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2015 SharePoint and Office 365 State of the Market Survey White Paper Prepared by: Concept Searching

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Martin Garland President +1 703 531 8567 [email protected]

July 29, 2015

© 2015 Concept Searching

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http://www.conceptsearching.com/

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2015 SharePoint and Office 365 State of the Market Survey White Paper

© 2015 Concept Searching 1

About the Research

The SharePoint and Office 365 State of the Market Survey was conducted from November 2014 to March 2015, and 432 unique surveys were completed by organizations that currently have one or more versions of SharePoint in use or are using Office 365 in a hybrid or cloud environment.

The survey was undertaken to determine the current SharePoint infrastructure, application priorities, the use of metadata, and the SharePoint managed metadata service. An additional objective was to determine the current or projected use of Office 365 and associated applications.

The questions were of multiple choice or select all that apply type, therefore the percentages do not add up to 100%. For the sake of simplicity, the percentages were rounded either up or down. In some cases, the authors had to analyze the responses to dig more deeply into the reasons for the responses. These analyses are purely the opinion of the authors.

The survey itself was made available via the Concept Searching website, and participants were reached via social postings and news items. The survey was not sent to the Concept Searching client base or prospects as it was felt those responses could skew the results. This was done to further ensure unbiased results from a random group of participants who chose to answer the survey. Best efforts have been made to ensure neutrality in the analysis of the results of the survey, and that it is void of Concept Searching product information.

Thank You to Participants

Concept Searching would like to sincerely thank all respondents to the survey. Their insight is invaluable and helps us, as a vendor, to understand the key challenges organizations are facing. We appreciate their time and input. As a customer focused organization, the results have enabled us to gain an understanding of the current priorities and challenges these organizations are facing as well as the intended plans to use cloud based products to achieve business advantages.

Thank You to Market Experts, Vendors, and Analysts

Market experts, vendors, and analysts have been referenced in this White Paper to provide additional insight. All references are noted. We certainly hope we have not crossed the boundaries, and sincerely appreciate their perspective and knowledge in contributing to this White Paper.

Caveat

This White Paper is based on a survey of SharePoint and/or Office 365 organizations. Although Office 365 is quite robust and the undisputed leader in the field, the goal of the paper was to be as honest and straightforward as possible discussing benefits and drawbacks that would seem to impact Office 365 adoption. From the responses, the authors are responsible for drawing conclusions. Opinions expressed are solely attributed to the authors. In most cases, these are challenges and limitations surrounding the cloud environment, not specific to Microsoft.

Feedback is welcome. Please direct any comments to Carla Mulley, Vice President of Marketing, at [email protected]




Table of Contents About the Research ........................................................................................1

Thank You to Participants .................................................................................. 1

Thank You to Market Experts, Vendors, and Analysts ....................................... 1

Introduction ..................................................................................................4

Environment ..................................................................................................5

Version of SharePoint as an Enterprise Platform .............................................. 5

Migration Activities in the Past Twelve Months ................................................ 7

Migration Plans in the Next Twelve Months ..................................................... 8

Migration to SharePoint 2016 ........................................................................... 9

Metadata Tagging ........................................................................................ 10

Satisfaction with Metadata Tagging ................................................................ 11

Managed Metadata Service and the SharePoint Term Store .......................... 12

Applications Using Term Sets .......................................................................... 13

Metadata Driven Workflows ........................................................................ 14

Applications Using Workflow ....................................................................... 15

Enterprise Search ......................................................................................... 16

Current Enterprise Search Engine .................................................................... 18

Changes to Enterprise Search Engine in Six Months ....................................... 19

Changes to Enterprise Search Engine in Twelve Months ................................ 20

The Cloud .................................................................................................... 22

Cloud Concerns ................................................................................................ 22

Office 365 and Office 365 Applications ......................................................... 25

Use of Office 365 .......................................................................................... 26

Use of a Different Cloud Solution .................................................................... 27

Use of OneDrive for Business .......................................................................... 28

Use of Delve ..................................................................................................... 30

Use of Yammer ............................................................................................ 32

Office 365 Applications Summary.................................................................... 34

High Priority Applications ............................................................................. 35

Application Priorities ................................................................................... 36

Summary ..................................................................................................... 37

Appendix A – Priorities by Application .......................................................... 39

Enterprise Metadata Repository ..................................................................... 39



Content Management...................................................................................... 39

Records Management ...................................................................................... 39

Information Governance ................................................................................. 40

Migration ......................................................................................................... 40

Enterprise Search ............................................................................................. 40

Content Management...................................................................................... 41

Collaboration – Internal/External .................................................................... 41

Content Lifecycle Management ....................................................................... 41

eDiscovery, Litigation Support, FOIA ............................................................... 42

Text Analytics ................................................................................................... 42

Information Security ........................................................................................ 42

Social Tagging................................................................................................... 43

About Concept Searching ............................................................................. 44

References ................................................................................................... 45



Introduction

The survey was conducted from November 2014 to March 2015, and Concept Searching received 432 responses from SharePoint organizations and organizations that are currently using, or plan to use Office 365. Although the survey sought to determine how SharePoint organizations were planning for the future, on a deeper level it sought to identify the key organizational drivers in leveraging SharePoint to develop and deploy intelligent metadata enabled solutions that capture and leverage enterprise metadata. A significant number of organizations are at the beginning of the metadata maturity model and have yet to leverage metadata to improve business outcomes. The questions covered a wide variety of probable application and environmental challenges, and the responses solicited provided a framework to rank those challenges organizations are seeking to solve.

The second objective was to understand the organizational view, acceptance level, and readiness to use Office 365, either in a hybrid environment or solely in the cloud. The results indicated both surprising and not so surprising answers. Office 365 was released in 2011, and has enjoyed enormous growth. Microsoft has spent considerable energy in the rapid addition of products and features to gain a competitive market advantage. In many initiatives, Microsoft has succeeded. The cloud will be the future, and we are currently at the beginning of a long road to exceed the functionality and improve the infrastructure currently available in on-premises systems, regardless of platform. Although Office 365 currently leads the way, competition from companies such as Google, Alfresco, M-Files, and Huddle, plus the big players, including Xerox, IBM, Hyland, Lexmark, and OpenText, are all on the playing field for document management and ECM cloud solutions, although currently Microsoft is in no danger of losing its wide margin in the competitive arena.

Microsoft has also made blunders along the way. Despite the often negative opinion expressed in independent SharePoint surveys, these organizations, for better or worse, are wed to SharePoint and reluctant to change. The inclusion of SharePoint Online, in many ways, muddies the waters as organizations must now evaluate their long term plans for SharePoint and Office 365, rather than making a cloud based application decision that will address organizations’ specific needs, such as collaboration, document management, or business social applications. In many cases, these organizations don’t need the full functionality of Office 365. Microsoft has made the decision to develop Office 365 as the most comprehensive solution for the cloud. In other words, be all things to all people. Based on survey responses, savvy organizations are and will continue to evaluate non-Microsoft cloud solutions to meet very specific needs, as opposed to the all-inclusive approach. It appears from survey results that Microsoft SharePoint clients may potentially remove the SharePoint factor from the decision making process, to achieve an ‘apples to apples’ comparison of competitive products that specifically address cloud as well as on-premises requirements. This is illustrated in the number of SharePoint organizations straying from the fold to utilize competitive search products.

The survey itself was quite comprehensive in the questions asked, and took a detailed approach to obtain specific feedback regarding Office 365 application offerings. For SharePoint on-premises organizations, it covered a wide variety of topics including the environment, application priorities, and the use of SharePoint. In many cases, as with all surveys, the answers revealed even more questions that could have been asked. It is left to the authors and readers to interpret the answers and seek to understand the viewpoint of the organizations and how the responses relate to improving business processes.

https://www.google.com/work/apps/business/

http://www.alfresco.com/

https://www.m-files.com/en

https://www.huddle.com/

http://docushare.xerox.com/

http://www-03.ibm.com/software/products/en/filecontmana

https://www.onbase.com/

http://www.lexmark.com/en_us/products/software/content-management/document-management.html

http://www.opentext.com/



Environment

The following questions were used to determine the current environment of organizations, and the migration paths, if any, these organizations have planned or completed. Support for SharePoint 2010 will end in the last quarter of 2015, and active movement was seen to migrate to SharePoint 2013. Based on Concept Searching’s 2014 SharePoint and Office 365 Metadata Survey results, the SharePoint community is typically reluctant to become an early adopter and it appears organizations wait at least two years to migrate after a new release is made available.

