Startups Challenge SharePoint
December 15, 2011
Enterprise 2.0 is a term being thrown around the blogosphere to indicate incorporation of social media functionality into workplace software. The leader in enterprise, Microsoft SharePoint, is quite clearly incapable of keeping up in any discussion of enterprise 2.0. Andy McLoughlin, co-leader of the enterprise 2.0 startup, Huddle, offers his insight in, “This 32-Year-Old Entrepreneur is Bent on Beating One of Microsoft’s Largest Businesses.”
McLoughin says,
There’s a huge amount of room to improve upon SharePoint as a content collaboration tool the enterprise. It’s sold as free software, yet any CIO who has tried (and failed) to implement it knows that it’s far too easy to spend many months and hundreds of thousands of dollars getting it ready for deployment. Users generally hate it and most licenses will never be deployed.
We agree. SharePoint at its best is simply a basic platform, or foundation, and functionality is only achieved through potentially costly add-ons for deployment. However, good third party solutions are out there. One is Fabasoft Mindbreeze.
The Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise user interface is based on Web 2.0 technology and combines simplicity with elegance. The operation is self-explanatory. Work just as you are used to. Access your data from anywhere. Also on smartphones and tablets. Elegant design, easy operation. With you wherever you are. Find and access your enterprise and cloud information straight away.
To set itself apart from the newer enterprise startups, Fabasoft has been an up-and-comer in the industry for ten years, having received the KM World Trendsetting Product of the Year four years running. With a track record of anticipation and innovation, Fabasoft Mindbreeze will continue to offer solutions that make sense in a changing technological culture. To fix today’s problems, and work toward tomorrow’s solutions, look at a smart installation like Fabasoft Mindbreeze.
Emily Rae Aldridge, December 15, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Mindbreeze Picks Up Where SharePoint Leaves Off
November 17, 2011
SharePoint 2010 is a widely implemented application, but not one that solves every solution. The issue is explored further in, “SharePoint 2010 collaboration ISVs focus on workflow, analytics.” The author, Jonathan Gourlay, reports that users are increasingly relying on a number of independent software vendors to plug the holes in the service that SharePoint provides.
Mark Gilbert, lead analyst for Gartner Research had this to say:
“’Just because SharePoint is a lot of stuff, it doesn’t mean it’s all good stuff, but a lot of it is,’ said Gilbert, who estimates he’s spoken to 3,000 companies about SharePoint. He compares the platform to a Swiss Army Knife that allows the user to add tools. ‘To make [SharePoint] a real enterprise-class tool, you typically have to pay a lot of attention to the care and feeding of it and you have to add a lot of third-party tools.’”
Here’s the main question: if SharePoint is being advertised as enterprise-class, why do so many users need ISVs to bring it up to that level? The article goes on to argue that the opportunity for vendors to build upon the SharePoint platform is huge.
We argue that one smart and agile solution could single-handedly solve an organization’s enterprise and SharePoint woes. Fabasoft Mindbreeze is getting good feedback regarding its suite of solutions.
“Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise understands you, or to be more precise, understands what the most important information is for you at any precise moment in time. It is the center of excellence for your knowledge and simultaneously your personal assistant for all questions. The information pairing technology brings enterprise and Cloud data together.”
So while experts in the field are saying that system administrators have to hunt and search for several ISVs to supplement their SharePoint implementation, Mindbreeze might save a lot of time and energy with its single easy-to-use solution. It’s definitely worth a second look.
*Disclaimer – Mindbreeze is currently upgrading their website. Links will be checked and if problems arise they will be updated. Thanks for your patience.
Emily Rae Aldridge, November 17, 2011
SharePoint and Its Sometimes Interesting Costs
November 3, 2011
SharePoint is touted as the ultimate solution to content management and collaboration for enterprises. Microsoft, however, never discusses the costs associated with their software, except for how it’s cost effective and overtime will save your business money. But is that true? Redmondmag.com posted an enlightening article about the hidden costs involved in a SharePoint project, “Study: SharePoint Costs High Due to Inadequate Skills.”
A study conducted by the Azaleos Corp. discovered that the average cost to run SharePoint per user is $46/month. Using Microsoft Exchange proved to be cheaper at $15-15/month per user. SharePoint users also cited downtime as the most common problem.
“The downtime mostly stemmed from hardware errors or mistakes made by IT team members. Those problems caused average monthly management costs for SharePoint to double to around $90 per user per month. Almost half (43 percent) of study respondents pointed to “a lack of administrator skills, training, and knowledge as an inhibitor to efficiently leveraging SharePoint.”
