waves. The reason to “go off the reservation” boiled down to the sense that some Microsoft centric shops were starting to demonstrate “fee fatigue.” What do resellers do when revenue from Old Faithful slows, resellers and integrators look for what will sell.

Third, after decades of having a sure-fire business model, some partners and integrators see that alternatives exist and may be worth exploring. Examples include cloud alternatives to on premises Microsoft solutions or – hang on to your hat – open source solutions.

The impact of the lousy financial climate is taking a toll on some Microsoft centric vendors. The toll will be more burdensome going forward. In short, integrators and resellers are in play.

Stephen E Arnold, May 22, 2012

Sponsored by Polyspot

In the post, “Prepare a Robust Adoption Strategy for Your SharePoint Deployment with 7 Tips,” writer Ken Toth stresses that people should be the primary focus of your SharePoint adoption strategy because no matter how great your technology it is the people that make your company succeed.

When describing the list of tips, Toth states:

“Executives need to be visible in their use of SharePoint. Next is getting buy-in from business users because they will drive your business requirements and you need to make sure the end results will meet their needs. Third, influence the organization by forming a core community of successful thought leaders and subject matter experts. Fourth, engage your users by selling the concept and establishing a meaningful connection to its value and benefits. Fifth, offer instructor-based and e-learning training. Sixth, market your SharePoint launch like you would a new product. Finally, promote participation by giving rewards and recognition.”

Looking towards the future, App development is a becoming a very integral part of ensuring a company’s ability to prosper in the 21st century. In order to stay current, SharePoint created the planned SharePoint App Marketplace. The post, “Furuknap Shares Insight on the Expected App Marketplace for SharePoint 2013”

In the referenced article, Furuknap explains:

“In short, the job ad is for a software developer who can help the Visual Studio team build the next generation of tools for SharePoint. The ad, however, reveals more information than I suspect Microsoft intended, and confirms the existence of the new App model, the App Marketplace, simplified HTML and JavaScript, and leveraging Windows Azure and SQL Azure for data, logic, and workflows.”

In the realm of SharePoint troubleshooting, the post “Understand the Difference Between SharePoint Publishing and Collaboration” does an excellent job of fleshing out the details of publishing and collaboration in a way that is easy to digest.

Toth concludes:

“One simple way to get encourage collaboration is by integrating a powerful search feature into your SharePoint system so users can efficiently find and reuse information. The experts at Smartlogic really understand the benefits of metadata. Here you can read about the comprehensive solution, “Tagging information with metadata significantly enhances its findability. Metadata also improves the consistency and quality of the output so content can be repurposed and reused slashing time it takes to create new content.”

Toth is absolutely right. Without third party solutions like Smartlogic, it would be much more difficult to really understand all of the intricacies that come with using SharePoint.

Jasmine Ashton, May 22, 2012

“The Search Genius platform is a powerful search application that enables researchers to use both text and structure searches of reports and technical documents stored using the SharePoint framework and [PerkinElmer's own] E-Notebook system, as well as text searches of the Internet. With the Search Genius platform, researchers can more readily gain broader access to previously difficult-to-access data. This enables greater and more holistic visibility to organization-wide information resources that researchers can then more easily leverage into new and existing projects. Scientists can also save their search results and easily create links and annotations that document their ideas and facilitate collaboration.”

Health care information technology is in the Stone Age. Will this crack the problem of fragmented medical information?

A longstanding leader in the science community, PerkinElmer turns 75 this year. The company is based in Waltham, MA, but has operations around the globe. Their mission statement: “Improving the health and safety of people and the environment.” Let us hope Search Genius is up to the task.

Cynthia Murrell, May 22, 2012

Sponsored by PolySpot

According to the report, Microsoft’s search engine Bing, currently second most popular search engine in the US, accounted for 30% of April’s search queries. Also, in addition to a 5% increase in Bing powered searches, Bing recently revealed that it has plans for a complete website redesign with goals to compete with Google’s Search Plus Your World by making search more social.

The article states:

“Microsoft says the Bing update will introduce “a better way to search.” The update will incorporate personal search results into the search engine’s algorithm. The results will appear in a panel on the side of the page. This includes which “friends might know,” “people who know,” and related activity recently on Facebook. Microsoft announced updates would come slowly. “

As Bing’s search traffic rose last month, Google’s dropped by 3%. While 3% doesn’t seem very drastic, Bing’s new redesign may lead to more competition than we initially predicted.

Jasmine Ashton, May 20, 2012

Sponsored by PolySpot

“According to a blog post, AOL is becoming a sponsor so it can transfer its internal open-source projects to the Foundation, ‘which eliminates the complexity of creating, funding and managing a separate foundation,’ in the words of Erynn Petersen, AOL SVP of Paid Services Engineering. ‘Outercurve sponsorship also will make it simpler for our partners to contribute to AOL-sponsored open source projects,’ Petersen added.”