Version of SharePoint as an Enterprise Platform

Which of the following are you currently using as your primary enterprise platform? Indicate if you will be using SharePoint 2016, as well as which version you are using now.

This question was to assist us in obtaining a starting point for the SharePoint infrastructure in place, the version, and interest in SharePoint 2016 and Office 365. What was encouraging was the number of organizations that migrated from SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010, 51%. SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2013 appear to be almost split in usage. A rather high percentage continues to use SharePoint 2007, 17%, but has dropped from last year’s percentage of 27%. The use of a specific version is highly variable and may be based on the customization, specific applications, and infrastructure dependencies that are currently in place. Many organizations are running more than one version of SharePoint to support a specific application that, for whatever reason, can’t be moved. Obviously cost, effort, and time must be considered before migrating.

Microsoft has announced that the beta version of SharePoint 2016 will be available in quarter 4 of 2015, with the general release estimated to be available quarter 2 of 2016. The 21% of respondents who indicated that they would move to SharePoint 2016 does not seem overwhelming, but it is anticipated that Microsoft will continue to announce new features and functionality as soon as they are available, which may influence organizations to migrate earlier.

Until organizations can assess the reasons, costs, and benefits to move to SharePoint 2016, we do not expect much movement in rapid adoption. Based on previous surveys, organizations are typically reluctant to upgrade SharePoint when it is initially made available.

“What was somewhat surprising was the number of organizations still using SharePoint 2010, 51%. SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2013 appear to be almost split in usage.”

http://www.conceptsearching.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/downloads/whitepapers/CS_SharePoint_Office365_Survey.pdf




According to the 2014 Survey, 50% of organizations were using SharePoint 2013, 76% SharePoint 2010, and 27% SharePoint 2007. This year saw a dramatic change. Use of SharePoint 2010 and 2013 is now neck and neck, and SharePoint 2007 organizations dropped from 27% to 17%.

An additional consideration in the adoption of SharePoint 2016 Online is the planned roadmap to morph SharePoint 2016 on-premises into a cloud application as much as possible. For those organizations that use SharePoint as their enterprise application platform, they may not be interested in SharePoint 2016, either online or on-premises, and may not find the lure very attractive. There are still many organizations that are traditional and have not assessed, nor are particularly interested in, moving to a social collaboration platform, unless it can solve or address a specific business organizational need.



Migration Activities in the Past Twelve Months

Please indicate any migration activities that have taken place in your organization over the last twelve months.

62% of the organizations responding were involved in migrations over the past year, although 38% remained stable with no migrations. Compared with the 2014 SharePoint and Office 365 Metadata Survey, those organizations still using SharePoint 2007 has dropped from 27% to 17%, illustrating that SharePoint organizations will migrate, albeit very slowly. Although 39% did migrate from SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2013, this is a positive sign for Microsoft.

“Compared with the 2014 SharePoint and Office 365 Metadata Survey, those organizations still using SharePoint 2007 has dropped from 27% to 17%, illustrating that SharePoint organizations will migrate, albeit very slowly.”





Migration Plans in the Next Twelve Months

Within the next twelve months, will you be migrating from your current SharePoint version?

It is clear from the chart below that SharePoint organizations are not readily open to migrations to SharePoint 2016, or Office 365 for that matter. Not limited to Microsoft, this is a typically cautious but recommended approach, as the majority of organizations do not want to lead the way in unchartered waters and potentially cause IT infrastructure upheaval and potential disruption of business.

SharePoint 2013 has been available for two years and 32% of the respondents indicate that they will be moving from SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2013. SharePoint 2010 Microsoft product support ends on October 13, 2015, which may be a factor in organizations moving to SharePoint 2013.

Responses indicate that 16% plan to migrate to SharePoint 2016 on-premises, with the understanding that additional features and functionality in Office 365 will not necessarily be available in the on-premises version. However, Microsoft’s long term strategy is to add as much cloud capability going forward in SharePoint 2016 on-premises. This may eventually change the responses for organizations that can clearly understand the new capabilities added.

Based on the cautious approach to the previous migration questions, this does represent a more aggressive approach than in the past. Migration to Office 365 is planned for 17% of respondents, but in future survey questions, this response can lead to confusion. The move to Office 365 is typically for very specific reasons, the most stated reason is to use Exchange, not necessarily to use or take advantage of the full functionality of Office 365. Therefore, the move to Office 365 needs to be understood in the context of what is driving the decision.

“The move to Office 365 is typically for very specific reasons, the most stated reason is to use Exchange, not necessarily to use or take advantage of the full functionality of Office 365. Therefore, the move to Office 365 needs to be understood in the context of what is driving the decision.”



Migration to SharePoint 2016

Microsoft has announced that a new version of SharePoint will be available in 2016. When it becomes available, at what point would you migrate?

The following graph is consistent with previous answers. Most SharePoint organizations will wait one to two years before moving to SharePoint 2016. What is unknown is whether they will be using SharePoint 2016 on-premises, or SharePoint 2016 Online, or both. If we look more deeply at the 25% that would migrate within twelve months, one might assume the migration most likely would not take place until the 2017 – 2018 timeframe, depending on the actual release date of the product. This is not good news for Microsoft. For Microsoft, the current SharePoint base would be the easiest to tackle to achieve Office 365 growth. However, Microsoft may need to provide more valid business reasons to make the move to Office 365 and SharePoint 2016 Online.



Metadata Tagging

Metadata tagging continues to be a source of organizational inefficiencies, and is the root cause of many business process failures. Yet, despite the availability of information regarding the importance of metadata and a slowly growing number of tagging and classification tools, SharePoint organizations stubbornly cling to manual metadata tagging, and are not necessarily happy with the results. Little has changed since our previous surveys.

Over the past few years, there has been a change in the functionality provided by third party search vendors that are incorporating features that encourage end user tagging and far greater input by end users that can alter the search algorithms. With Office 365 Delve, the end user is given even more control over tagging of content. For example, Delve will provide end users with the ability to re-classify content and, should they be so energized, to notify administration if a document has the wrong level of security. Delve via Office Graph will be using the existing metadata tags on content. It is extremely questionable whether Delve, or any other search product, will score high in relevance or accuracy, when depending on end user tagging. From a Microsoft point of view, this is the route it had to take unless it had acquired a software vendor that provided automatic metadata generation and auto-classification, as Microsoft does not provide that functionality in either product. Yet the long term success of its search products, or any search solution, is highly dependent on accurate metadata.

The ability to capture concept based metadata and retrieve relevant search results from within an organization and diverse repositories, is the real currency of interoperability. Providing syntactic as well as automatically generated semantic or conceptual metadata enables the meaning of content to be represented and shared in an unambiguous and transparent manner. The implications of inaccurate and subjective metadata stray far beyond search, impacting records management, eDiscovery, migration, data security, collaboration, and the list goes on. Ultimately, this can potentially result in dissatisfaction with search results. Adding complexity, since Office Graph uses machine learning, the initial acceptance and use of search could be a disappointment in terms of accuracy and relevance, unless the technology can quickly learn what end users are seeking. Unfortunately enterprise search is not one-size fits all.

“The implications of inaccurate and subjective metadata stray far beyond search, impacting records management, eDiscovery, migration, data security, collaboration, and the list goes on.”



Satisfaction with Metadata Tagging

Please tell us how you currently tag unstructured content and how satisfied you are with the results, with ‘1’ being extremely satisfied and ‘5’ not satisfied at all.

94% of SharePoint organizations rely on manual tagging and are not extremely satisfied, or highly satisfied, with the outcomes of their tagging efforts. This indicates an awareness and knowledge of the importance of metadata, but no action to solve the issue has been taken. The majority of SharePoint organizations have taken a middle of the road attitude towards rating their satisfaction with metadata tagging, done almost exclusively by end users, either in a free-for-all fashion or through drop down lists. Compared with last year’s survey, more organizations are using auto-classification tools, but the results do not indicate they are overwhelmingly satisfied with those results either, and the use of third party tools has inched up only slightly.

Based on Concept Searching’s historical reference and industry knowledge, individuals in both the areas of business and IT do not understand metadata or the impact, both positive and negative, that poor metadata can have on business processes and any application that requires the use of metadata. The responses indicate that metadata is slowly becoming a recognized component in effective content management and search. In future graphs, we will see that organizations have placed a high priority on search and content management. However, unless manual metadata tagging can be eliminated, or is consistently accurate, which is highly unlikely for as long as it is done by human effort, there is not much that organizations can achieve in terms of improvements and business benefits.

