Collaboration and Content Strategies Blog

Office Finally Embraces SharePoint in 2010

Blogger: Larry Cannell

Many enterprises buy into Microsoft’s integrated vision of collaboration because they assume their products work well together. While in the case of SharePoint and Office this is technically true (more so with the 2007 versions), many of these integrations are either not used by or not visible to the average Office user.

However, integrations introduced in SharePoint and Office 2010 may change this perception because they are exposed in menus and dialogs used by nearly every Office user. Perhaps supporting SharePoint Online and having SharePoint provide the basis of Office Live Workspaces is encouraging the SharePoint and Office planners to take a more user-centric perspective.

In any case, here are some of the new integrations between SharePoint and Office 2010 that you should look for.

The Office 2010 file manipulation functions (e.g., file/open, insert picture/video, save to, etc.)  makes it significantly easier to work directly with SharePoint content. In previous Office editions SharePoint content was accessible but was not easy to find. These integrations include:

• A list of favorite SharePoint sites is presented to the user alongside of “My Documents” in the file manipulation menus/dialogs. This list is managed on SharePoint. No more cutting and pasting URLs to jump to SharePoint content.
• SharePoint becomes a primary source for document templates used in Office applications. Previously, templates opened from Office were mostly limited to the familiar “Blank” templates, downloaded templates stored locally, or the Office Online templates (such as the ever popular Word templates used for creating fancy meeting agendas). In 2010, corporate and group templates should be easier to access through the Office applications.
• A document’s properties can be aligned with SharePoint’s new taxonomy and tagging system using a rich, auto-complete interface. In 2007 specific document properties can be required by a SharePoint content type but the new taxonomy/tagging system enables a potentially more valuable user experience within both the Office application (to select a term or add a tag) and SharePoint (to drive navigation of documents based on these terms/tags).

Office 2010 applications cache files opened from SharePoint and will only transmit new or changed information, rather than retransmitting the whole file over the network. This is enabled by the new MS-FSSHTTP protocol, which can support uses cases such as these:

• Assume a user opens a 50MB PowerPoint file stored on SharePoint. The browser starts up the PowerPoint application and then PowerPoint transfers the file from SharePoint. The user likely knows it’s a large file and waits, so far so good. However, every time the user wants to save the file (File/Save), even if only a single character is changed, the entire 50MB is transferred back to SharePoint (which can take several minutes, depending on the network bandwidth). This is simply how the WebDAV protocol works and is a major inhibitor to working directly with Office files stored in SharePoint. In 2010, the Office application keeps a local cache of the document and only the changes are transmitted to SharePoint (a matter of a few bytes). In short, the performance of saving files to SharePoint should be similar to that of saving changes to a local disk.
• Documents can be simultaneously co-authored by multiple users. In the case of Excel, for example, multiple people can be working in different parts of the spreadsheet at the same time. These co-authoring scenarios are started by users editing files stored within a SharePoint site.

Source: “Multi-user authoring with Office 2010 and the Office Web Apps” (David Rasmussen, Microsoft @ the SharePoint Conference 2009)

In my opinion, teams working together on documents should store and work with them directly in workspaces, rather than keeping a single master copy on someone’s computer and simply use the workspace to periodically share a copy of “the latest version.” By keeping the master copy of a file in the workspace “the latest version” is instantly available to everyone. Office’s use of local caches and the MS-FSSHTTP protocol will make the behavior of these scenarios more acceptable to users.

However, this is a big change in how many people work. Could you move documents from your personal “My Documents” folder to a SharePoint site? Time will tell if these capabilities are sufficient to encourage this mode of working together. If not, then these new integrations may also go unused.

Incidentally, you can also read what I wrote during SharePoint Conference 2009 on my personal blog under the spc09 tag.

SharePoint Conference Breaks the Bank

Blogger: Craig Roth

The Microsoft SharePoint conference in Las Vegas just ended and it was quite an event.  They sold out with 7,400 people.  Huge by SharePoint standards, a yawn by Vegas standards (at a hotel halfway down the strip I got asked a couple of times if I was with the ATM convention. "Yes", I said).