SharePoint is still a young piece of software with a manifest destiny for its future. Its problems are many, but there are a lot of third party solutions to resolve them. At the end of the article, Azaleos Corp. advertises it’s AzaleosX app to help increase uptime.
We believe that you may want to take a close look at the cost effective search and content processing solution from SurfRay. Contain costs and improve user satisfaction with one snap in for SharePoint.
Whitney Grace, November 3, 2011
SurfRay
SharePoint Best Practices and Beyond
October 12, 2011
No matter the extent of your search implementation challenges, our team at Search Technologies has the processes and technologies to deliver results.
A series of Best Practices articles for SharePoint Server 2010 by Microsoft TechNet includes an article on the best practices for enterprise search, “Best Practices for Search in SharePoint Server 2010.” The article also applies to Microsoft Search Server and covers everything from the deployment to antivirus policies.
Some useful information is covered; one learns to test the crawling and querying subsystems after changing any configuration or applying updates:
We recommend that you test the crawling and querying functionality of the server farm after you make configuration changes or apply updates. An easy way to do this is to create a temporary content source that is used only for this purpose. To test, we recommend that you crawl ten items — for example .txt files on a file share — and then perform search queries for those files. Make sure that the test items are currently not in the index.
Management also needs to be aware of planning the search topology, planning for capacity and performance, and planning for findability. Users must be able to easily find what they are looking for, and managed properties and scopes will enhance the end-user search experience. You must start with a well-configured infrastructure. Defragmenting the search database after a series of crawls and queries can help with content management.
Overall, it is important to test the subsystems, be prepared, and review the anti-virus policy to avoid any unexpected problems.
For more articles in the series, see Best practices (SharePoint Server 2010).
You will want to tap into the expertise garnered in more than 100 Fast search deployments by our team at Search Technologies. That’s where Search Technologies comes into the spot light. We have more experience than any other firm in implementing search best practices for SharePoint licensees. Contact us at www.searchtechnologies.com.
Iain Fletcher, Vice President, Search Technologies October 12, 2011
Search Technologies is the world’s largest independent provider of search engine expertise, consulting and implementation services.
SharePoint: The New Black?
March 28, 2011
A new season of Project Runway is coming. Will black be the “new” color? Will SharePoint be the new “black”? I learned in Hong Kong that Microsoft is selling tens of thousands of SharePoint licenses each week. With SharePoint the new “black” for corporate fashionistas in Hong Kong and apparently other world capitals, the question of the value of a trendy color is important. I suggest you point your browser at “Measuring the Value SharePoint 2010 Can Bring to Your Organization.”
One of the goslings forwarded this link to me. I scanned the write up and noted that the author is into SharePoint, “smitten” may be a better word. The write up asserts that SharePoint 2010 has the ability to add value to my business by correcting and preventing some common business problems and improving the everyday functionality of my organization.
There is a key assertion; to wit: SharePoint 2010 can improve productivity by speeding up how fast business problems are able to be resolved. The author is convinced that SharePoint allows me to involve fewer people, prevent common mistakes and compare how long it takes to solve problems utilizing SharePoint compared to the time it took before SharePoint solutions were implemented.
And wait. There is more. SharePoint also has the ability to reduce cost by reducing the licensing costs associated with technical support, servers, and helpdesks. By eliminating dual servers you can cut updating costs.
SharePoint, if it is a good fit for your organization, can also help to increase revenue by creating a more productive and time saving sales environment and allowing users to share knowledge and give the organization a more competitive edge. Also, by quickly resolving problems presented by customers creates loyal customers.
Yep, the new black. No problem, but I like a different color. My hunch is that many SharePoint licensees will find a different color of search system essential to enhance basic black.
Stephen E Arnold, March 28, 2011
Freebie
Microsoft Sibling Rivalry: Fast vs SharePoint
January 5, 2011
Have you ever been curious how SharePoint’s competition measures up? The SharePoint Field Note Blog has a post that compares the regular MSS search with the FAST search: “Developing SharePoint 2010 Search Solutions (Fast and SharePoint).” From a basic glance, MSS and FAST searches aren’t that different. They both have service application infrastructure, metadata schema management, crawl scheduling, and scopes, best bets, and synonyms.
“The biggest differences between SharePoint and FAST is FAST’s more robust ability to crawl millions of documents and better relevance in search results. SharePoint search can efficiently crawl and query up to 100 million documents, whereas, FAST can efficiently do the same up to a 500 million documents.”