“Unless manual metadata tagging can be eliminated, or is consistently accurate, which is highly unlikely, there is not much that organizations can achieve in terms of improvements and business benefits.”




Managed Metadata Service and the SharePoint Term Store

Do you use the Managed Metadata Service and the SharePoint Term Store?

The SharePoint Term Store uses a manual process and does not include any sophisticated metadata generation or auto-classification capabilities. Although Microsoft has made incremental improvements to the term store, from its availability in SharePoint 2010, term set capabilities remain somewhat limited. There are certain vendors, including Concept Searching, that provide auto-classification capabilities to augment the Term Store and write back metadata into the managed metadata properties. But many third party vendors do not eliminate manually intensive rule building, and assume administrators understand the nuances of the all functional groups within their organizations, which means that testing is cumbersome. Microsoft is continuing Term Store capability in SharePoint 2016 Online, but it is assumed it will still be a stand-alone application with no integration with the Term Store on-premises. The issue remains that the feature is not widely adopted.

Despite the manual functionality in the Term Store, those who have deployed or are planning to deploy term sets represent 66% of the responses. The realistic number is 44% of SharePoint organizations are using the Term Store. The authors have found that stating future intentions in year-by-year comparisons typically does not occur. The Term Store has proved to be a benefit to SharePoint organizations, and over the past few years we have seen some growth. The remaining responses indicate that either a need is not seen, it is too difficult, or that third party metadata and auto-classification tools will be evaluated.



Applications Using Term Sets

If you are using SharePoint term sets, select the application, or applications that you have term sets defined.

Most organizations using term sets are using them for content management and to improve search results. Building an enterprise metadata repository and information governance, which were last year’s priorities, are now lower on the list. Based on the responses to this question, SharePoint organizations are taking advantage of the ability to deploy term sets to improve management of outcomes, whether in content management or search.

This percentage of organizations using term sets to improve content management and search goes hand in hand with the satisfaction with tagging procedures. Based on the responses from Satisfaction with Metadata Tagging, organizations appear to be taking additional action to improve both processes that are visibly impacted by poor metadata.

“Most organizations using term sets are using them for content management and to improve search results. Enterprise metadata repository and information governance, ranked first and second last year, now rank lower on the list.”



Metadata Driven Workflows

Do you use metadata to drive workflows to improve business processes?

The majority of SharePoint organizations have not yet reached the metadata maturity level to use metadata to drive workflows. This make sense, as metadata is overwhelmingly generated manually, therefore deploying workflows becomes a more difficult proposition as the metadata may or may not be consistent, or accurate, which prohibits workflow processes to function correctly.



Applications Using Workflow

If you are using metadata in workflow processes, which applications are using them? Please select a status for each.

Of those organizations using workflow processes, 26% concentrate on content management and content lifecycle management, and the remaining primary enterprise applications represent very low percentages. With content being created and ingested constantly, there are significant benefits of processing specific types of content, ideally without user involvement.



Enterprise Search

Analysts, studies, surveys, and consultants continually point to the problems of search – meaning no one can find what they are looking for. The same problem that has existed since search began continues. Management seems to be well aware of the challenges of search, understands what unstructured content is, yet typically does nothing about it. There are not only above average search engines, there are also tools that assist in eliminating most of the challenges with search. According to an AIIM1 presentation, Are You Prepared for Digital Disruption? 2015 Predictions, 71% of organizations acknowledge that search is essential, 28% have never tuned it, and only 18% have cross-repository search capabilities. Even more surprising is that 8% of organizations have not even turned search on. Much of the culpability of poor search results resides with organizational management, who appear not to be willing to expend the time, effort, and money to improve search performance and relevancy.

Not to be overlooked, the end user is also a major consideration. Many individuals don’t know how to search, and using one or two word keywords they expect the results to be relevant, timely, and accurate. Too many results cause navigational difficulties and the inability to visually evaluate the results to discern which entry is closest to what the user was searching for. Providing detailed search criteria is an individual but not necessarily a logical choice. Users tend to abandon the search if there are many results or too many pages. According to IDC2, 85% of relevant documents are never retrieved during search and the average user will spend two and a half hours per week looking for information. Business users will tend to search longer if they know the information is there, further reducing productivity. 55% of searchers will select irrelevant results from a list of query responses multiple times, 36% won’t go beyond the first three search results – not pages, results on page one – and 91% will not go beyond the first page of search results3.

The search engine must accommodate the different ways that users search, and be able to discern their intent – human and machine retrieval are very different. Humans are limited by their ignorance. We don’t know what we’re looking for much of the time and so do not know how to find it. We often rely on technology to provide parameters to narrow our scope and put us on the right track. Unfortunately, technology is based on ‘face value’ and so it does not know how to interpret our queries. Unless trained, machines do not understand that a single word can mean multiple things (order a meal, put things in order) or multiple terms mean the same thing (crane: a bird, a type of construction equipment, to strain out one’s neck).

Microsoft’s search strategy is somewhat unclear. Office Graph, the core component, is based on artificial intelligence, uses portions of the FAST search technology, and employs metadata tags. This is the basis of the Clutter feature in Outlook that lets users remove low priority emails. It is also the basis of Delve, which is a business social tool. From within Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, Bing is used to provide a tool called ‘Insights’ with a Tell Me search feature from within the basic Microsoft applications. Within the Office 365 Compliance Center there is eDiscovery Search as well as a new lightweight search mechanism, just released called Compliance Search. To top it off, we still must deal with SharePoint Search.

A positive improvement is the hybrid search service application that enables a unified index approach, and is also available to those organizations on SharePoint 2013. This may be the impetus needed for SharePoint on-premises organizations to migrate to SharePoint 2016 Online.

“According to an AIIM1 presentation, Are You Prepared for Digital Disruption? 2015 Predictions, 71% of organizations acknowledge that search is essential, 28% have never tuned it, and only 18% have cross-repository search capabilities. Even more surprising is that 8% of organizations have not even turned search on.”

http://www.aiim.org/

http://www.slideshare.net/jmancini77/are-you-prepared-for-digital-disruption-2015-predictions-43795198


http://www.aiim.org/






The challenge with metadata is both obvious and elusive. The ability to harness the meaning of content requires the utilization of tools that deliver the ability to manage and retrieve content at the same rate that it is being created, ingested, and distributed. The fundamental component is the quality of metadata, which is required by many applications within an organization. The basic problem with Office Graph is that, although it will learn on its own, it is still using the metadata assigned by end users, which is typically subjective and error prone, resulting in a lack of meaningful metadata. Microsoft has never provided automated semantic metadata generation, or auto-classification. It is the authors’ opinion that this factor will significantly impact the accuracy and relevancy of content delivered to users, unless organizations use a third party tool.

These factors can present challenges to Microsoft – although organizations want accurate and relevant search, they don’t want to spend money or time on it, but ideally want a plug and play environment, take the burden off IT to continually tune it and end users to find what they are seeking. Since Office Graph resides in the cloud, it has met many of these requirements. On the downside, because it resides in the cloud, it is highly doubtful that it can be tuned to improve search based on an organization’s unique nomenclature and corpus of content. It has not been announced if there is a way to tell Office Graph that the search responses are erroneous so adjustments can be made accordingly. Office Graph, even though combined with features of FAST, needs to learn the interests of each individual, which may delay the effectiveness of search across an organization, and ultimately Office 365 adoption. The final stumbling block is the issue of end user tagging. This factor can seriously derail the benefits of Office Graph, as well as enterprise search in general.



Current Enterprise Search Engine

Does your organization have an enterprise search engine and if yes, please indicate the search engine in current use.

Almost all organizations are using the enterprise search that is included in the specific version of SharePoint. However, in a survey4 authored by Vanson Bourne and published by Rocket Software, the general enterprise search market, which does not include SharePoint, is using Autonomy (29%), IBM Vivisimo Velocity (27%), Oracle Endeca (23%), Homegrown (21%), and Oracle Inquira (18%), plus some stragglers.

The same survey ranks Enterprise Content Management systems, where SharePoint is the clear leader. Within this category, SharePoint has a decisive advantage over other ECM vendors at 94%, followed by IBM FileNet at 28%, HP Autonomy at 25%, Oracle Web Center at 23%, and Xerox DocuShare at 13%. It is highly unlikely that any of the competitors are going to replace SharePoint as the most used ECM solution. However, Microsoft needs to not only remain competitive but continue to add new functionality to remain the leader.

The integration of FAST Search in SharePoint products did provide enterprises with more advanced search functionality, but not enough to make it a contender in enterprise search. Microsoft has announced a single, integrated search functionality to address on-premises, hybrid and cloud environments. This is to be accomplished through the unified index capabilities. This is an advantage and provides business value to organizations.