Here's a guide to my blog posts from the conference over on the KnowledgeForward blog:

• SharePoint Conference: Keynote Applause Lines

• Reflecting on the Winding Path of SharePoint

• Free SharePoint Governance Poster

Microsoft Social Computing Overview

Blogger: Mike Gotta

Notes from Christian Finn, Director, Social Computing

• 13 sessions in "social track"
• Microsoft design point is to co-mingle structured collaboration tools alongside social computing tools - it's unrealistic to think of social computing disconnected from collaborations strategies
• Back to information workers and productivity ... find knowledge, share ideas, work in teams, feel valued, manage projects, build= a network and use content
• Long-term ROI of social computing is helping information workers feel valued (e.g., via comments from peers, ratings, etc)
• Microsoft also thinks of the IT Pro ... control costs, provide solutions, maintain security, do more with less, ensure compliance, reduce islands, etc
• This situation also causes users experience is fractured across too many tools and silos
• The challenge for IT: If you are in IT - they are asking for consumer versions of sites for internal use - but arguments raised re: compliance, security, etc.
• The challenge for the Enterprise: Connecting the dots is the challenge of the enterprise ... need to locate expertise, build community between people as a result of mergers, or onboard new employees
• Social Computing lowers the cost for sharing and organizing ... surfaces knowledge and networks (expertise) and increase employee engagement
• Pitfalls: Demographics, hierarchy, policies, culture, etc
• Microsoft believes SharePoint scales to meet as narrow or broad a view an organization has on social computing, you can use it in a very classic way - no MySite etc - keep with basic document libraries, forums, workspaces - or - you can use blogs, wikis, profiles, etc - all in one platform.
• Customer examples: Accenture (extensive use of MySite, social distance), skill attributes used for staffing, etc), Electronic Arts (very strong from a user experience and aesthetic viewpoint). Looks more like Facebook, supports skins for different product areas, etc. British Telecom used podcasting kit for just-in-time learning. Supports knowledge retention (interviews, user-generated videos on best practices).
• SharePointM social journey began with MySite 2003 (disagree that Microsoft had any clue of social computing in 2003 though - some recasting history here)
• Demo
  • MySite: much cleaner UI, less form-like, softer blending of UI elements, typical stuff (name, presence, phone, etc), can use Business Connectivity Services to bring in HR data etc, free-form text for entry of ad-hoc information, redesign of middle section of MySite - tabs for organization, colleagues, tags, memberships etc) - supported by privacy settings.
  • Note Board emulates Facebook Wall type interface - can have Note Board on documents, sites, not just "wall". can have list of comments ala discussion stream
  • Personal tag cloud - when clicked will find people and artifacts
  • Tag Profile: way to aggregate all the people who are using a tag inside the organization... can "follow" tag - do a people search and locate all people associated with that tag
  • MyNetwork is a running newsfeed - stream, river of news model - activity stream comes close to social messaging (Twitter) but not sure I would go that far - seems more "FriendFeed" like.
  • Follow a tag results in event being posted into news stream - way to discover people and artifacts - passive signal model
  • Colleagues ... social graph, Facebook friends, can organize colleagues into groups with privacy controls at group level
  • Filters for newsfeed
  • Organization: org browser is an overlay directory to find people and their relationship to the organization ... not sure who someone works for, where they report in the org structure - Silverlight and HTML version. See digest, direct reports, etc and then can link to full profile - can control delegation
  • Content: similar to 2007 version - can share documents, etc.
  • Status message shows up in news feed Note: wonder how this works with OCS presence status? Opportunity for integration but doubt that there is any linkage right now. Visa-versa - can OCS/Communicator status be sent to news feed - maybe too much noise (on phone, busy) but maybe not
  • Blogs: Much improved UI ... actually looks like a blog ... more Ajax type UI for posting ... maybe not as great as Wordpress or other tools but likely good enough for many situations ... believe you can use Live Writer as well (better choice in my opinion for authoring)
  • Note: Wonder if there is a blogs central type catalog - does not sound like it.
  • Video streaming built into SP2010 ... natively stream of video up to 2GB from store ... ratings supported ... Silverlight player
  • Wikis: two varieties ... team site wiki:  as people move from documents to web pages as medium of information exchange, need to support this within team sites - rich text editor ... bar was really low, previous version of wiki really was not a wiki so this implementation is a significant advancement ... oddly, don't use wiki term. Also have Enterprise Wiki (different) - more like Wikipedia - build on publishing model ... page publishing and categorizing of pages (then why call it a Wiki?) ... access controls supported and versioning ... can chose to have workflow aroudn wiki as well (ex: HR policies database). Under the cover all of this are in lists so blogs, wikis can have workflow attached.
  • Enterprise Wiki surface is a publishing template so you can put web parts and other artifacts like video.
  • Note: people will have to keep close track of team wiki vs. enterprise wiki - different capabilities and different implementations! Will not be able to take a team wiki and promote it to an enterprise wiki for example.
  • Records management and social computing: can apply rules (disposition etc) to blogs, wikis, etc.
  • Note: I still do not believe there are sufficient data loss controls, audit logs, etc here - Msft needs to prove that the support for security, identity and privacy needs much more thoroughly beyond demoware.
  • No iPhone application - too bad :)
• Customization: REST, JSON, ATOM, etc.

