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- jdeane, on 10/22/2009, -11/+46Microsoft has actually been doing a fantastic job with their Office suite. Word, while not the best word processor on OSX, is fantastic on Windows. I have never used SharePoint, so I am not able to speak intelligently about it. However, if it works like Microsoft claims, sign me up. Collaboration is a real headache when working in teams on projects. Let's face the facts, Google Docs isn't going to take over for Office anytime soon so enabling easier collaboration is a great step forward for Microsoft.
It's not just word though, if anyone can find a better/more feature rich spreadsheet application (or basically any application - IMO, Excel is in the top five list of greatest applications ever) than Excel then go ahead and post a link in the comments.
*prepares to be dugg down* - topgigmedia, on 10/22/2009, -3/+21Window of opportunity - nice pun.
- jugglingjon, on 10/22/2009, -5/+21do you even know what sharepoint is?
- AWBoy666, on 10/22/2009, -1/+16You'd be surprised. Most people I know really like Office. Google Docs isn't anything more than a way to share Office documents online, which email has done for years.
- duewydo, on 10/22/2009, -0/+11I have a fair amount of sharepoint experience. I think my biggest let down is when I see its implementation in businesses where they use the default layouts that are offered. It is actually fairly flexible and can do some interesting things if you get someone who knows what they are doing to incorporate it into your existing business. Rather I find that the implementations I have seen are default and they try to make all their other operations work around the default share point. I guess now that I think about it, the vanilla install gives you a tool that operates much like a wiki, although you could take it a lot further.
I guess I think this article is over hyped because I don't see Share Point going mainstream, it will stay a business product and and so you aren't going to see it gain any more ground then it already has. I tried pushing SharePoint once as a way to create a paperless workspace. It sickens me how everyday information packets are printed out for everyone and just about all go into the trash with out being opened. So users could log into share point and read the packet electronically if they wanted. But it wasn't share point, the old farts just wanted that paper work to clutter their desk, giving the allusion of being busy. - strangewill, on 10/22/2009, -1/+12I use to run sharepoint in Firefox, never had an issue... -shrugs-
It's mostly people who try to use sharepoint as a website front end that fail miserably, as a collaboration piece it works great. - lukas88, on 10/22/2009, -1/+10I agree with you about Word and Excel, two of my favorite apps. I still think Google is going to come out on top, simply because they are going to win the integration game. For example,you can create web/email based questionnaires that automatically enter data into a google docs spreadsheet. From there you can reference the data from any webpage as part of a chart/graph.
Google will win the "casual use" market because they are free and they are better at integration. MS will still probably be king at most workplaces, it simply has more powerful apps. - haid, on 10/22/2009, -2/+10MS has a history of making things that only-sort-of work on other platforms. Certain sharepoint functionality only works in IE.
It has been successful strategy because it holds out the promise of functioning and so squelches alternatives. But of course it will "work best on Windows". So Entourage is like Outlook, but doesn't allow you to accept or decline an event from the calendar if the email for the event was deleted.
MS just can't give up old, bad ideas. I'd like to think the world is changing and such short term thinking is on the way out....but... - friendofasquid, on 10/22/2009, -1/+8I've worked on a rather large SharePoint implementation. If it convinced me of anything, it's that Microsoft has only made token steps to make itself cross-platform. It has spotty support for non-IE browsers for starters, only runs on SQL Server and is very hard to consume its web services in non-Microsoft environments and relies on AD for authentication (and sometimes, though not always, authorisation).
SharePoint does a lot of things, but most of them are mediocre at best. Instead, I'm a big proponent of "enterprise" wikis like Confluence that remove the need for an Office installation altogether and just stays out of your way, yet integrates very nicely with Office nonetheless. - OverDriven, on 10/22/2009, -14/+21One of my clients has been using Sharepoint as a web based system for years (running it on their own server). It's garbage IMO. I mean you can't even use all of it's functions unless you are on IE. They certainly aren't happy with it either, but their IT company sold them on the idea.
- gernblansted, on 10/22/2009, -0/+7Using free stuff doesn't mean automatic profit on the other end. If more of a profit comes from buying into a company's ecosystem, even if they aren't liked, then guess which one will be used more by profit makers.
Live a life of free software and make money doing so - that's great and respectable. But in the end, ideology alone doesn't stand a chance of dominating against cold hard cash flow. - lukas88, on 10/22/2009, -2/+8How many people do you know that use live? In contrast, how many people use gmail, google maps, google search, etc. They will win the integration game because more people use their services.
Android is a perfect example of how well they know how to do integration. In contrast, I struggled with windows mobile 6 for two years. I believe MS is getting better but they also have a history of being amazingly inept about such things. - kgdoom, on 10/22/2009, -9/+15I'm not impressed with SharePoint. Plenty of alternatives that work way better and play way nicer with a non Microsoft stack.