Depending on the search product selected, search can be an expensive proposition. Not only the cost of the software but the ancillary costs of maintenance, consulting, deployment, and training, not to mention end user adoption. If organizations are willing to make the investment in search, it puts moving to Office 365 or to a hybrid environment in jeopardy.

Although most SharePoint organizations are using the native SharePoint search functionality, the responses illustrated that 27% of organizations are using non-Microsoft products. This should be an interesting statistic to watch as Microsoft continues to enhance Delve and as Office Graph matures.

“Although most SharePoint organizations are using the native SharePoint search functionality, the responses illustrated that 27% of organizations are using non-Microsoft products.”

http://www.vansonbourne.com/

http://www.rocketsoftware.com/

http://www.autonomy.com/

http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/information-optimization/

http://www.oracle.com/us/solutions/business-analytics/business-intelligence/endeca/overview/index.html

http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/Acquisitions/inquira/index.html

http://www-01.ibm.com/software/ecm/filenet/

http://www.autonomy.com/

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/webcenter/suite/overview/index.html

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/webcenter/suite/overview/index.html

http://docushare.xerox.com/



Changes to Enterprise Search Engine in Six Months

Is your organization planning on deploying an enterprise search engine within the next 6 months, if so please indicate the product.

Parallel with answers to the previous question, SharePoint organizations are starting to stray from SharePoint search options. Although low percentages do not indicate a massive move away from SharePoint enterprise search, if we couple the response with the 27% from the previous question, representing those who are already using non-Microsoft search options, and include the 33% who are planning to deploy a non-Microsoft enterprise search engine, the conclusion can be drawn that SharePoint is losing customers to other search alternatives.

Prior to SharePoint 2013, when the FAST features were incorporated into the search functionality, FAST Search for SharePoint was available for SharePoint 2010, and SharePoint 2007. Although FAST in its heyday was considered a highly sophisticated search engine, over the years has lost that advantage, being surpassed by other commercially available search products that have continued to evolve and improve.

“Although FAST in its heyday was considered a highly sophisticated search engine, over the years has lost that advantage, being surpassed by other commercially available search products that have continued to evolve.”



Changes to Enterprise Search Engine in Twelve Months

Is your organization planning on deploying an enterprise search engine within the next twelve months, if so please indicate the product.

Within the next twelve months, 44% of the respondents indicated that they will be deploying a non-Microsoft search solution. This represents a substantial number of organizations that, despite the cost and effort, are willing to make the move to a new search technology. If this were to occur, and we say this cautiously, the factor could significantly impact Microsoft’s plan to push the adoption of Office 365 and disrupt the intent to encourage SharePoint organizations to move to Office 365, SharePoint Online, or SharePoint 2016 on-premises. It is highly unlikely that an organization would tackle a move to the cloud and the implementation of a new search engine concurrently or overlapping.

Records Center

Are you using, or do you plan to use, the Records Center? If yes, are you planning to augment the Records Center with a third party solution?

This question must be taken with a grain of salt, although does provide some insight into the use of SharePoint records management. The question was directed at SharePoint on-premises, not Office 365. This was not clearly articulated, therefore the results indicate usage, but the authors cannot determine the environment.

SharePoint Online offers customers the ability to use the capabilities of the Records Center, now part of the Office 365 Compliance Center. According to Microsoft, records can be managed ‘in place’, which means documents can be left in current locations or sites, or records can be stored in the specific archive, called the Office 365 Compliance Center. The Office 365 Compliance Center is intended to serve as a central repository in which organizations can store and manage all their records, such as legal or financial documents.

“A substantial number of organizations, despite the cost and effort, are willing to make the move to a new search technology. If this were to occur, and we say this cautiously, the factor could significantly impact Microsoft’s plan to push the adoption of Office 365 and disrupt the intent to encourage SharePoint organizations to move to Office 365, SharePoint Online, or SharePoint 2016 on-premises.”



The Office 365 Compliance Center supports the entire records management process, from records collection through records management to records disposition. If in-place records management is chosen, instead of the Office 365 Compliance Center, any feature available in the Office 365 Compliance Center can still be used, such as information management policy enforcement, routing, and hold, to manage records on any site.5

Even though Office 365 is certified for ISO 27001, EU Safe Harbor, HIPAA compliance, etc., to guarantee the security and privacy of documents stored in the datacenter, many organizations have their own rules preventing them from moving sensitive data to the cloud. In some cases, regional or local legislations prevent the use of cloud based storage outside a country or a region. Despite being compliant with the EU Safe Harbor regulation, it seems that the US government can force a US based company, such as Microsoft, to hand over data stored in one of its subsidiaries throughout the world.

The current Records Center question does illustrate there are some converts to managing records using Microsoft records management solutions, although 44% have no plans to use the Records Center, and we assume that would also apply to the Office 365 Compliance Center, although that could be erroneous.

Why we don’t see a lot of movement, at least in large enterprises, is the fact that Microsoft has depended on third party application vendors to enhance SharePoint on-premises with add-on applications. There are several excellent and highly sophisticated third party records management products on the market today that provide significant functionality, whereas the Office 365 Compliance Center or the SharePoint Records Center would not be a comparable product. Currently the Office 365 Compliance Center is a cloud only, standalone feature. For those customers who would want integration with on-premises records management would have to develop the interface as it isn’t provided by Microsoft. The authors assume some hesitancy would also be due to compliance and security in a cloud environment.



The Cloud

In some aspects, Microsoft has been singled out for weak security in the cloud. This is not unique to Microsoft and applies to all vendors operating in the cloud environment. Microsoft has been diligently addressing the security issues and has announced new features and products to assist in solving the issue. Windows Update for Business, System Center Configuration Manager, Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics (ATA), Office 365 transparency and control enhancements, and Customer Lockbox have all been released. The question remains whether this is enough to allay the security fears of moving to the cloud that is impacting adoption of Office 365, or for that matter, any cloud solution.

In defense of all cloud services providers, many of the security fears are generated based on how organizations run their business. Reports show that content management for most organizations is a train wreck. Based on that assumption, organizations are increasing risk by moving some or all content to the cloud, without fixing the internal problem of content management. Even from survey responses, content management, content lifecycle management, and information governance are all targeted application priorities for SharePoint organizations. One must question whether the security concerns of the cloud are internally rooted or are truly based on the potential of security risks in the cloud. It is most likely a combination of both.

Cloud Concerns

Please rate your concerns on using the cloud, with ‘1’ being the greatest concern. Please select a status for each.

Microsoft is continually accelerating its development efforts to launch more new features and products to bring social, collaboration, and productivity to Office 365 and to hybrid environments. The following question sought to determine the reasons organizations would not move to a hybrid or cloud environment. As you can see from the following graphic, the respondents are primarily concerned with business processes, not business social. Security and data breaches, integration with on-premises systems, end user security rights management, and complexity in compliance and regulatory guidelines all take center stage according to the responses. It is a significant challenge for Microsoft to allay these concerns with additional enhancements, despite the deluge of recent announcements. From a different perspective, Microsoft has made it clear if it cannot build, it will buy to plug any gaps that are preventing adoption.

This is not to say that there isn’t value in Office 365 or its applications, it is just at odds with what SharePoint organizations are trying to accomplish – running their business using traditional applications. Introducing new technologies is a disruption, regardless of vendor, requires additional technical expertise, and in most of the Office 365 applications requires end user adoption for success. The frequent delivery of new features and products raises questions about reliability and, in many cases, such as Delve, the current reach is too small to be fully functional.

“The frequent delivery of new features and products raises questions about reliability and, in many cases, such as Delve, the current reach is too small to be fully functional.”

http://www.slideshare.net/jmancini77/presentations



Aggregating the highest and second highest concerns, we can see from the responses above that security, data breaches, end user security, and rights management, are serious inhibitors to adoption. Integration with on-premises systems was also ranked as a high concern. Moving to a hybrid environment would naturally create challenges within an organization, not only compatibility issues, but also technical, administrative, cultural upheaval, and the management and support of two different environments. The other high priorities focus on business issues such as records management, non-compliance, and information lifecycle management.

In the case of Office 365, specifically OneDrive for Business, despite security enhancements, users will, perhaps unintentionally, place confidential or personal information and records that haven’t been declared in OneDrive for Business. The end result is polluting OneDrive for Business with records that should have been declared, unprotected confidential and out-of-date information, and low value content that will, by necessity, need to be vetted to identify organizational risk. It is important to note that these concerns apply to both on-premises and cloud environments. To reiterate, these issues are not specific to Office 365.