SharePoint 2009 Conference: Morning Keynotes

Blogger: Mike Gotta

Notes from Steve Ballmer keynote...

• Vision: seamless experiences across your life
• SharePoint is at the center of intranet, Internet, etc
• Public Beta in November
• Synergies with SharePoint Workspace (Groove recast for SharePoint with improved offline support)
• Targeting 1H2010 for general release (note: my guess is May)
• What is SharePoint? Collaboration, analytics, social networking, content management, portal, workflow, etc etc
• Want to someday bring SharePoint to consumer market
• New user experience for SP2010 - ribbon and other office UI elements
• Consolidate workloads and costs on a single platform (old argument but more so with this release)
• Adding sandbox environment
• Additional standards support (REST, JSON, ATOM) Note: Encouraging widespread development of third-party applications (e.g., Adobe AIR) that front-end SP2010 via these standards might be one of the most significant advancements in the release and Microsoft doesn't push this concept strongly enough - look at all the AIR apps around other social tools for instance
• Demo
  • Business Connectivity Services (next generation of business data catalog)
  • Many more templates within Visual Studio specific to SharePoint
  • Sandbox solution:enable developers to create applications that can be throttled by IT ... isolate application ...
• Note: so far, 45 minutes into keynote, not a single message that would be considered a message to a "business decision maker" - interesting ... pitching to developers and support people in audience, no focus on business solutions, processes, etc (few side comments but nothing in-depth and compelling)
• Cloud, discussion on hybrid split between SP online and SP on-premises
• Important: Still no parity still between SP2010 in cloud and on-premises - better, but not 100%
• Note: When will cloud/SaaS be the primary target environment for SP releases? Seems like on-premises is the target environment creating this lag in terms of parity
• Internet-facing SP: SP in cloud for intranet different than customer-facing Internet
• First real business scenario: Kraft example, consolidated 200 web sites. Volvo also using SP externally for Internet. Not clear what percentage though in these examples are SP - are they 100% run on SP or other platforms are also leveraged
• Demo Internet Facing
  • SharePoint Server For Internet Sites
  • FAST Search Server for Internet Business
• Intranet 2010 Products
  • SharePoint Foundation (successor to WSS)
  • SharePoint Server
  • Fast Search Server
  • SharePoint Online
• Question on long elapsed-time between releases: Basically, SteveB reply is that it has taken them this long (to the 2010 release) to get to the point where the foundation is at a point where they can release application-level functionality faster. But no insight as to what people should expect in the future - is the next release 2013? No guidance so I'm not sure anyone should believe that cycle times are going to get any better until there is proof...
• Question on social computing: SteveB rightly points out the need for social computing to address security and identity aspects of related applications and that IT organizations play a key role to help mitigate risks but no specific insight as to how data loss, identity and security issues are handling in 2010 social computing. Hopefully more to come in this space...

