Sharepoint Moss 2007 Pros & Cons by Toby Ward, Prescient Digital Media

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Toby Ward, Prescient Digital Media

SharePoint (MOSS 2007) Pros & Cons

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Toby Ward

Founder, CEO, Chief Blogger, Prescient Digital Media Internet & intranet management consultants We build highly effective websites & intranets

Clients include:

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History Lesson

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Microsoft Sharepoint

Windows Sharepoint Services (WSS)Windows Sharepoint Services (WSS)

•Basic document management (DM) & collaboration•Free download if you have a Windows Server license

Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007 (MOSS)

Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007 (MOSS)

•Web development, server, and portal services platform with more advanced DM, collaboration & CMS•Separate server product, also requires MS SLQ Server

History – First versionsSharepoint Portal Server 2001 / WSS 1.0 Initial versions based on Exchange ‘Web Storage

System’ (WSS) version 1 Portal Server easy to setup & configure (limited

options) Good ‘workgroup’ level intranet portal Introduced MS ‘web parts’ (non-standard compliant

portlets for displaying content)

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History – Second generationWindows Sharepoint Portal Server 2003 / WSS 2.0

Less easy to configure, more customizable Focus on “Portal Server” – simple document

management features from original removed Move away from WSS to SQL Server More templates for ‘free’ Sharepoint Services Integration between WSS and CMS

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History – Current generationOffice Sharepoint Server 2007 / WSS 3.0

Dropped ‘Portal’ – added ‘Office’ Re-instated DM (& basic records management) Integrated MS CMS Server leverages WSS to build out multiple sites Added Enterprise Search as a focus Blogs, wikis, MySites & 40+ other free templates

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MOSS today

Sharepoint technologies WSS – freebie, for smaller workgroups & intranet sites MOSS – marketed as platform, ECM, Portal MOSS Search – part of overall off search offering MS .Net development platform (SP Studio) Forms Server (InfoPath) – forms rendering &

processing Business Intelligence (Excel Services) – dashboards &

KPI monitoring

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WSS - Pros

Free! (If you have a MS environment & a Windows server 2003 licences)

Good collaborative add on for heavy Outlook (‘meeting workspace’) or Office (‘document workspace’) users

40 free templates allow for rapid customisation of the OOB product

Further customizable if .Net / ASP skill set available

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WSS - Cons

Workgroup level solution only Very basic DM, search, & no CMS Very MS centric – browser compatibility still not

100% In large enterprises, can be good for local

collaboration but adds silo’s & brings chaos to overall info. mgmt. & enterprise wide collaboration

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MOSS 2007 Overview Collaboration focused portal server which Microsoft

says can be used in many scenarios:

© 2008 Content and Code's visual representation of the SharePoint Platform

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Source: TheCodeProject

.com

MOSS 2007 Services

1. Portal Good integration with other MS tools, such as

Active Directory, MS Office Personalisation centered on MySites Simple but limited interface Increasing third party Web Parts and integrations More simple than deluxe solutions from IBM,

Oracle

> CON: Limited personalization, integration, and bundled applications when compared to others.

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2. Collaboration

Out of the box facilities for sharing lists, calendars, etc.

Good integration with Exchange for calendars, task lists

Very simple Blog and Wiki templates Integration with Instant Messaging Team Sites (same as WSS) & MySites > PRO: Real strength is inherent in Team Sites, site

creation under Site Collections

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3. Content Management

Very simple CMS, but not advanced ECM Very simple document management, via

‘Document Libraries’ is simplistic and basic (but 80-90% of what most orgs. need)

Simplistic records management (RM) No native Digital Asset Management Conversion of Word to HTML adds usual verbose

MS code etc> CON: Comparitvely weak when compared to

other ECM solutions

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4. Business Intelligence

Marketed as “BI for the rest of us” Centered on publishing Excel sheets More complex scenarios requires Excel server

components, BizTalk Server, etc. MS Performance Management Server which can be

accessed via Sharepoint portal and provides balanced scorecards, dashboards etc

> CON: Not really BI, but has the potential when you buy other products

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5. Business Process

MOSS provides forms and integration to Windows Workflow

MOSS as a .Net development platform and front end

Full business process solutions would require BizTalk Server, possibly InfoPath, Visio, Sharepoint Designer, Visual Studio, etc.

> PRO: Strong forms capabilities

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6. Search

Puts just as much emphasis on people as on documents or pages

Easy to customise query and results pages Search includes ‘People’ search as standard However, not universally well received Enterprise search (for Enteprise License) Web Parts for FAST (& other search engines)

> CON: MS bought FAST & integrates with other search engines... (confidence in their product?)

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Search - versions23

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Templates / Design

40+ free templates My Sites Team Site Board of Directors Business Process Reporting Knowledge Base Discussion database Competitive analysis worksite ...

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My Site

Team Site

Template examples - BPR 28

Template – Board of Directors29

Template – Knowledge Base 30

HedKandi31

SpeakTech32

ShareView33

Hawaiian Air34

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What the experts say...

Expert quotes:

“MOSS does a lot of things, but does very few things very well.”

Shawn Shell, Consejo Inc., author of the CMSWatch “The SharePoint Report”

>

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Expert quotes:

“Though it covers a broad spectrum of capabilities, MOSS 2007 is not yet a full enterprise content management (ECM) system. Organizations requiring advanced content management capabilities and process-centric applications will need to augment their capabilities with partner offerings, or deploy MOSS 2007 alongside an ECM system.”

Gartner, “Five Best Practices for Deploying SharePoint”

>

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Expert quotes:

“MOSS is very good for very good in smaller, workgroup environments (it’s not traditionally very good for 5,000 or 10,000 concurrent users).”