In a recent report authored by the privacy and data protection team at BakerHostetler LLP6, of 139 incidents in 2014 in which the cause could be identified, 36% of data breaches were the result of employee negligence and 22% stemmed from theft by outsiders, the report said. Theft by insiders caused 16% of the problems and malware produced an additional 14%. The final 11% came from phishing attacks.7

Even malware can be attributed to end user behavior. According to a study by M-Files, organizational restrictions on what can be placed in the cloud are typically ignored by end users, and there is a growing issue of loading, using, and accessing personal applications without management authorization. M-Files found that, “it bears noting that 56% of respondents said their company ‘does not have policies in place that prohibit the use of personal file sharing and sync solutions for storing and sharing

company documents.’ 14% aren't sure if the employer does or not.” 8



As more organizations adopt cloud environments, an additional problem is the use of non-enterprise approved applications that end users prefer to use, which are not necessarily what the enterprise expects them to use. This raises another concern, as typically the IT department does not know what’s being loaded, therefore can’t control it. In theory, IT would like employees to share files securely and use enterprise approved applications. Currently topical, this is referred to as Shadow IT. Other supporting research studies regarding Shadow IT, referring back to the study by M-Files, indicate that almost half of workers are storing confidential company information via unauthorized sharing and sync apps like Dropbox or Box9. Skyhigh Networks concluded from its ‘Cloud Adoption, Practices and Priorities Survey Report’ that Shadow IT is ten times worse than most IT departments suspect, with 72% saying they have no idea how big a problem it is10. A Netskope Cloud Report found 90% of cloud apps in use at businesses aren’t enterprise grade. Astoundingly, the research also found that the average organization has more than 600 cloud applications in use – which IT may, or may not, know about. 11

“A Netskope Cloud Report found 90% of cloud apps in use at businesses aren’t enterprise grade. Astoundingly, the research also found that the average organization has more than 600 cloud applications in use – which IT may, or may not, know about.”

http://www.m-files.com/

http://www.skyhighnetworks.com/offers/wp-csa-capp-survey/

http://www.skyhighnetworks.com/offers/wp-csa-capp-survey/

http://www.cmswire.com/cms/information-management/could-cloud-apps-make-the-enterprise-sick-027681.php



Office 365 and Office 365 Applications

Microsoft is not the only corporation to report financial data in a way that obscures what the real numbers are. Microsoft does not break out its public cloud, or even its combined public/private cloud, revenues. Instead, it now reports them as part of what it calls ‘Commercial Cloud.’ Commercial Cloud also includes revenues from Azure, Office 365 and Dynamics CRM Online. It is impossible to determine what the actual adoption rate and growth of Office 365 is. Regardless of the adoption rate of Office 365, while recent reported revenue moved up 6.5% from the previous year, its quarterly profits were down almost 11.9%.12 Obviously, this puts more pressure on Microsoft to sell more product, and its largest market for cloud is Office 365, and what should be its easiest target are SharePoint organizations.

The following series of questions focuses on the use of Office 365, specific Office 365 applications that are available, and whether respondents are using or planning to use them. Since 19% stated they would not be using Office 365, the number of respondents is fewer than the 432 total respondents. However, of that 19%, it appears that some responded to the Office 365 questions anyway.

It is important to note that the survey was conducted before the Microsoft Ignite conference. Therefore, survey responses are based on a mindset which may have since changed.



Use of Office 365

Are you using, planning, or won’t use Office 365?

The White Paper authors feel that for many organizations it has partially been the Microsoft approach that has prevented SharePoint on-premises organizations moving to Office 365, or to a hybrid environment. The issue that is never widely discussed is the fact that organizations, for the most part, use Office 365 for Exchange only, which dramatically skews Microsoft sales numbers and adoption of Office 365.

Microsoft has realized that its marketing mantra of ‘cloud only’ did not necessarily resonate with loyal SharePoint customers, and received a rather muted response. The new message ‘hybrid’ is now what Microsoft is marketing. By doing so, it is now addressing the second-rate position to which SharePoint on-premises had been relegated, and this has forced Microsoft to commit to delivering a SharePoint 2016 on-premises and cloud version. It is also integrating new and useful features, combining both Office 365 and SharePoint 2016 Online. As Office 365 becomes more SharePoint friendly, SharePoint on-premises customers will be able to share some common features with Office 365. Microsoft has finally acknowledge that its mantra was not winning the war with SharePoint customers, and it appears that best efforts with the new release of SharePoint 2016 have been made to soften the ‘cloud only’ message and transition it to a hybrid offering with shared features.

Microsoft must also spend more time on the Office 365 interface and tight integration with the applications. Currently, navigation among the various applications Office 365 is not designed to be a connected environment and one cannot easily move between applications. This can probably be attributed to development efforts focusing on rapidly improving specific products as opposed to the platform as a whole.

Of the respondents’ answers, 40% of the organizations are using Office 365 and 33% plan to use Office 365 in the future. The remaining 19% will not be using the product.

“Microsoft has finally acknowledge that its mantra was not winning the war with SharePoint customers, and it appears that best efforts with the new release of SharePoint 2016 have been made to soften the ‘cloud only’ message and transition it to a hybrid offering with shared features.”



Use of a Different Cloud Solution

Are you using or planning to use a different cloud solution?

SharePoint organizations, regardless of how much they complain, have proven to be a loyal customer set. However, when moving to the cloud, they are now free to break free from Microsoft ties and seek alternative solutions.

To provide a backdrop, a survey by an independent source, RightScale 2016 State of the Cloud Report13, found that 93% of respondents prefer the hybrid cloud model, and 82% of enterprises already have a hybrid cloud strategy in place. 68% of enterprise run less than a fifth of their application portfolio in the cloud. This is an important finding. Assuming the statistics are valid, enterprises are not moving many core applications to the cloud. Microsoft’s approach is at odds with this finding, as the core of its marketing message it is still ‘cloud only’ and to use Office 365 as the enterprise platform.

According to the responses for this question, 39% of organizations either are or will be using a non-Microsoft cloud option. These percentages may also indicate that they will be deploying highly specific cloud applications instead of what Microsoft is offering. Again, it is important to note that overwhelmingly the use of Office 365 is for Exchange.

“Assuming the statistics are valid, enterprises are not moving many core applications to the cloud. Microsoft’s approach is at odds with this finding, as the core of its marketing message it is still ‘cloud only’ and to use Office 365 as the enterprise platform.”

http://www.rightscale.com/2015-cloud-report

http://www.rightscale.com/2015-cloud-report



Use of OneDrive for Business

Are you using or plan to use OneDrive for Business?

OneDrive for Business is truly one of the strengths of Office 365, sharing and storing information for users in remote locations. Users can create, edit, and synchronize their documents to OneDrive for Business. Alternatively, they can save documents to OneDrive for Business from within the desktop application interface. Once again, security became a significant issue for Microsoft with the announcement of OneDrive for Business. Initially addressing the issue with the announcement of Data Loss Prevention (DLP) availability, although useful, it was not robust enough to solve potential security issues and DLP is cumbersome to manage the administration requirements for very large organizations.

Part of the issue is a loss of management control. As discussed previously, remote users can, and do, load personal information and photos, and store personal emails, all of which represent potential security gaps and risks for an organization. In addition, records may not be declared, privacy or confidential content can be exposed, and content of no value that should be deleted will impact the accuracy of search as well as increase risk and potential compliance violations.

This will challenge organizations, regardless of product. They have to decide which content to migrate, evaluate the risk of specific content living in the cloud, and develop an accessibility plan on how content will be classified when migrated. Interestingly, based on a study by Docurated, “only 29% of businesses surveyed plan to move to a single cloud repository. Of companies already using cloud storage, a mere 5% use it to house 76%-100% of their content. Most hover around the 25% or less mark when it comes to putting their content into the cloud.”14 The recommendation of the survey findings suggested that companies need to provide a single source to access content, not provide content all in one place. An interesting approach, but forces the management of content from multiple, diverse, and often disconnected repositories, thereby increasing the complexity of managing content, unless using third-party tools. For some, regardless of the effort, that may be the most logical choice.

38% of organizations are using OneDrive for Business and another 32% will use it after migrating to Office 365. The remaining 32% will either not use it, or have no plans to use Office 365.