Notes from Jeff Teper keynote

• SharePoint 2010: the business collaboration platform for the enterprise and the web
• Sites: single infrastructure for intranets, extranets and Internet sites
• "Replumbing" of UI, adding ribbon, etc
• SharePoint and Groove user experience consistent now - SharePoint Workspace, offline support, better mobile support
• Collaboration: wiki, blog, tags, etc etc all improved
• Social tagging was a significant focus area
• MySite - some rewriting of history on how MySite was positioned originally. Back circa 2003, MySite was an orphan feature that no one seemed at Microsoft was able to clearly position. Was never intended to play the role it is being positioned for today re: social computing.
• Profiles - revamping search and finding people
• Single metadata store for tags, taxonomy etc
• Search - query on experience, people search, KM aspects, social graph, org chart, etc
• Social Computing Demo
  • Activity feed, tags, tag clouds, recent blog posts, etc
  • Can see aggregation of other connections re: activities, etc
  • Ratings fro documents
  • Expertise location: people search ... displays people and profile information, can view recent content from person, authored content, browser where person is in organizational chart
  • Note board (like FB wall) on profile page

Is SharePoint Inevitable for My Organization?

Blogger: Craig Roth

It's amazing how often the question "Is SharePoint Inevitable for My Organization?" comes up in conversations with clients.  Usually not that bluntly or directly, but the question underlies their questions and assumptions.  For example, in a conversation with a client today they were looking at another portal product.  But there are some pockets of SharePoint and after some back and forth on comparisons, they stopped and asked if the evaluation matters since they're not sure they can stop SharePoint anyways due to a lack of central control and some enthusiastic groups.

Of course, the question is vague in that it doesn't specify whether SharePoint is going to exist for tactical uses or be a strategic portal and collaboration solution that pushes out all others.  An organization with lots of other products in place can fit SharePoint in if it's tightly scoped, possibly limited to one or two functions.

I have indeed talked to some organizations that don't have a drop of SharePoint in them (that the person I was talking to knew about anyways).  If someone is trying to keep SharePoint out - or just wants to understand what it would take to make such a decision - it's worth examining the companies that have done so.  I see two models.

The first model is companies that have kept SharePoint out through brute force.  Architectural decisions have been made based upon principles and best fit for the organization and the decision was not to use SharePoint.  For example, they may have a mostly Java skillset and applications are expected to be able to run on Unix.  Compliance is strong at these organizations, so no project with SharePoint passes the necessary architecture review and data center and LAN security processes ensure that no servers can be deployed with it.  These organizations often claim to have no "rogue" servers due to strict compliance and security measures. 

The second model is companies that have correctly addressed the needs of the business by providing non-Microsoft content management, collaboration, and portal solutions that meet their needs.  Their collaboration and content architecture not only meets capability needs, but is easy for end-users to self-provision sites without bothering IT.  Accordingly, there is no desire for SharePoint because it would not provide anything the business needs that they don't already have in house.

I admire both of these types of companies.  After many years of working on web architecture and governance, I can appreciate an organization that has established a proper top-down architectural strategy and sticks to it.  But I admire the second type even more since it doesn't leave a frustrated, grumbling underclass of business folks that aren't having their needs met.  In the second model, IT is properly fulfilling its role as a service provider to the business.

What this line of discussion leads to is essentially the question "Is it worth the political capital it would take to keep SharePoint out?".  A weak central IT group (or at least weaker than the advocates for SharePoint) would have to expend significant political capital to shut SharePoint down, including escalating compliance violations, stopping partially completed projects, and endless debates with SharePoint's proponents.  This may be possible, but not worth the costs of failure or even success (festering animosity) that could result in some organizations. 

In an ideal world, architectural principles that optimize long-term, enterprise-wide value would guide IT decisions.  And those architectural principles, in turn, would reflect the needs of the business.  But years of speaking with clients about their real-life situations have demonstrated the reality of how those decisions are often made.  Decision making in a sub-optimal or unbalanced environment requires a bit of extra foresight.  Politics is the art of the possible, so in these cases, central IT decides to just let SharePoint in rather than fight it.