Alan Pelz-Sharpe, CMSWatch

>

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Expert quotes:

“MOSS is very good for very good in smaller, workgroup environments (it’s not traditionally very good for 5,000 or 10,000 concurrent users).”

Alan Pelz-Sharpe, CMSWatch

>

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Expert quotes:

“Without proper architecture and governance, I can guarantee you that SharePoint will fail.”

Bob Mixon, President of Mixon Consulting

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Expert quotes:

“The software's Swiss Army knife approach helps companies create more useful intranets, set up document sharing, offer blogs and wikis, and build a richer online company directory. But SharePoint's feature sprawl can be part of the problem”

Information Week columnist Nicolas Hoover

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Expert quotes:

“We don't believe that MOSS presents a good fit for most E-Business scenarios or enterprise wide deployments in large organizations. Instead consider MOSS for department-level collaboration or intranet scenarios in mid-market organizations already using Microsoft extensively.”

Janus Boye, BoyeIT, Enterprise Portals Report – CMSWatch

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MOSS 2007 – CMSWatch view43

Source: CMSWatch Enterprise

Portals Report V3.0

MOSS 2007 – CMSWatch view44

Source: CMSWatch Enterprise

Portals Report V3.0

Overall ProsSubject to the specific needs of each client.... A good fit for clients heavily invested in MS

infrastructure and .NET (custom .NET development) A good collaborative workspace product for Team

Sites and MySites Simple, entry level WCM & records management Potential with added investment for BI and BPM Search also maybe ‘good enough’

> IDEAL: small company of 100-5000 needing a collaboration based portal in a .NET environment

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Overall Cons “Jack of all trades and master of none (little)” Poor functionality and applications compared to

others (simplistic content management, DM & RM) Limited ‘out of the box’ experience but really a

development platform for anything above basics Limited personalization Search is questionable at best

> CAUTION: Potential for unmanaged proliferation without careful planning & governance; not a large enterprise solution unto itself

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Additionally... Very expensive customization & additional licensing

costs for Forms (InfoPath), BI and BPM modules Lack of flexibility in IA, accessibility and taxonomies Custom look-and-feel requires time and an

experienced developer which might not be supported by MS

Poor documentation & no clear future path (details on Office 14 starting to emerge)

> NOTE: Requires heavy investment in MS products & is not truely SOA

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CMS and alternatives

MOSS 2007 – CMS integrations Ektron CMS 4000 Connector is part of standard offering, allows MOSS docs to be sent to Ektron CMS sites

EpiServer CMS 5 Connector allows MOSS users to send content to CMS 5 based sites

Ptools S5 .Net framework integration of web 2.0 tools as well as base CMS

Sitecore Full bi-directional integration with MOSS and use of Word as editing environment

Alterian (formerly MediaSurface) “Use the collaboration capabilities to compile list data & display it in relevant formats via CMS sites.”

OpenText RedDot

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CMS alternatives for InternetSubject to the needs of the organization: Vignette Interwoven (Autonomy) Percussion Ektron Sitecore FatWire Day Liferay

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ECMS Integrations

EMC Content Management & Archiving Division (ex-Documentum)

Web Parts for Documentum repository, eRoom and ECIS federated search Archiving Services for Sharepoint Records Management integration

OpenText LiveLink Content Lifecycle Management for MOSS2007 Legal Information Management, MOSS edition Case Management Framework, MOSS edition

IBM Filenet “Users can stay in the familiar Microsoft environment for document activities while using IBM

FileNet P8 enterprise content management capabilities.”

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ECMS Alternatives

EMC’s CMA offerings (Documentum) IBM Content Manager & FileNet OpenText Livelink & Hummingbird Oracle Universal Content Management (Stellant) Vignette Interwoven (Autonomy)

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Portal & collaboraton (2.0)

Portal & Collaboration AlternativesHigh end ‘enterprise portal’ software IBM WebSphere Oracle Webcenter (BEA Aqualogic) LifeRay (integrated with Alfresco)

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Portal & Collaboration AlternativesCollaboration focused software: Lotus Quickr EMC eRoom / Magellan (eRoom replacement) Jive software Clearspace Openroad Communications ThoughtFarmer Sixapart MoveableType or WordPress MediaWiki or SocialText or Confluence

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Search alternatives to MOSS

Autonomy (has integrations with MOSS) Microsoft’s FAST (has integrations with MOSS) Endeca COVEO Vivisimo Google (for external websites)

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Intranet 2.0 Global Study Of those using social media on the intranet, 47% are

using SharePoint 17% use MediaWiki 16% use WordPress 13% use Confluence

> 561 participant organizations world-wide

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Intranet 2.0 Global Study

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ROI 52% of organizations using Web 2.0 achieved Best-

in-Class performance (5% didn’t) (Aberdeen Group)

Companies using Web 2.0 tools achieved 18% increase in engagement (1% of those that didn’t) (Aberdeen Group)

Sabre has already attributed $500k in savings to their employee social networking tool (Sabre)

Cisco attributes $millions in savings to their wikis (Cisco)

Employees with the most extensive digital networks are 7% more productive than their colleagues (MIT)

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Additional reading & resources:Reading IntranetBlog.com (Toby) The SharePoint Report (CMSWatch.com) blogs.MSDN.com/sharepoint (MOSS team blog)

Learning www.Microsoft.com/SharePoint/learning

Consulting Help The SharePoint (MOSS) Plan http://www.prescientdigital.com/services/intranet

%20services/the-sharepoint-plan

Toby Ward, President, Prescient Digital Mediatoby@prescientdigital.comwww.PrescientDigital.comwww.IntranetBlog.comwww.Twitter.com/TobyWardwww.Facebook.com (search “Intranet Global Forum”)

416.986.2226

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