“According to a study by Docurated, “only 29% of businesses surveyed plan to move to a single cloud repository. Of companies already using cloud storage, a mere 5% use it to house 76%-100% of their content. Most hover around the 25% or less mark when it comes to putting their content into the cloud.”

http://www.docurated.com/



OneDrive for Business Security

Microsoft faced a challenge in convincing the marketplace that OneDrive for Business had the appropriate security. If you have deployed, or are planning to deploy OneDrive for Business, please select either Yes or No for one or more options as appropriate.

Unfortunately for Microsoft, it took a public beating on OneDrive for Business and security issues, spending months trying to convince potential customers that it was a secure product. The purpose of this question was to determine the reason why organizations would not deploy OneDrive for Business. Although most responses indicated they would be using the product, security and additional administration was a concern, but the authors were surprised and had expected a much higher number. Note that the percentages are clearly off, but respondents could select more than one response.



Use of Delve

Are you using or planning to use Delve?

The answers to this question indicated that over half of the respondents would not be using Delve. If this statistic remains constant, it presents somewhat of a conundrum for Microsoft. To a great extent, Microsoft’s current marketing focus is on Delve. It does not appear that it has clearly articulated any justifiable business benefits of Delve and why organizations should move to Office 365 to take advantage of the product. In its current state, Delve lacks the integration with third party applications that would be needed to accomplish its intent.

Delve is a dashboard like interface, using machine learning and artificial intelligence (employing Office Graph) to display the most relevant information of interest to a user, based on their work, and of those in their network. Delve indexes and analyzes emails, meetings, contacts, social networks, etc., and presents this information as cards. Rather than having to search for something, Delve tries to automatically and intuitively deliver relevant information to the end user. Some may not like the overly intrusive approach of being presented with data, but others will see it as a huge time saver. It is important to note that Delve integrates with Exchange, OneDrive for Business, Yammer, and the SharePoint Online personal blog page, only temporarily, with more content sources planned. Integration with iOS, Windows 8, and Android was also announced.

Under the name ‘Organizational Analytics’, the new version of Delve, available later this year, will include a dashboard view which will track your own work performance and compare it to the company average. Although Microsoft sees this as a valuable tool, one would question whether it is an effective management tool and may upset the proverbial end user apple cart. This is not new, as there are plenty of workplace monitoring tools. Recently, lawsuits15 have been initiated and there are associated legal and ethical issues surrounding employee monitoring. The Organizational Analytics feature is not very sophisticated as a workplace monitoring tool, but does provides basic capabilities. However, it is the responsibility of organizations, not Microsoft, how the feature is used.

Termed a productivity tool, also added to Delve is a new profile page for users to specify their contact information, who reports to whom, and an authoring canvas for blogging. It also includes a praise page where the user can list accolades, customer sales, contracts, whatever they wish to share with colleagues.

According to Mark Hachman, Senior Editor of PC World in his article ‘A revamped Microsoft Delve looks like a corporate mashup of Facebook and LinkedIn’, “It’s looking more like a corporate-sponsored mashup of Facebook and LinkedIn – with likely the same self-editing effect that friending your parents on Facebook would inspire.” He continued, “Also note that Delve is only as good as the people who use it. Case in point: IDG uses Office 365, but an early attempt to nurture conversations on Yammer failed miserably. Each group and even publication had already settled on their own collaboration solution. One of two things needs to happen for Delve’s profile pages to become a hit: Either HR must be able to auto-populate them with end user information, or the corporate culture must encourage its use. Otherwise, your Delve profile could be a wasteland.”16

“According to Mark Hachman, Senior Editor of PC World, commenting on Delve, ‘It’s looking more like a corporate-sponsored mashup of Facebook and LinkedIn – with likely the same self-editing effect that friending your parents on Facebook would inspire.’”

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2909621/a-revamped-microsoft-delve-looks-like-a-corporate-mashup-of-facebook-and-linkedin.html




As stated above, Delve’s success is based solely on participation by organizational users. This is not a Microsoft issue, it is an organizational issue. The E2.0 adoption council reports that 72% of organizations reported resistance from users, and only 32% overcame it17. This is a challenge as business social applications typically fail because of lack of end user acceptance, even when sponsored by management. It will be up to individual organizations to decide if Delve is a help or a hindrance. Microsoft has a huge challenge ahead, as Delve currently works with some Microsoft products, but the optimal solution is to provide integration with a vast number of third party Microsoft applications and non-Microsoft applications, which is still years away.

Microsoft also plans to add more controls for end users, so that they can tag and categorize content from within the Delve interface, as well as alert administrators about files with access rights settings that need to be adjusted. This reverts back to the basic problem of inaccurate and subjective metadata, and end users potentially changing the tags on previously tagged content from their personal frame of reference. With regard to security rights, end users may not be aware of the appropriate access rights that should be assigned to content, which does not help the overall management of security across organizations. Enabling end users to make security rights recommendations on content may result in inaccurate assignment of rights and pose a risk to organizations.

The additional concern raised with the use of Delve is, once again, security. Mike Gotta, a Gartner analyst, said, “In enterprises where employees and managers haven't always been diligent about setting appropriate access rights settings for documents and files, it's inevitable that Delve will inadvertently expose information to people who shouldn't be seeing it,” Gotta predicts. “While that may not be the software itself, it will heighten the problem of improperly locked down information. Delve will make information less shielded," Gotta said. "It's taking information previously disconnected and fragmented, and arranging it and surfacing it and making it more broadly and easily available and discoverable."

According to the responses, 7% are using Delve with 23% planning on using it. The remaining 40% will not be using it, although they may not be using Office 365 at all.



Use of Yammer

Are you using or planning to use Yammer?

Microsoft is committed to Yammer and its success. It will be available in SharePoint 2016 Online. To push organizations towards Yammer, Microsoft has almost silently removed a number of features available in the current version of SharePoint Online. Notes and Tags features have been deprecated since September, but will remain available for one year. The Tasks feature has been removed from the current version of SharePoint Online. In the future, the Sync to Outlook feature is also subject to removal. Microsoft has stated that, although certain features will be available in SharePoint 2016 Online not all of them will be. Currently, it has not stated what is and what is not to be included. It is predicted that SharePoint Online’s Newsfeed solution is only temporary and will be deprecated to further push organizations to adopt Yammer.

According to Rob Helm, Managing Vice President of Directions on Microsoft18, stated in a Redmond Channel Partner article, “Microsoft has typically pointed to Yammer, a cloud-based collaboration service, as a replacement for many features currently available in SharePoint, although there is no premises-based Yammer version.” Helm expressed surprise at how slowly Yammer is being integrated with Microsoft products.

Yammer is essentially a micro-blogging tool. In comparison with competitive products, such as harmon.ie, Neudesic, Chatter, Sitrion, tibbr, and Socialcast, Yammer does not score well. According to the Real Story Group, “Yammer tends to focus on microblogging for its own sake, rather than more advanced applications; thus it does not solve SharePoint’s application problems. Functional thinness and siloed streams means that many customers have seen a drop off in adoption after making the initial connection.”

Often called ‘Twitter for the Enterprise’ because microblogging is its core functionality, Yammer users often face the same challenges and benefits that Twitter users do. The Real Story Group also stated that, “not surprisingly, Yammer usage can explode (at least initially) within an organization. However, be prepared for Yammer usage to become a kind of siloed stream within your broader digital workplace. Yammer is good for what it does, but after initial connections are made, sometimes usage drops off as employees struggle to place the service within the regular workflow of their daily work.” 19

According to David Roe, in his article on CMSWire, ‘The Problem with Yammer? People don’t use it.’20, “There is still no evidence to suggest that Yammer is being used widely across the enterprise. In fact in July of this year (2014), David Lavenda of harmon.ie told us that in his experience Yammer is still not being used by workers that have access to it.”

In fairness to Microsoft, the problem lies not with the product itself but with the way people work. Email is still the collaboration tool of choice for most enterprise workers, and, despite overflowing inboxes, it doesn’t look like it’s going to change any time soon. Another cited problem is that Yammer, in many organizations, has lost its microblogging benefits and has been replaced as a repository to post anything and all information that has to do with an organization, which causes users to reduce their use of it.