Collaborative Online Lists

Blogger: Larry Cannell

Everyone uses lists. Some of us are more serious about using lists but we all use them. We use them for keeping track of tasks we need to do, shopping for groceries, maintaining contact information, and in hundreds of other ways. We also use lists when we work with others (for example, on a project team or with colleagues in our workgroup). Lists are important for keeping track of the work we are doing together, for sharing information, and so forth. Collaborative online lists are simply lists that are easily accessible and can be maintained by multiple people.

Perhaps the most popular list-editor is Microsoft Excel. Of course, this use of Excel does not exercise any spreadsheet calculation feature. Excel simply makes editing lists easy. A quick browse through Microsoft’s online Excel template catalog reveals a number of list-only templates.

However, the problem with using Excel to manage a list, such as project team’s issue list, is that it is stored in a file and files can be black holes of information (recall that I hate files). Files tend to be treated as personal items and not easily shared. A project’s administrator may keep a list of issues and send it out just before a weekly meeting but that is about as much sharing as we see when lists are kept in files. Need to find out about a particular issue before the next meeting? Well then call the project administrator on the telephone.

Collaborative online lists avoid this problem by being stored online so they are easily accessible and the responsibility for updating them can be shared. The good news is you may already have the most popular online collaborative list solutions running within your intranet. Lists can be found in collaborative workspace products such as EMC/Documentum eRoom (where lists are called databases), Lotus Quickr, or Microsoft SharePoint.

If done correctly, collaborative online lists can support both emergent and hierarchical uses. For example, I know of a large company that was going through a significant downsizing. They were running SharePoint on their intranet and someone created a list to capture information about people leaving the company. It started filling with names and became quite popular. That is, until HR shut it down (I suppose there are other lessons to learn here). Nevertheless, this is a good example of an emergent online list.

Collaborative online lists can also support hierarchical use cases. For example, large development efforts often consist of many teams within a hierarchical reporting structure. Imagine having a workspace for each team and each one maintaining a list of issues in a common format. These lists could then be rolled up and consolidated to provide managers with a broad overview of all issues (yes, culturally, this may be challenging). eRoom provides a similar function with their “Enterprise Database” function.

If list items have unique URLs they are easier to reuse. For example, you could use social bookmarking systems to bookmark and tag an issue (or any type of list item) and associate them with other related web pages or sites on the intranet. This way an issue within a list can become part of a larger enterprise knowledgebase.

Collaborative online lists are a lot like wikis. I view wikis as replacing Word files and collaborative online lists as replacing lists kept in Excel files. In both cases, information is easier to access and uniquely addressable (and, hence, easier to share and recall).

However, there are a few things collaborative workspaces can learn from wikis, the biggest of which is security. Often times the default security of a collaborative workspace limits access to no one, except those specifically invited to the workspace. Wikis tend to be open from the start. However, wikis marketed to enterprises can also be tied down, just like the traditional collaborative workspace. So, this isn’t necessarily a technology problem.

A First Look at SharePoint 2010

Blogger: Craig Roth

The spigot on the information coming out of Microsoft about SharePoint 2010 was cranked up from a drip to a trickle on July 13th with the debut of the SharePoint 2010 web site. Microsoft has been promising to open it to a full-blown fire hose at the SharePoint Conference in October, but until then it's worth going through what has been released. (there's also an invitation-only technical preview).

First, before we get to features, there's a new conceptual view. The old 2007 "SharePoint donut" got tons of usage since most everyone is at a loss to describe what SharePoint is without it. Sure, it's a "collaboration server", but what does it do? Well, let me whip out this diagram and walk through it …

Here's my best guess so far on how the old donut maps to the new one. "Sites" is the most vague (statements like "Sites allows you to expand across environments" that describe capabilities rather than a definition). I think Sites is just a generic, catch-all bucket for anything involving creation of websites, so it overlaps with all the others.

Here are my takeaways from the main video (with marketing-speak omitted except where I found it interesting or telling). I'll be clear where I'm injecting my own point of view by using [brackets], although the rest is paraphrased so what you see here is filtered through my own perspective. I encourage you to view the videos yourself as well.