Has anyone considered that FAST technology might be superior to SharePoint’s technology? What happens when an organization is dealing with 500 million plus one documents? That might be a weakness. The post also lists individual quirks one will encounter when developing custom search solutions, such as FAST doesn’t support SharePoint Search SQL queries. Both have problems when searching with decimal places, which can be overcome based on the program. In the end, which has the better searching solution depends on what you need for your organization.
Whitney Grace, January 5, 2011
SurfRay: Catching the Crest of the SharePoint Wave
May 31, 2010
Editor’s Note: I participated in an email exchange with SurfRay’s management and technical team. I have been tracking the company’s technology for many years. First, I provided some competitive background to the team largely responsible for the Mondosoft product five or six years ago. Then, the Speed of Mind database acceleration and search technology became part of the SurfRay company. I have been tracking vendors who have addressed some of the needs that some Microsoft SharePoint customers discovered. My interests concern content processing, metatagging, and search and retrieval. Today’s SurfRay includes the Ontolica technology as well as the Web site search, analytics, and structured data technologies from Mondosoft and Speed of Mind. I wanted to make certain I was up to speed on what the Copenhagen-based company was doing. The following summary highlights the information I gleaned in my in-depth conversation with SurfRay executives.
SurfRay A/S, based in Copenhagen, has captured significant buzz for its Ontolica product. Microsoft offers many functions, but when it comes to making information easy to access, “basic” SharePoint falls short. Ontolica delivers search and content processing as a snap in. One day, SharePoint content is tough to find. The next day, after Ontolica has been installed, SharePoint content becomes available to users. In fact, installing Ontolica 2010 involved little more than clicking Next, Next, Next… Quite a different approach from the Lego block, assemble-it-yourself approach taken by other vendors.
Highlight shows one click filters for the user’s query.
Torben Ellert, my SurfRay contact point, told me:
Ontolica delivers a powerful solution that clicks into standard SharePoint without any difficulty and typically installing in minutes. Few companies are so focused on being pure Microsoft that they are willing to live with problems when a simple and effective solution exists.
Simple. And SurfRay is growing at a double digit pace.
SharePoint Taxonomy Fairy Dust
April 21, 2010
First, navigate to “SharePoint 2010: Using Taxonomy & Controlled Vocabulary for Content Enrichment”. Second, read the article. Now ask yourself these questions:
- Who sets up the SharePoint taxonomy magic?
- From where does the taxonomy come?
- Who maintains the taxonomy?
- How are inappropriate terms removed from the index and the correct terms applied?
Got your answers. Here are mine:
- A specialist in controlled term lists is needed to figure out the list and then an industrial strength system like the one available from Access Innovations is needed. Once the system is up and running and the term list generated you are ready to tackle SharePoint.
- The taxonomy comes from a method that involves figuring out the lingo of the organization, available term lists, and then knowledge value work. In short, a taxonomy has to be in touch with the organization and the domain of knowledge to which it is applied. Sound like work? It is and most taxonomy problems originate with slap dash methods.
- The taxonomy must be – note the imperative – by a combination of a human and software. New terms come and old terms go. The indexes and the tagged objects must be kept in sync. Humans with software tools perform this work. A taxonomy left to the devices of automated systems, left unchanged, or tweaked by azure chip experts is essentially useless after a period of time.
- Inappropriate terms are removed from the system via a human and software intermediated system. Once the term list is updated, then the process of retagging and reindexing takes places. Muff this bunny and no one can find anything.
Now read the article again. Quite a bit is left out or simply not deemed relevant. My suggestion is to do some thinking about the nature of the user, the specific information retrieval needs, and the expertise required to do the job to avoid wasting time and money.
Like most tasks in search, it is more fun to simplify than to deal from the top of the deck. SharePoint is one of the more interesting systems with which to work. Once the short cuts and half baked approach goes south, you will be ready to do the job correctly. I wonder if the CFO knows what questions to ask to figure out why content processing costs have gone through the roof because of rework, fiddling, and bungee jumping without a cord.
Stephen E Arnold, April 21, 2010
Unsponsored post
Infrastructure Ripple from SharePoint
March 22, 2010
Navigate to Thor Projects and read the article “Infrastructure Ripple Effect – The Story of Servers, Racks and Power.” I have about 48 inches of screen real estate and I needed all of it to read the article. The layout is – in a word – interesting. The point of the write up, in my opinion, is summarized in this passage from the article:
I am reminded that any change creates a ton of little ripples.
When an information technology pro runs into problems with a single server, I wonder what the impact of more massive on premises changes might be.