“Be prepared for Yammer usage to become a kind of siloed stream within your broader digital workplace. Yammer is good for what it does, but after initial connections are made, sometimes usage drops off as employees struggle to place the service within the regular workflow of their daily work.”

https://www.directionsonmicrosoft.com/webinar

https://rcpmag.com/Articles/2015/02/17/Microsoft-2015-Roadmap-Enterprise-Lens.aspx?Page=1

https://harmon.ie/

http://www.neudesic.com/

http://www.salesforce.com/chatter/overview/

http://www.sitrion.com/

http://www.tibbr.com/

http://www.socialcast.com/

http://www.realstorygroup.com/

http://www.cmswire.com/cms/social-business/the-problem-with-yammer-people-dont-use-it-025957.php


https://harmon.ie/



Since Yammer is solely a cloud based solution, although it will be included in SharePoint 2016 Online, it is questionable whether all organizations using the online version of SharePoint will want to move all their social communications to the cloud. Yammer is now being positioned as a ‘team collaboration tool’, as of June 2015, which makes more sense if Microsoft can carve a clear position for the product in the marketplace.

Microsoft also provides the ability to escalate a Yammer conversation to a Skype group meeting, easily accessing file sync and share capabilities in OneDrive from a Yammer group, integration with Office Graph, and enabling Yammer teams to schedule group events in Outlook calendaring. These are beneficial business features that add value to Yammer.

The survey indicated that 34% will not use Yammer, while 30% do use it, and 24% plan to use it. Although 30% does not mean overall acceptance and use of Yammer, it does hold promise for Microsoft, if these organizations have been able to integrate it into their culture and have overcome end user adoption issues.



Office 365 Applications Summary

Which Microsoft cloud solutions have you deployed, or plan to deploy? Please select a status for each.

Last October, Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, said at a Gartner conference that, “Office 365 is the new Exchange and one will cannibalize the other. The key is to ensure that current Exchange customers can transition on their own terms.” Exchange is the gateway drug to the cloud, largely because it is so easy to move email workload now. Mr. Nadella was certainly correct in that statement, clearly substantiated by the survey findings.

This question is key, and the results of the survey must be understood from this perspective. Currently, 76% of respondent have deployed Exchange. Another 13% plan to do so. From all survey questions, most organizations are using the cloud for email. In second place is Lync (now Skype for Business), and SharePoint Online. As a result, if Microsoft published revenues from Office 365, they would certainly be skewed as to the high number of organizations who have found business advantages of using email in the cloud.

The survey, ‘The Need for Third-Party Security, Compliance and Other Capabilities in Microsoft® Office 365®’, by Osterman Research, conducted on behalf of McAfee, “found that an important or extremely important reason for migrating to Office 365 is to reduce email costs (cited by 66% of decision makers and influencers), to reduce the workload for IT staff (61%), and to free up IT staff for other projects or initiatives (55%).”21

These responses can be tied back to previous statements that perhaps the SharePoint world is not necessarily ready or willing to take advantage of Office 365 productivity tools, but is more focused on business tools and the quantifiable benefits of moving email to the cloud, as illustrated below.

“The survey The Need for Third-Party Security, Compliance and Other Capabilities in Microsoft® Office 365®, by Osterman Research conducted on behalf of McAfee, ‘found that an important or extremely important reason for migrating to Office 365 is to reduce email costs (cited by 66% of decision makers and influencers), to reduce the workload for IT staff (61%), and to free up IT staff for other projects or initiatives (55%).’”

http://www.ostermanresearch.com/whitepapers/download191.htm

http://www.ostermanresearch.com/whitepapers/download191.htm

http://ostermanresearch.com/

http://promos.mcafee.com/offer.aspx?id=648888?&lqmcat=SEM:BIng:US:4601152315:mcafee:Brand



High Priority Applications

Surprisingly, information governance was the highest priority application at 21%. As shown in Appendix A, organizations are involved in improving information governance now, and a combined 47% have it on the agenda within the next year. Information security ranked second at 22%, with a combined 41% considering it a priority application to address within the next twelve months.

Again, somewhat at odds with the mixed emotions expressed towards Office 365, collaboration, both internal and external, was the third highest rated priority application at 16%, with 46% of the organizations responding that they will be improving the functionality within the next twelve months. According to an article in TechTarget, ‘Following the SharePoint Online Collaboration Evolution’, authored by J. Peter Bruzzese, “SharePoint Online is starting to outgrow its on-premises older sibling in that there are features available in the cloud that won't be possible or won't be released on-premises. Starting with SharePoint Server 2016, we should see that divide widen due to the freedom Microsoft has with its cloud-based platform to grow the option out at will. Microsoft is making good use of it and evolving SharePoint Online collaboration into the ultimate platform.”22

“Again, somewhat at odds with the mixed emotions expressed towards Office 365, collaboration, both internal and external, was the third highest rated priority application at 16%, with 46% of the organizations responding that they will be improving the functionality within the next twelve months.”

http://searchexchange.techtarget.com/opinion/Following-the-SharePoint-Online-collaboration-evolution



Application Priorities

Regardless of future decisions about using Office 365, SharePoint organizations must still focus on the day-to-day applications that run the business. The survey broke down major business applications and asked respondents to rank their importance to their organizations, both now and in the future. The applications and the responses can be viewed in Appendix A. The responses provide a birds-eye view of the priorities of these application improvement efforts, from an organizational and a tactical perspective.

Please see Appendix A for a breakdown of each application and additional details for that specific application.



Summary

Overall, the survey results provided a great deal of information on the current state of SharePoint organizations, and their directions and priorities. Viewpoints on Office 365 and SharePoint 2016 Online provided insight on how SharePoint organizations are evaluating the cloud, and highlighted some of the areas that Microsoft must address to reach its sales objectives. Since SharePoint 2016 has not yet been released, the responses may change, depending on additional value that will be provided in the immediate future.

The assumption that SharePoint organizations will eventually make the move to SharePoint 2016 is most likely valid. The assumption that they will migrate to SharePoint 2016 Online is still doubtful. Industry analysis indicates that over 90% of organizations are considering, or are using, a hybrid environment. But as we have seen, Exchange in the cloud is the most important driver for cloud adoption, at least in the Microsoft environment. This introduces new questions on the acceptance of ECM cloud applications as a whole. From the small sampling represented in this survey, interest in cloud applications is focused on those applications that introduce improved business processes or new capabilities, such as Skype for Business, remote and mobile connectivity, email, and internal and external collaboration in Office 365. It will be up to the market to decide if it wants ECM in the cloud, or to use the cloud for applications that address specific requirements.

The combination of Office 365 and SharePoint 2016 Online may complicate the decision for many SharePoint organizations that wish to take advantage of Office 365 functionality, but have no desire to move business applications to the cloud and prefer to use on-premises SharePoint only. It does change the cost factors, support, and administration challenges when using one or two specialized cloud applications as opposed to an enterprise platform. This is in line with analyst reports on cloud usage, not just in relation to Microsoft.

There are several excellent and sophisticated software solutions designed for the cloud that address very specific organizational needs. The majority of organizations are implementing cloud based solutions based on their individual needs and have proved highly selective. In many ways, this can complicate SharePoint organizations’ decision making process as they will need to evaluate the use a bundled Office 365 solution as opposed to a single application, such as content collaboration, micro-blogging, knowledge management, or business social networks, which address their unique requirements and deliver a stronger ROI.

The security issue is definitely prevalent and ranks highly as a concern, which is a cloud not a Microsoft concern. Microsoft has been diligently addressing these concerns. OneDrive for Business provides a great deal of value for organizations that need to accommodate remote users, and share and store content, but it also increases organizational risk. The question remains whether Microsoft can allay the security concerns and provide administration, management, and security of content in a manner that reduces risk.

Most SharePoint organizations remain on the fence where Delve is concerned. Users will either love it or hate it. Currently, although integrated with other products, it is quite limited in delivering all the information from diverse applications that users would need to access daily. According to survey responses, SharePoint organizations’ perception of Delve is quite different from Microsoft’s.

“The assumption that SharePoint organizations will migrate to SharePoint 2016 Online is still doubtful. Industry analysis indicates that over 90% of organizations are considering, or are using, a hybrid environment. But as we have seen, Exchange in the cloud is the most important driver for cloud adoption, at least in the Microsoft environment.”



The final hurdle is that of organizational and management buy-in. It is only over the past couple of years that management has been willing to consider collaboration and social tools. From the opposite perspective, end user reluctance and lack of adoption will render productivity enhancements useless. There are still many organizations that do not see the value of these tools, so that mindset must also be changed.

Overall, SharePoint organizations have indicated their primary concerns are business applications and ancillary tools that will facilitate business processes, such as Skype for Business, Exchange in the cloud, and OneDrive for Business. The objective of Microsoft should be to alter its marketing message to emphasize the quantifiable business benefits of Office 365, in order to change the mindset of SharePoint organizations and encourage adoption based on business value. It will be interesting to see how Microsoft’s develops its Office 365 marketing strategy, and if it can win the war with SharePoint.



