The following are my scribbled notes from a few sessions:
SharePoint in 2011: How Did We Get Here?
- At the beginning of the session the presenter asked the crowd to shout out some words that they think described SharePoint in 2011. Those words were: clunky, complex, social, misrepresented, bottomless pit, and collaboration.
- "Companies incorporating collaborative decision making are outperforming their peers" from a McKinsey Global Survey in 2011. I tried to find this survey or quote on Google but had no luck. I did find a 2010 Global Survey by them in which they stated "companies incorporating decision-making as a core competency – even a competitive differentiator – are outperforming their peers."
- Microsoft uses SharePoint to keep their Office products in vogue in an era where the rest of technology is moving to the web
- Difficulties in upgrading SharePoint versions has bedeviled the product since its inception
- There are 4 main themes to SharePoint
- File sharing is the mother of collaboration
- Empower the individual (not the enterprise; enterprise work is left to partners)
- Sustain the Office franchise
- Promote .NET
- From a partner perspective it is great to work with SharePoint. SharePoint means you never have to say "no" to a customer because everything is possible with SharePoint, the only question becomes how much it'll cost. ~~Can't this be said for any major portal software?
- "The blog feature isn't that good"
- The micro-blogging and activity stream features leave a lot to be desired
- Out of the box, SharePoint is missing key business applications
- For every $1 spent on licenses a customer usually spends $6-9 on services (training, development, etc)
- 60-80% of deployments involve a partner in some capacity
- The key takeaway is that there are alternatives and they should be explored
- SharePoint business process management (BPM) works fine within a Microsoft software environment (Project, Office, Exchange, etc) however when it comes to integrating with non-MS enterprise systems (CRM, HRIS, etc) it is not good
- SharePoint is better documented and supported than other vendors in the space
- SharePoint has a 3 year software upgrade cycle which is problematic as the consumer space is changing at a much faster pace and customers are less willing to wait for changes in spaces such as social, collaboration, mobile, etc
- 2011 Content Technology Vendor Map from the Real Story Group
What is - and what isn't - SharePoint
- Prediction: FAST will be more integrated in SharePoint 15 (2013/14)
- Not sure what the future of WorkSpaces will be
- FAST is good for high volume, or multiple repositories of content, however the majority of customers would be better served by addressing issues with their existing search. FAST is usually not the silver bullet.
- The strengths of SP's WCM: standard tools, out of the box capabilities, .NET
- The weaknesses of SP's WCM: web content management in SP is terrible, it is Windows only, content reuse, browser compatibility issues
- Strengths of doc mgmt in SP: Office integration, ease of use, workflow
- Weaknesses of doc mgmt in SP: Workflow, problems with complex document management
- Strengths of record mgmt in SP: Easy to implement, based on rules
- Weaknesses of record mgmt in SP: It only understands SP content, narrow constructs, not enterprise ready
- Guaranteed - you will need 3rd party tools and extensions for SharePoint
The Real Cost of SharePoint
- There are 3 main versions of core SharePoint software
- Foundation: Free
- Standard: CAL based license
- Enterprise: CAL based license, and you must buy standard to get Enterprise. The CAL for Enterprise includes FAST
- A "Core CAL" is available that includes 4 components: SharePoint Enterprise, Exchange + 2 more things...? ask about it!
- "Internet Sites" is an add-on that is needed for ANY non-employees to access a SharePoint site. The authentication mechanism is irrelevant to the need for this (meaning you can't toss partners into Active Directory and treat them like employees and assume you don't need this product at that point)
- Office 365 doesn't have the capabilities to run all SharePoint add-ons. For most you'll need to go the on premise route.
- When buying development licenses go for the MSDN license which includes Visual Studio. You'll get much more than if you just buy the Visual Studio license.
- A rough pricing estimate for 1k users is $328,993 for an on-premise install. This includes every type of license necessary (SQL, Windows server, SharePoint, etc)
- Office 365 runs between 10-27$ per user for the Enterprise edition
- Microsoft offers huge discounts for non-profits, however all additional components don't necessarily receive the same discounts (MSDN, Windows Server, SQL Server, add-on from vendors, etc)
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