Foley asked whether the choice had anything to do with last month’s sale of hundreds of AOL patents to Microsoft, and was assured there’s no connection. (By the way, Microsoft is reselling a number of these patents to Facebook. Interesting.)

A 501c(6) non-profit , the Outercurve Foundation is resolved to complement other open source foundations rather than compete with them. It provides organizations with details like software IP management and project development governance in order to encourage collaboration and spur faster results.

Cynthia Murrell, May 16, 2012

Sponsored by PolySpot

“Tips for Maximizing SharePoint For Corporate Communications Success” provides readers with an recap of a recent presentation along with several other resources to supplement the topic including: a PowerPoint presentation, a case study, an article, and a training.

Blogger Ken Toth informs:

“The free resources may be worth checking out if you’re looking to boost communications success in your organization. Maximizing SharePoint to manage your content and communications is no doubt a priority for success.”

Another informative post was “Presentation Recaps from Connect With the Experts SharePoint Day Now Available.” The article recaps a recent SharePoint presentation by Ant Clay where he spoke on SharePoint Performance and Business Intelligence.

After sharing Clay’s highlights from the day, Toth states:

“Stimulating conversation with fellows in the SharePoint community is a great way to participate in continuing education, get new ideas, and to develop a network of colleagues to call on throughout your SharePoint deployment and maintenance process. Slides from the presentations on why SharePoint works and how to govern it are also included if you missed the day’s talk.”

Another helpful article that offers solutions and applications on all versions of SharePoint is “Best Practices and Tips for Using Corasworks and SharePoint to Improve Work Processes.”

Suggested tools that better service the customer include: an app request system, task management and an app catalog.

Toth thinks:

“The best practices may be worth reviewing, especially to get tips for weekly programmatic reviews. We also know that it is best practice to use a powerful search feature to connect your users with the valuable information they need. Look to Smartlogic to enrich your metadata and provide an enhanced search and navigation experience with the Semaphore Content Intelligence Platform.”

Toth is absolutely right. Using a third party solution to solve your SharePoint needs is always an excellent idea for those who are not interested in taking the time and energy necessary to do the research on your own.

Jasmine Ashton, May 15, 2012

Bach compared and contrasted the Xbox and Zune businesses and shared some inside stories during a Northwest Entrepreneur Network event Seattle this morning. The topic was “intrapreneurship” — the buzzword for entrepreneurial projects inside major companies — but as Bach noted, the lessons apply to traditional startups, as well.

But the sentence preceding this paragraph was the kicker:

Former Microsoft executive Robbie Bach led the company’s entertainment division through the rise of the Xbox business, which has become a success, by many measures, after billions of dollars of investment and some major bumps in the road. He also led the division through the launch of the Zune music player, which is “probably universally viewed as less of a success,” as he puts it, charitably.

The write up then focuses on four “lessons.” These confused me because even though the Xbox is allegedly successful, there is the red ring of death meme and the need for data to show that the Xbox has paid off the investment and covers the on going customer support and repair activities.

The first lesson is to focus on a “discontinuity.” This is Peter Drucker stuff. The problem is that there are many discontinuities, so isn’t it necessary to pick the right discontinuity at the right time and execute without investing so much that pay back is tough, if not impossible.

The second lesson is marketing and branding. Okay, but Microsoft seems to be a company making and killing brands with dizzying speed. Windows Live, Windows NT, Zune—what’s the brand logic and marketing strategy behind these moves? Windows RT?

The third lesson is find “partners who want you to be successful.” Partners want to make money. If you have something that will make partners money, then you are on the right track. Partners who stop paying for expensive certifications or quietly add “off the reservation” activities are not partners. These are companies run by executives who need revenue growth. There are lots of potential partners. Which partner is the key question?

The fourth lesson is “capitalize on your competitor’s mistakes.” My view is that this has more to do with picking a discontinuity and acting in a timely manner. Much of the so-called “insight” in technology has more to do with being in the right place at the right time. When the right time shifts and the right place moves to another location, most companies end up in challenging situations. Examples range from Microsoft’s support of legacy code to the stunning work on the Windows Nokia phones.

How do these lessons explain the trajectory of Microsoft search technology. Answer: Not too well.

In short, these are “lessons” which need to be reviewed by a curriculum committee. Just my opinion.

Stephen E Arnold, May 14, 2012

Sponsored by Polyspot

A Framesniffing Attack occurs when a hidden HTML frame loads a target Web site in the hacker’s Web page to mine information about the content and structure of the framed pages. The hacker can then overcome browser securities and read the sensitive information.