I thought about Mauro Cardarelli’s “Where Does SharePoint Still Fall Short?” when I thought about adding hardware. He wrote:
Let’s face it; the interface for security management is confusing and cumbersome… even for people who use it every day. What are the consequences? First, you increase the likelihood of security breaches (i.e. showing content to the wrong audience). Second, you increase the likelihood of giving users permissions greater than necessary. Finally, you increase the likelihood of a having a security model that is highly diluted and overly complex. This is probably why the 3rd party market for SharePoint administration has been so strong… someone needs to pay attention to what these folks are doing! But I would argue that this is reactive (versus proactive) management… and things need to be taken one step further.
Hardware and security. Hmmm.
Stephen E Arnold, March 22, 2010
No one paid me to write this article. I will report this to the Salvation Army, an outfit that knows about work without pay. Perhaps the cloud access to SharePoint will obviate the problem?
Microsoft SharePoint: The CMS Killer
March 7, 2010
I read “Interesting Perspective on How SharePoint Is Capturing the ECM Market.” The write up references a post by Lee Dallas who writes the Big Men on Content blog. The idea is that SharePoint works seamlessly with Active Directory. As a result, access and identity are part of the woodwork, and no information technology staff have to futz around so employees can find and manipulate documents, presentations, or spreadsheets. Furthermore, SharePoint put a stake in the heart of enterprise content management systems by adding collaboration to the create it, find it, and use it approach of the traditional content management vendors. SharePoint won because it added these features and did a great job marketing.
I agree that Microsoft SharePoint seems to be everywhere. I also know that Microsoft has pumped Tiger Juice into its partners and resellers to push the SharePoint solution. The marketing message is reinforced with zeal and great prices. Keep in mind that SharePoint requires a dump truck full of other Microsoft software to deliver on the bullet points in the SharePoint sales presentation.
Now my view on this brilliant success is a bit different.
First, Microsoft SharePoint has been around a long time. It is a combination of products, features, functions. When I hear SharePoint, I see the nCompass logo, circa 2001. I also think “content server”. The current incarnation of SharePoint is a bunch of stuff that requires even more Microsoft stuff to work. A number of Microsoft partners have built software to snap into SharePoint to deliver some of the features that Microsoft talks about but cannot get to work. These range from search to content management itself. I wrote about a SharePoint expert who uses WordPress because SharePoint is too much of a headache. Age can bring wisdom, but I think SharePoint’s trajectory has been one that delivers mind boggling complexity. SharePoint consultants love the product. Addled geese like me see it as one more crazy enterprise solution that today’s top managers just pay for reflexively.
Second, the world of content management has become mired in muddy road after muddy road. Some projects make travel by donkey delightful. CMS was created to help outfits without any expertise in producing information post Web pages. Then the Web morphed into an applications platform and the CMS vendors were like the buggy whip manufacturers who thought horse powered carriages were a fad. Big CMS projects almost never worked without application of generous layers of money and custom engineering. At the same time, information management became important due to the fine work of the SEC, Enron, Tyco, and other outfits. Now many organizations have to keep track of documents, not lose them like White House email. It turns out that managing electronic information is pretty difficult. The bubble gum approach of Web CMS won’t work for a nuclear power plan engineering change order. Some folks are discovering this fact that a Web page is different from tracking the versions of a diagram for a cooling pipe in an ageing pressurized water reactor. Imagine that!
Third, companies lack the dough to spend wildly for information technology. The financial challenges of many organizations have not been prevented by fancy systems. Some might argue that fancy systems accelerated the impact of certain financial problems. The reason there are the alleged 100 million SharePoint users is a result of really aggressive marketing and bundling. If SharePoint provides job security, go for it. I have heard this sentiment expressed by an information technology company in Europe on more than one occasion.
The net net of SharePoint is that Microsoft is going to make a great deal of money, but there will be a gradual loss of customers. The reason is partly due to demographics and partly due to what I call SharePoint fatigue. When users discover that the fancy metadata functions don’t work, some will poke around. Metadata must be normalized; otherwise, fancy functions don’t work very well. Fixing metadata is expensive. When a cloud service comes along with the function that normalizes metadata transparently, then SharePoint will be behind an eight ball.
SharePoint, like other Microsoft software, is reaching a point where moving forward becomes more difficult and more expensive. That’s the signal for outfits like Google to strike. The death of CMS has given SharePoint a good run. Now that SharePoint may be difficult to scale, stabilize, and extend, SharePoint becomes catnip for Googzilla. Just my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, March 7, 2010
No one paid me to write this. Since I mention Microsoft, I think I have to report non payment to the many SharePoint fans at the Department of Defense.
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