Nine companies are saying "yes," having recently launched Enterprise 2.0 offerings that integrate with SharePoint technology.
If there's one thing that any I.T. pro knows it's the value of "maximizing their investment" in whatever servers they run, technology they use, or services they've signed up for. With strict budgets in place, no I.T. purchases are bought on a whim. Instead, each decision is researched, tested, thoughtfully considered, and, if worthy, purchased, then rolled out to become a part of the I.T. infrastructure. SharePoint is no exception.
One of the Microsoft Server products that businesses worldwide run is SharePoint. For those not from the I.T. community, SharePoint is thought of as a more robust version of Google Sites, but that's a poor comparison. Yes, both tools allow for team site creation and collaboration, however the similarities start and stop there.
For many companies, SharePoint is the portal for all their business data - and not just docs, spreadsheets, presentations, and PDFs, but also browser-based forms that interact with built-in workflow technologies which add business logic to sophisticated online applications.
Other tools allow for the addition of business intelligence enabled dashboards and reporting centers, enterprise search, and application templates that can be downloaded and customized to quickly set up internal web sites and services that provide everything from online help desks, to groupboard workspaces, to knowledge libraries, vacation scheduling tools, project tracking workspaces, sales pipelines, and much more.
In other words, businesses won't necessarily be ditching SharePoint anytime soon just to run the latest and greatest "Enterprise 2.0" technologies. However, that doesn't mean they're not interested in running Enterprise 2.0 apps - it just means that they'll be more likely to "maximize their investment" in SharePoint in order to do so.
This week at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference, several vendors are demonstrating their social-computing business tools, and a good many of them are tools that integrate with SharePoint technologies. Here's a look at who these companies are and what they offer:
Just yesterday, Awareness announced their new platform that allows for the creation of Web 2.0 communities that connect people and content through social networking technologies and Awareness-powered widgets that can be ported to any third-party services from Facebook to MySpace.
With the new platform from Awareness, Microsoft SharePoint integration is built-in, letting I.T. admins use SharePoint's scalable and searchable back end to tie together internally-facing SharePoint environments with externally-facing social networking/Web 2.0 communities.
This integration also includes the packaging of Awareness's Web 2.0 widgets as SharePoint Web Parts that let users monitor and contribute content, display user details and status, search content, and view metrics. Awareness also integrates with SharePoint's Identity Management to allow for SSO (single sign-on), which makes using both platforms together a seamless experience.
Yesterday, NewsGator announced the launch of their new SharePoint add-on, Social Sites 2.0. This tool brings new social capabilities to SharePoint Server 2007 including community pages, which are ad hoc communities formed around projects, interests, or locations, and social networking capabilities that let employees better collaborate and share knowledge. Social Sites also includes tools for tagging, search, customized recommendations, and a discussion component that includes email integration. Users are provided with social graphs based on both explicit and implied connections, making it easier for them to find their colleagues and content in an easier way than before.
Atlassian, makers of Confluence, an enterprise wiki creation tool, announced its integration with SharePoint through an embedding function that lets the Confluence wiki appear to be a part of the SharePoint site, complete with an edit button for making changes. The wiki lets users add charts, diagrams, image galleries, maps and database content within their pages.
Yesterday, WorkLight announced its new WorkLight for SharePoint, which lets SharePoint Server users securely view and update information from SharePoint Server through familiar consumer tools like Windows Vista gadgets, Facebook applications, personalized homepage gadgets, RSS, mobile devices, and more.
Last month, blueKiwi Software announced their integration with both Microsoft Office and SharePoint. With their new SharePoint connector and blueKiwi OfficeAssistant, their social software suite easily integrates with a company's SharePoint Server to provide social networking tools and capabilities that include blogging, user profiles, conversation trackers, tagging, social search, and more.
Yesterday, Connectbeam announced their new Spotlight Connect for SharePoint, a bookmarking and tagging add-on module for their enterprise social search-and-discovery application that brings social content, collaboration, and bookmarking tools into SharePoint via a special add-on module available this July.
Telligent's Community Server Evolution platform uses its REST API, mail gateway, shared authentication and single sign-on, to integrate with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, Microsoft Exchange Server, and Microsoft Active Directory. Their social-computing platform offers enterprise blogging tools, social networking, social streams, forums, media galleries, and business analytics through detailed reporting.