As explained in the ITWire.com article:

“Paul Stone, senior security consultant at Context said, “Using Framesniffing, it’s possible for a malicious Web page to run search queries for potentially sensitive terms on a SharePoint server and determine how many results are found for each query. For example, with a given company name it is possible to establish who their customers or partners are; and once this information has been found, the attacker can go on to perform increasingly complex searches and uncover valuable commercial information.”

The problem deals with the X-Frame-Options header that turns off the Web browser framing feature and in SharePoint it is not turned off by default. Microsoft has stated in the next SharePoint version they will set the X-Frame options, but until then, SharePoint gurus, it is up to you to find a solution. If your organization discovers a way to keep its information from prying eyes, you will still need a way to find the data.

Search Technologies implements solutions which are secure and do not impede findability or system performance. For more information, navigate to www.searchtechnologies.com.

Iain Fletcher, May 10, 2012

SearchTechnologies

The post, “Discussion on SharePoint and Social In Light of Harris Interactive Enterprise Social Networking Survey,” discussed the fact that social networking in enterprises is a growing field that is filled with potential.

Jared Spataro of SharePoint offers the company’s point of view on the research:

“it’s not necessarily about all the bells and whistles and new “Facebook-like” features. As it’s pointed out in the Harris Study organizations are looking for functionality like instant messaging, email, video conferencing. Likes, activity streams and microblogging are not top on the list. These are the tools, Spataro says, that people are familiar with, so bring those capabilities into the social software solution and focus on productivity.”

In the realm of SharePoint and social media, “List of Useful Microsoft SharePoint Blogs to Track on RSS,” provides a list of 25 blogs that offer helpful tips, opinions, and news on SharePoint.

When discussing the blogs that he personally refers to from the list, Ken Toth states:

“Many of the blogs on this list are ones we read regularly. SharePoint Joel – SharePoint Land, Laura Rogers @ Wonderlaura, Marc D. Anderson’s Blog – A Management Zealot Speaks Out, and Waldek Mastykarz’s Innovation Matters are four we refer to often. Some that are new to us are SharePoint Dragons, The SharePoint Guys from the UK, and harbar.net. We look forward to checking them out.”

“Make Your Public Facing SharePoint Site Look More Polished With Easy Tips,” advises on ways to make your SharePoint site look more polished and professional by changing the colors/theme and upper left image from the standard template.

Toth states:

“There are many online resources that provide copyright-free images for your use, and the article provides links to a few of them as well as directions for how to change those and the theme. Also, Neal advises that your images should have a transparent background so that it blends seamlessly into your ribbon. The article includes step-by-step directions for this as well.”

For those who are new to social media and web design and would like a more out of the box solution for your SharePoint needs, consider using Smartlogic’s semantic technology solution called the Semaphore Content Intelligence Platform.

Jasmine Ashton, May 8, 2012

In the post, “SharePoint Governance Plan Perceptions Survey Phase One Released by Axceler” we learn that while many companies believe that SharePoint governance is important, almost 40 percent do not have clearly defined governance plans and 9 percent have no plans at all.

Ken Toth excerpts a portion of the article:

“Not only that, 64.9 percent viewed SharePoint as a strategic enterprise platform. It seems more than contradictory that these organizations lack a coherent governance plan, yet view governance as important and SharePoint as a strategic platform. It doesn’t bode well for these companies if they don’t see planning for governance as part of their mission.”

Another noteworthy post that would be beneficial for those using SharePoint in the field is “Improve the SharePoint Experience for Field Personnel Through Best Practices.” According to the summary of the article, there are six best practices for site-based tasks to be completed in the field.

Those best practices are:

“Keep essential information on the same page, display multiple List View Web Parts in a single page view, create a flat site structure and implement enterprise cache management to support offline work, display recent changes to the site, develop search scopes for frequently requested items, and create separate SharePoint sites for different groups of users or products.”

When we are discussing best practices, it is important to also remember that many Sharepoint end users also make the same mistakes. “Top Technical Mistakes to Avoid in Microsoft SharePoint” covers a variety of angles to worth a close look during your deployment process.

When describing the number one blunder the writer highlights the Big Bang Roll Out:

“Someone sends out an email that the new intranet site, My Sites, and collaboration platform are available. Suddenly everyone in the organization comes flooding in, and in the process, they put the entire farm underwater. The servers encounter more load in an hour than they’ll typically encounter in weeks of operation, and a great environment is tarnished by one big email. Rather than doing one big-bang email to everyone, stage your communication over the course of a day or two to even out the load a bit.”

While reading best practice and top mistake articles can help many end users address a multitude of issues that can arise when dealing with Microsoft SharePoint, at times when that just isn’t enough, we recommend that you look into a third party solution like Smartlogic’s out-of-the-box enterprise semantic technology.

Jasmine Ashton, May 1, 2012