- mweels, on 10/22/2009, -2/+8You had me until "windows + internet explorer."
- ibgarrett, on 10/22/2009, -3/+9This is all great and everything, and from what I've seen of SharePoint it looks great, with one tiny problem. It's a closed system. Unless a company is more than willing to commit to being a slave to Microsoft's pricing whims I would never fully recommend going with something like this.
We live in a day and age when information is to be shared widely, across multiple platforms and tools. When we get a single company dictating who has the tools and how to use them, it severely limits what the platform can evolve into, and by whom can evolve it. - OverDriven, on 10/22/2009, -0/+5Who would try to use Sharepoint as a website front end? I can't imagine anyone trying that. Do you know of a site that actually does this?
- belthize, on 10/22/2009, -2/+7All the article really says is that it doesn't matter what the front end is if it can't deal natively and fully with the document format.
The author's generally correct that the dominance of .doc (soon to be docx) and xls (soon to be xlsx) will translate into dominance for Office and Sharepoint but it would be a mistake to go further and suggest that Office and Sharepoint's dominance is a reflection of their inherent worth/polish.
If ODF became the defacto XML standard for all office docs Office and Sharepoint would have a much rougher time. - AeroGuy, on 10/22/2009, -0/+5Open XML is not fully documented. Period. It is therefore not an implementable standard. Game over in my book. (Despite being ridiculously voluminous, the definition says things like "behave like Excel 95" and other ridiculous crap. So, you are supposed to go buy Excel 95 and try to figure out what its bugs are in order to be able to even *read* the standard definition?
Even MS itself has no complete implementation of Open XML. That should tell you something. - AgentSamosa, on 10/22/2009, -2/+7Crap? The combination 2007+ versions of Exchange, Sharepoint, and Office *properly* implemented is something that will be very hard to beat in terms of capability, collaboration, and flexibility by any open source or Google Apps product. Yes, in some cases GA or open source will be a better fit, but on the corporate/enterprise level, it's all Microsoft.
- YokohamaGaijin, on 10/22/2009, -3/+8Sharepoint is good at its core mission: unlocking the collaboration layer in a business environment. Everything else is mediocre to poor in its implementation. We use it because we are a MS shop and the integration with Office products is outstanding (as it should be). We will never use a Google apps or future equivalent (even MS Live) as it raises too many concerns about data integrity and potential concerns for our customer's trademarked/copyrighted information.
Developing for Sharepoint is a pain in the ass but I'm liking what 2010 is promising. I hope to hear more in the near future. - ibgarrett, on 10/22/2009, -0/+4Sure doesn't seem like it from this site - http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver ...
- seltaeb4, on 10/22/2009, -1/+5Microsoft itself is an old, bad idea.
- HonoredMule, on 10/22/2009, -1/+5I'll take one right beta over two wrong finals.
- DarkShroud, on 10/22/2009, -1/+5Are you aware that MS is launching a free web version of Office? It will integrate into people's live accounts. Add into that the functionality of Live Mesh & Sky Drive for syncing and MS has a real hit. Also, Hotmail accounts can be set to automatically access & download mail from other email accounts & services, this is all done server side.
- Chakat, on 10/22/2009, -2/+6You can self-host google apps. They don't offer it online, but you talk to their sales department, they will give you a quote for a machine you can plug into your datacenter and have gmail, apps, etc.
- redfox2600, on 10/22/2009, -1/+5The problem with Google apps is that it's hosted and controlled by Google. Google indexes your documents, they host and basically control the content. Which is a horrible thing to do in a real business environment.
Yes share point has some crappy things about it. But hey that's true for everything else. Welcome to the real world. - Peat, on 10/22/2009, -0/+4I think what he forgot to include is he's in Vegas at the SharePoint 2009 conference.
- MWeather, on 10/22/2009, -0/+3For one, there are several programs that can write compliant ODF files, but not a single one that can write compliant OOXML files.
- turbotad, on 10/26/2009, -0/+3SharePoint conference just concluded, and one of their main design goals for SP2010 was (a) KILL IE6, and (b)support Firefox and Safari. In some of the demos of SP2010, they intentionally did the whole software demo in Firefox. At a Microsoft convention!!
- MWeather, on 10/22/2009, -2/+5Without buying lots of other Microsoft software, just how useful is this free app?
- damonic, on 10/22/2009, -5/+8There are certain functions that will only work in IE. My company uses it as a intranet portal and its an absolute pain in the ass for our design team on the Mac.
- Ndelangen, on 10/22/2009, -0/+3just what I expected
- TehSnappy, on 10/22/2009, -1/+4What mechanism to pull in fresh content automatically? RSS/Atom? SharePoint supports it. Are you expecting SharePoint to go search random hard drives for documents to upload? To edit itself?
- th3heretic, on 10/22/2009, -3/+6Speaking for my job, I don't see us moving to any of these products at any time in the future.
