I was watching a Phil Lee podcast available through PodTechNet. The discussion was about Microsoft SharePoint Collaboration Server. The discussion made me start thinking.
The legacy behind the SharePoint product is that it started as a Site Server and migrated to SharePoint 1.0. Microsoft then merged Front Page into Windows SharePoint Services which morfed into SharePoint Portal Server 2003. The idea is to take the typical tools that everyone uses (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) and enable users to share these applicaitons as a service collaboratively. This isn’t quite Documentum, FileNet, or the other ECM processes. It is more of a collaboration tool and not a document control mechanism. It does not have the business process integration like a traditional ECM product.
The SharePoint Server 2007 does incorporate the Content Management 2002 server and Office 2007. This is considered to be the money maker for Microsoft. They key to the code is splitting the services into different components. It consists of Collaboration. a Portal, a Search Engine, Content Management Services, Business Analytics, and Business Process Automation. The service layer under these services create things like information lifecycle management of documents, security and access controls, and other things to provide government compliance and data retention regulations.
The concept here is that if a user is a historical Office Suite user, there is an opportunity to upgrade everything to collaborative services and corporate standards with the new Suite and SharePoint combined. These services are also starting to include some basic templates for back office applicaitons like inventory, basic accounting, and HR. These templates are not robust and will probably only work for mom and pop shops.
The demo that was given showed a contracts folder that allows a group of people to create documents with Excel, share these documents through files, or make them available offline through Outlook. The tool also has a discussion group mechanism that allows for a newsgroup style discussion. This service is available as is News offline but also works similar to an instant messenger chat session if you are connected.
The demo showed an example of filing an expense report through a template. This integrates a Forms server on the SharePoint server similar to the Oracle Forms server integrates with an Applicaiton Server. The expense tool showed basic forms.
The way that file sharing is done has changed slightly. Rather than looking at a collection of Powerpoints being dropped into a directory, users can subscribe to a shared channel to view presentations generated from a group that generates collections of presentations. This is a little different from a web page service because it allows for people to be notified when something drops into a channel.
SharePoint is becoming pervasive because many companies own Office 2007 and other related technologies. They typically have at least one SQL Server license, and there isn’t really a good collaboration tool other than email and IM. SharePoint gives you a tool to easily expand use of other tools that users are familiar with.
Some of the drawbacks are that it is easy to cause islands of information and problems when integration of different sharepoint instances merge. The storage structure, topology, and data organization becomes an issue. There really isn’t a sync or offline way of attaching to this. It is also a Windows only solution. There is also a big step in going to Office 2007. Once you go, everyone will have to be able to read the new file storage format. This is an all or nothing step.
This product does have good momentum. It does integrate a variety of tools that people are familiar with.
– end of training video –
In my opinion, this looks like a good tool. I am not a fan of Microsoft products because they typically only work on Windows but that does not seem to be a problem for most corporations. I don’t think it integrates very well into documents that need to be scanned or documents that are not Windows format. The search engine and security mechanisms are not as granular or robust as they need to be. Fortunately for Oracle, we do have some good extension products that we got with the Stellant application that allow us to integrate the SharePoint data and other products like Documentum together. It seems like every customer that we talk to has an ECM solution and it needs to integrate into SharePoint. Many companies are treating it like a web version of Outlook that does collaboration and joint scheduling. Not a bad concept but many of these companies are moving forward with initiatives in different business units to isolate sharing between departments. This is cauing integration and standards problems within their company when they try to aggregate into one SharePoint site.