Collaboration Is the Database

What I tell everyone is that SharePoint is a pretty good technology for building intranets and collaboration. If you are running a fully Microsoft shop or have extensive SharePoint capacity or an Enterprise license, than SharePoint is a smart tool to use. People often point out its flaws, and it certainly has several. But over all these it has an ease of administration and use that make it the first content management system embraced by millions of users without complaint. In fact its worst problem is that it is over used.

I began working with Microsoft SharePoint technology in 2004. Like many people I was far from impressed to start. SharePoint 2003 had issues on all levels, from search, scalability, UI, and HTML. But with all the technology issues SharePoint had, and to a great extent still has, it also had an intuitive user interface and administrator interface. And it is this intuitiveness which has made it the first and foremost tool in getting web based technology in to the workforce.
It really hard for me to speak objectively about SharePoint. SharePoint like few other technologies has changed the nature of my work and open opportunities up for me I could hardly imagine a few years ago. SharePoint opened doors to be precisely where I wanted to be just 5 years ago.

And as a user I really like SharePoint. When I was with Logica I was a major user and evangelist for the product. I saw teams really get benefit from the product. But I have since implemented the system many times and it has serious flaws. SharePoint 2007 is vastly better than the SharePoint 2003 product, but both still pose major risks to a companies SQL infrastructure and the costs of data store. SharePoint does little to improve the visibility of knowledge to the Enterprise and its lack of true work flow or business logic means its use it always a fudged execution by the staff using it. The collection of all the team sites in a SharePoint farm do not create an Enterprise.

My career is becoming as much working against SharePoint and working with it. But the tool has a kind of magic contract with users. Like when Office gave people Power Point and suddenly they could make interactive visual communication themselves without having to pay artists. SharePoint puts a great deal of power in the hands of certain users, and in today's business climate I imagine a lot of that power is being used wisely.