One Collaboration Platform to Rule Them All?

Cathing up on some news of earlier this month.

CMSWire published an article quoting some of the findings from a recent report by Osterman Research. Let’s go straight to the quotes …

… SharePoint is a big topic these days. With the release of SharePoint Server 2007, analysts everywhere are trying to get a grasp on its reach into the enterprise and the issues surrounding its implementation.

According to the latest from Osterman Research, SharePoint is becoming the de facto collaboration platform for many organizations today. …

Strong confirmation on the uptake of SharePoint …

… The Osterman study sought to determine trends in the use of SharePoint over the next 12 months. Results of the study indicate that in organizations that deployed Microsoft Exchange, more than half are currently using SharePoint and 12 percent plan to deploy it in the next 12 months.

The number of organizations that employ SharePoint for mission-critical applications is less than 20 percent, a figure expected to double over the next year. Meanwhile, the number of SharePoint applications will quadruple. …

Good detail on the level of application into ‘mission-critical’ area’s and a strong confirmation of the level of trust companies have with regards to SharePoint, as the mission critical application of SharePoint will double over the next year …

… The study also noted that most deployments are hosted by third-party hosting providers. Organizations for the most part don’t have plans in place for hosting SharePoint applications. …

This is one I didn’t expect to be the case already. The fact that the majority of the surveyed companies uses a hosted SharePoint environment shows also a high level of confidence in the partner ecosystem around the Microsoft platform and in hosted (SaaS) solutions …

… To many IT managers, implementing SharePoint is a no-brainer. ..

… At the end of the day, SharePoint is still a lot cheaper than many other enterprise CMS systems. Thus it makes sense that organizations want to take advantage of it for content management and collaboration.

However, with great power comes great responsibility.

Organizations looking to implement SharePoint just need to remember this one word: governance. It’s not a big word, but it carries a big stick. …

Be sure to read the whole article for the full perspective : CMSWire.com