- Mizzike, on 10/22/2009, -4/+7This comment brought to you by Microsoft.
- inigomntoya, on 10/22/2009, -2/+5So, NetWare isn't 'in' anymore?
- lorddazzer, on 10/22/2009, -1/+4Sharepoint is not bad for enterprise scale solutions who need interoperability with Microsoft products. The full 2010 suite is going to be a serious contender, no doubt.
For the everyday mom/pop business they'll probably have better options with better scalable solutions. - sunny0, on 10/22/2009, -1/+4Agreed. If it's not free then who cares? I can use a free office suite and share my files for group editing using google for free. WOW... that is a good business decision :D.
- ibgarrett, on 10/22/2009, -0/+3dig1x - did you even read the article? It states clearly in there "twice" that it's a closed system.
FTA: "By using the Open XML document format (Microsoft’s “standards-based” but proprietary code)" and "Customers can’t switch to competing document editing products unless those tools can replicate those processes, and they can’t. Yes, Google, EMC, Cisco and others have collaboration tools, but none that can edit Microsoft documents properly, because they don’t use Open XML."
Sure seems closed to me. Once you're in, you're in.
And additionally: "This type of functionality is only possible because of the intimate relationship, all underpinned by Open XML, WPF — and Silverlight on the Web – of Microsoft SQL Server, Office, Exchange, Active Directory, Collaboration Server and Web applications (and yes, like batteries, these essentials are all sold separately)."
Read "SOLD SEPARATELY" MS has a great way of nickle and diming you to death... - digiteyes, on 10/22/2009, -0/+2I am not really a big fan of SharePoint even though we use it at work. I have to say though from an enterprise standpoint Microsoft has the market cornered. With SharePoint 2007 Microsoft started laying down the foundation for an enterprise class collaboration system, with SP 2010 they have really taken this a step further with deep integration with their Office Suite. Which makes sense considering the move away from destkop to the cloud.
SharePoint as someone jokingly said, is a place where Microsoft products that don't make it go to die ( InfoPath, Performance Point, Groove). To their credit though these products have been revived by integrating their best features to strengthen the SharePoint brand.
Their one shortcoming as always is that their technology never really plays well with other systems, but IMO thats how they are able to convert people to use their products, since they basically have a product in practically every segment. To borrow a snipped from the iPhones tagline, "We are sorry you are not able to integrate with your legacy systems, however we have an app for that".
Outside the enterprise not really sure how much impact they will have since there are so many alternatives that innovate at a faster speed than SharePoint can manage. But who knows MSFT tends to be bullish, and they have the capital to back it. if you cant beat em, buy em. - bashmohandesx, on 10/22/2009, -0/+2For mom & pop, here is what Office Live is coming for, it will be the Sharepoint for the rest of the world
- AeroGuy, on 10/22/2009, -1/+3Never underestimate the power of a few well-placed bribes.
- haid, on 10/22/2009, -1/+3They produce products for other platforms and intentionally hobble them. How can anyone release a calendaring application (part of entourage) and not allow one to click on the calendar event and accept or decline the meeting?
But in some sense you are correct. They need for a poor pseudo compliant product to exist on other platforms to drive customers to their "premium" product. But they don't need to be the supplier of that pseudo compliant product. Consider .NET and MONO. Mono is an open source somewhat compliant clone of .NET, but not produced by MS (directly). In this case, what MS chooses to hold close to the chest as proprietary is what ensures that "Works best on Windows" will be fulfilled. But it is the same strategy as before.
As a consumer, the best approach is to stick to truely open initiatives that will work on all platforms. Only if we do this will MS have to compete on a level playing field. (But I doubt it is in their DNA) - friendofasquid, on 10/22/2009, -0/+2I take your point about the default layout being crappy. But SharePoint is a beast to master, and consultants are expensive. If you're not mostly happy with it out-of-the-box, seriously consider another product.
- Ndelangen, on 10/22/2009, -0/+2yes it would be.
- strangewill, on 10/22/2009, -1/+3http://www.guajome.net
My old high school, har har. They wouldn't touch IIS for fear that it would bring down the entire website being as the techs who bought into deploying sharepoint built it as if it was a tower of cards, that and seemed to not understand how IIS can isolate separate websites...
Two years later they still wouldn't deploy additional websites on the same server, absolutely terrible.
I ran sharepoint internally the way it was suppose to be run, and I liked it. - PinkyTheWinky, on 10/22/2009, -0/+2Thats irrelevant because office does not default to saving to ODF. MS Still want their own formats to be the standard.
- seltaeb4, on 10/22/2009, -1/+3... and their Astroturf Army.
- amoeba, on 10/22/2009, -3/+5VENDOR LOCK-IN!
I can haz licence? - TehSnappy, on 10/22/2009, -0/+2Groove integrated with SharePoint 2007, and in SharePoint 2010, Groove has been renamed "SharePoint Workspace"
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/05/groo ... -
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