Sharepoint 2010 Overview (Tom Rizzo)

• Mentions how they are supporting all browsers (although he tellingly stumbles when trying to say "Safari" ... )
• Promises great strides in social computing
• Went around the SharePoint 2010 donut:
  • Sites
    • Sites are all about sharing information
    • Mentions a further push into extranets and internet sites
  • Communities
    • Plans to support a hierarchical structure of communities
    • "Regardless of how they come together" [implies to me embracing end user creation and maintenance of their own communities rather than just enabling administrators to create communities]
  • Content
    • People-centric, LOB-centric
    • "We've been Working hard to manage content from creation to disposition and destruction … "
    • Will enhance ability of users to discover content
    • [our analysis of SharePoint 2007's enterprise content management showed weakness at the later stages of the process , so beefing up capabilites around disposition and discovery seem to show positive action from Microsoft to close the gap]
  • Search
    • FAST will be combined with existing SharePoint search.
    • More investments have been made in uncovering hidden assets
    • People search will be (better) blended with search.
    • At 8:22 he says "You'll be able to find rich people across your organization". [I guess that's handy if Bill Gates works at your company and you need to borrow money for lunch]
    • There's a plug for the business connectivity services (formerly business data catalog) in terms of searching structured data
  • Insights
    • Combining the rest of SharePoint with the business intelligence stack. [not really any detail here, or nothing new to talk about]
  • Composites
    • "Rapidly create dynamic bus solutions" [At the SharePoint conference in 2006, none other than Bill Gates said building composites is the #1 capability of SharePoint. If they're going to get away from the "portal" word which is increasingly watered down then this is a good choice. Composite applications encompasses portals, but also other important styles of web apps made from piece parts including any type of assembly of web services or RESTful services, mashups, or business process management]
• Features shown in the demo
  • User interface
    • The Office ribbon now shows up all over SharePoint and is removable, customizable, contextual
    • He showed live editing of text in a website, and as you mouse over different font sizes you get preview of fonts just like in Word 2007
    • He showed a very fat client-like resizing of images, adding a border, etc.
    • You can add Silverlight with an out of box Silverlight web part
    • There's the ability to apply PowerPoint themes to sites (colors, fonts, etc.)
  • Business connectivity
    • You'll be able to put a Visio diagram directly in SP, and since Visio can have links to get live data from business systems that means live data too [neat!]
    • Forget BDC: it's now BCS. There's a new acronym: Business Connectivity Services (BCS) to replace the business data catalog (BDC)
    • Instead of just sites in SP designer 2010, it has lists, workflows, etc.
    • Also has an item in SP designer called "entities" for creating connections to bus data
    • Demoed a SQL connecter that auto-creates CRUD (create, read, update, delete)
    • You cal see a BCS data set in SharePoint and it looks like a list, but it’s a SQL database. Demoed filtering.
    • You can also click "edit item" and update the item. [I hope they improve the interface. It refreshes and fills the whole screen with a data dump of the row. Not at all like editing in a cell]
    • Demoed creating a new doc from SharePoint in Word which has a bunch of fields defined in BCS. You can select a customer name from the list and it fills in all the fields from that record in the document information panel
  • Work with data in richer ways
    • Microsoft finally clarified that Groove (new name=SharePoint Workplace) is the rich client for SharePoint. [wow, that took a long time for something we knew was going to happen]
    • Workplace can sync info from a SharePoint site
    • Showed in SP workspace how he can edit info offline, and then synced back up by selecting "Connect to server" and "Sync supplier list". [Not sure why its so manual. In Notes you don't have to hit "connect" then "sync". Maybe there are automated, scheduled options too that weren't shown. I hope so]
  • Tom emphasized that these are just some of the features - not an exhaustive list.

SP 2010 for IT professional video (Richard Riley)

• He mentioned on premise or as SaaS
• Beta later this year, general availability 1st half of 2010
• Goal is to scale up and out with high reliability [just as Bill Pray noted in his thoughts on Exchange 2010, it seems many of the administrative enhancements for SharePoint 2010 are to help it support SaaS rather than to just help current on premises installations]
• [bookmark] IT professional productivity
  • Central admin: he mentioned "easier to find" and ribbon UI [he didn't mention any actual functionality changes]
  • There's a best practice analyzer
    • It analyzes health, performance, and has reporting
    • Rules can regularly run and send pop ups with issues encountered. Admins can build rules and automatically apply fixes
    • There is a new logging database, extensible with custom data and custom reports
• Scalable unified infrastructure
  • Large lists will not hang the system anymore [yahoo!]
  • The admin can set thresholds for how many rows max will be returned. And there's a "happy hour" when you can get larger responses from queries.
• Unattached content database recovery
  • Admins can browse content in repositories, create an export, and upload to list
• Flexible deployment
  • You can detach a 2007 database and attach it to 2010
  • When you migrate to 2010 it keeps UI the same, but you can select an option to switch user experiences