Leverage Software announced integration with SharePoint Server, enabling users to interact with external-facing internet communities of their partners, customers, or corporate alumni, while maintaining the security needs of an enterprise.
Tomoye's Ecco software, which lets you get answers, network, and collaborate across the enterprise, is now offering a SharePoint-ready solution. This capability lets users publish documents from SharePoint to Ecco and supports SSO between applications.
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These sites look as though they were built in '98. How is sharepoint for adding a "web 2.0" design layer?
Posted by: wowza | June 10, 2008 12:18 PM
Socialtext just announced Socialcalc, which goes after a missing piece in all of the solutions you mention here: spreadsheets. That's an area where Sharepoint has an advantage, and that advantage is with the bean counters that have much influence on buying decisions. Integrated spreadsheet functionality inline with wiki docs and blog posts strengthens the case for an alternative E2.0 platform to SharePoint.
Posted by: Justin Kistner | June 10, 2008 2:48 PM
Have you actually used this product? Sharepoint barely works let alone the answer to Web 2.0 in companies.
It's mostly a boon to the consultant market who get called to fix the thing once your information is locked away inside it.
It's an "out of the box solution" but it is hardly "enterprise" worthy, it's expensive, and it doesn't work that well.
Posted by: Share Pointless? | June 10, 2008 3:09 PM
@Share Pointless: Yes, I have - it's heavily used in the "real world" of I.T. & business - and I think it's great that these enterprise 2.0 companies are extending it even further...
However, that being said -
(@wowza) I agree - there is definitely an untapped potential market for SharePoint themes to "pretty up" the UI - like many enterprise offerings, a lot of thought goes into the back end, not as much into design. Of course, if you're any good with CSS, you can re-do any SharePoint site with SharePoint Designer...but, personally, I would have *killed* for some downloadable themes that saved me the effort.
Posted by: Sarah Perez
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June 10, 2008 5:19 PM
The '"real world" of I.T. & business'? Uh huh.
That would have to be the world that doesn't care that a blank out of the box Sharepoint master page has more than 100 markup validation errors. Yes, you could make it output valid markup... In much the same way as you could probably turn a car into a plane given enough time, resources and knowledge. But I'd rather just start with a plane.
That would have to be the world that doesn't balk at the ridiculous licencing model.
That would have to be the world that doesn't laugh at the outrageous cost of "expert" consultants and support.
Hope that MS Kool-Aid hits the spot for you. I gave it up years ago.
Posted by: Jimmy Ricard | June 10, 2008 9:09 PM
Sharepoint is not the only game in town for Web2.0 in the enterprise.
Take a look at this.
http://greenhouse.lotus.com/
You can experiment with Lotus Connections here for free.
Posted by: Swapnonil Mukherjee | June 11, 2008 12:19 AM
It's a cute misconception that you can customize Sharepoint with "just some CSS".
I've worked on a large customization projects and it's a real mess. Webdesign is a combination of HTML and CSS and Sharepoint horribly fails at both of them. The HTML is the worst I've ever seen (I've worked with lots and lots of tools, both on the Java, MS, and Ruby fronts), and the CSS is a real mess with no organization whatsoever (thousands of lines of CSS that you explicitly need to override).
Because of this, Sharepoint is very very hard to customize. My advise is to either keep the default look, or pick another tool. It is that bad, really.
Posted by: Emil Stenström | June 13, 2008 2:32 AM
I'm not agree with most of you.
Sharepoint is hard to customize as it is hard to be able to do that.
With Moss 2007 you could create and publish a internet-facing website totaly customized about css and html, with the content management features out of the box.
I think today there's poorly knowledge about MOSS 2007 and its development enviroment, that certainly lacks in some features...
Posted by: Luca | June 16, 2008 3:16 AM
Great article, also Dotster just announced their "sign up for a domain and get a social network solution" - they call it Dotster Connect, worth checking it out since they are new and usually their services are very reasonably priced.
Posted by: John | June 23, 2008 7:15 AM
Most vendors are on the me too path for the share point bus. I have looked at a few integrations and I have to say most are just a check off box for most vendors offering the least integration required to have an "integration" for the marketing docs. Awareness is nice as well as HiveLive in regards to integration but it is hard to say if anyone will get any value from it. I am skeptical of announcements like Leverage Software's, I have looked at their platform and it is hard to imagine they will get it right as their other touted integrations like SF.com are so weak.
Posted by: Janine P | June 25, 2008 12:33 PM