Appendix A – Priorities by Application

Enterprise Metadata Repository

Content Management

Records Management

0% 10% 20% 30%

High Priority Issue

Works as Intended

Actively Improving Now

Planned in next 12 months

Don’t Use/Not Important

Enterprise Metadata Repository

0% 10% 20% 30% 40%

High Priority Issue

Works as Intended




Content Management

0% 10% 20% 30%

High Priority Issue

Works as Intended




Records Identification/Management



Information Governance

Migration

Enterprise Search

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30%

HIGH PRIORITY ISSUE

WORKS AS INTENDED

ACTIVELY IMPROVING NOW

PLANNED IN NEXT 12 …

DON’T USE/NOT …

Information Governance

0% 10% 20% 30%

High Priority Issue

Works as Intended




Migration

0% 10% 20% 30%

High Priority Issue

Works as Intended




Enterprise Search



Content Management

Collaboration – Internal/External

Content Lifecycle Management

0% 10% 20% 30% 40%

High Priority Issue

Works as Intended




Content Management

0% 10% 20% 30% 40%

High Priority Issue

Works as Intended




Collaboration Internal or External

0% 10% 20% 30%

High Priority Issue

Works as Intended




Content Lifecycle Management



eDiscovery, Litigation Support, FOIA

Text Analytics

Information Security

0% 10% 20% 30% 40%

High Priority Issue

Works as Intended




eDiscovery, Litigation Support, FOIA

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%

High Priority Issue

Works as Intended




Text Analytics

0% 10% 20% 30%

High Priority Issue

Works as Intended




Information Security



Social Tagging

0% 10% 20% 30% 40%

High Priority Issue

Works as Intended




Social Tagging



About Concept Searching

Concept Searching is the industry leader in advanced semantic metadata generation, auto-classification, and taxonomy management. Its award winning products are the only statistical metadata generation and classification technologies that use compound term processing to generate intelligent metadata from unstructured and semi-structured data. Compound term processing, or identifying ‘concepts in context’, solves a variety of business challenges. Using the concept identification capabilities, organizations can transform content into business assets to improve performance.

Concept Searching’s Smart Content Framework™ for information governance is a combination of best practices and underlying products that encompass the entire portfolio of unstructured information assets, resulting in increased organizational performance and agility. The output from the Smart Content Framework™ delivers intelligent metadata enabled solutions that are being used to enable concept based searching, automatic declaration of documents of record, identification and protection of privacy and confidential data, intelligent migration, content management, granular identification of content for text analytics, and improved delivery of social content. The solutions are deployed in diverse industries, Fortune 1000 companies, and smaller companies that need to meet strict compliance, data privacy, and information governance regulations.

Concept Searching has a Microsoft Gold Application Development competency and is a participant in the global Business-Critical SharePoint program. Although platform independent, the Concept Searching Microsoft suite of products uses a single code base, supporting all versions of SharePoint, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive for Business, providing clients with the choice of on-premises, cloud based, or hybrid environments to best meet their needs.

Headquartered in the US, with offices in the UK, Canada, and South Africa, Concept Searching solves the problem of finding, organizing, and managing information capital. For more information about Concept Searching’s solutions and technologies please visit www.conceptsearching.com and follow on Twitter and LinkedIn.



https://twitter.com/conceptsearch

http://www.linkedin.com/company/concept-searching

www.conceptsearching.com

© 2015 Concept Searching

Americas Europe Canada +1 703 531 8567 +44 (0)1438 213545 +1 703 531 8567 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Marketing and PR Australia New Zealand Africa International: +1 703 531 8564 +61 (0)2 8006 2611 +64 (0)4 889 2867 +27 (0)21 813 9633 Europe: +44 (0)1438 213545 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

Follow us on Twitter @conceptsearch

References

1 Are You Prepared for Digital Disruption? 2015, John Mancini, President AIIM

International 2 IDC

3 Skill Related Problems in User Online Behavior; van Deursen & van Dijk; 2009)

4 Changing Landscape of Enterprise Search and Publishing, Vanson Bourne Study, June

2014 (registration required) 5 Records Management, Microsoft

6 BakerHostetler, Data Security Incident Responses: Lessons Learned, May 2015

7 Human Error Biggest Cause of Data Breach Survey, BakerHostetler LLP, May 2015

8 Survey: Half of Enterprises Lack File Sharing Security, M-Files, November, 2014

9 Employers, Employees Ready to Rumble Over Secure File Sharing,

FierceContentManagement, November, 2014 10

Cloud Adoption, Practices and Priorities Survey Report, Skyhigh Networks 11

Could Cloud Apps Make the Enterprise Sick, Virginia Backaitis, CMSWire, January, 2015 12

What are they thinking? Microsoft C.E.O. Satya Nadella sees the future and it’s subscriptions, Ken Doctor, Politico Europe, 05/05/2014 13

RightScale 2015 State of the Cloud Report, January 2015 14

Cloud Storage isn’t the final word in document management, Lisa Hoover McGreevy, FierceContentManagement, July 2014 15

Former Intermex employee files lawsuit for being fired after uninstalling tracking app Xora, The American Bazaar, May 2015 16

A revamped Microsoft Delve looks like a corporate mashup of Facebook and LinkedIn, Mark Hachman, Senior Editor, April 14, 2015, PCWorld 17

Enterprise 2.0 Study D4 Final Report, E2.0 Adoption Council, European Commission, December, 2010 18

Another Take: Microsoft's 2015 Product Roadmap, Microsoft Certified Professional Magazine, Kurt Mackie, Senior News Producer, 1105 Enterprise Consulting, February, 2015 19

The Enterprise Collaboration & Social Software Evaluation Report, Real Story Group, 20

The Problem with Yammer? People don’t use it, David Roe, Staff Reporter, CMS Wire, July 2014 21

The Need for Third-Party Security, Compliance and Other Capabilities in Microsoft® Office 365®, Osterman Research, July, 2013 22

Following the SharePoint Online collaboration evolution, J. Peter Bruzzese, Tech Target









http://info.rocketsoftware.com/rs/rocketsoftware/images/Changing%20landscape%20of%20enterprise%20search%20and%20publishing%20whitepaper%20June%202014.pdf?mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRonuKzKd%2B%2FhmjTEU5z17%2BUuX6W%2Fhokz2EFye%2BLIHETpodcMTcJiM7%2FYDBceEJhqyQJxPr3AL9IN2MZ0RhnlCg%3D%3D

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn790613.aspx

http://www.bakerlaw.com/

http://www.bakerlaw.com/press/bakerhostetler-data-security-incident-response-report-shows-human-error-is-more-often-to-blame

https://bol.bna.com/human-error-biggest-cause-of-data-breach-survey/

http://www.channelpartnersonline.com/News/2014/11/Survey-Half-of-Enterprises-Lack-FileSharing-Security.aspx

http://www.fiercecontentmanagement.com/story/employers-employees-ready-rumble-over-secure-file-sharing/2014-11-26

https://www.skyhighnetworks.com/offers/wp-csa-capp-survey/

http://www.cmswire.com/cms/information-management/could-cloud-apps-make-the-enterprise-sick-027681.php

http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/media/2015/05/8567326/what-are-they-thinking-microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-sees-future-and-its

http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/media/2015/05/8567326/what-are-they-thinking-microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-sees-future-and-its

http://assets.rightscale.com/uploads/pdfs/RightScale-2015-State-of-the-Cloud-Report.pdf

http://www.fiercecontentmanagement.com/story/cloud-storage-isnt-final-word-document-management/2014-07-29?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=internal

http://www.americanbazaaronline.com/2015/05/13/former-intermex-employee-files-lawsuit-for-being-fired-after-uninstalling-tracking-app-xora/

http://www.americanbazaaronline.com/2015/05/13/former-intermex-employee-files-lawsuit-for-being-fired-after-uninstalling-tracking-app-xora/


https://mcpmag.com/articles/2015/02/18/microsoft-2015-product-roadmap.aspx

http://www.realstorygroup.com/Reports/Collaboration/


http://www.webtorials.com/main/resource/papers/McAfee/paper15/osterman-office-365.pdf

http://www.webtorials.com/main/resource/papers/McAfee/paper15/osterman-office-365.pdf

http://searchexchange.techtarget.com/opinion/Following-the-SharePoint-Online-collaboration-evolution

Documents

2015 SharePoint and Office 365 State of the Market Survey ... · PDF file2015 SharePoint and Office 365 State of the Market Survey White Paper Prepared by: ... The second objective