SP 2010 for Developer (Paul Andrew)

• Developer productivity
  • Paul talked about the Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint tools
  • There is a new visual Web Part designer and team foundation server
  • You can look at lists and other server items from the server explorer within VS without having to go to SharePoint
  • Can specify deployment configuration such as a package WSP file that can include custom installation steps
  • Demoed click and drag creation of a Web Part with a button that calls LINQ query
• Rich platform
  • There is the ability to use LINQ to access SharePoint lists including joins
  • The new client object model can be used to run code on the client machine (.NET, Javascript, Silverlight)
  • Paul also mentioned the Silverlight Web Part and business connectivity services
• Flexible deployment
  • Paul talked about solution deployment [but frankly I got distracted at this point and don't have notes here. I believe this is an attempt to address SP2007 weaknesses around staging from test to QA to production]

Data connectivity services

• In the demos, DCS still showed as BDC in VS 2010 since it's not finished yet
• Paul showed how it supports creating methods for BCS CRUD
• In SharePoint you can create an "external list" now, which means data from the BCS
• There are new "list" menus in the ribbon bar in the SharePoint web UI
• Demoed using Silverlight to fill a data grid with data from a SharePoint list. With Silverlight, it's running on the client so things like sorting the list are done without calls back to the server

That's a summary of what I took away from the latest information on SharePoint.  At our SharePoint Workshop (SharePoint 2007: The Current Governance Nightmare—and Will It Get Better?) on July 28th at Catalyst we have added a module on what's new in SharePoint 2010 that includes our statements on what we thought was missing from 2007.  Seeing new stuff is great, but lining it up against the weaknesses in 2007 provides a better view of the progress being made.  All said though, it's still too early to stand up and applaud.  There's a lot more information left in the tank that has to trickle out first.

Note: This is a cross-posting from the KnowledgeForward blog.

SharePoint Governance Workshop

Blogger: Craig Roth

Our Catalyst conference in San Diego is just over two weeks away now and I'm looking forward to this annual gathering of my co-workers at Burton Group, clients, vendors, industry luminaries, and users of technology.  Guy Creese and I will be giving our one day, advanced SharePoint workshop there (Tuesday, July 28, 2009) and there are still some slots open (it sold out when we gave this workshop in Scottsdale last year).  This is the first time it's been offered at Catalyst North America and is separate material (only about 10 minutes of overlap) from the "Understanding Microsoft SharePoint v3/2007 in Context" workshop that we still offer as a private onsite workshop. 

Governance is the largest section of the workshop, but I also want to point out the "SharePoint as an enterprise solution" section which applies an ITIL v3 model to SharePoint to structure our advice on offering SharePoint as a service rather than just dumping raw infrastructure on your users and divisional IT departments.

See the Catalyst website for more details.

SharePoint 2007: The Current Governance Nightmare—and Will It Get Better?

Craig Roth, and Guy Creese

SharePoint 2007 has been a runaway success, offering Office-centricity and ease-of-use to workers interested in storing and sharing information. However, its ease-of-use is also a snare and a delusion, in many cases fostering uncontrolled proliferation of thousands of SharePoint sites that have different navigation, taxonomy, and security models.

This workshop addresses SharePoint infrastructure planning and governance issues as well as the future of SharePoint with these modules:

• SharePoint as an enterprise solution
• SharePoint governance
• SharePoint security
• Deployment pre-work
• Adoption of SharePoint in the enterprise
• The future of SharePoint and a glimpse at Office 14

This just in: All attendees to the workshop will receive a free poster on "Creating a SharePoint Statement of Governance" that provides a handy reference to the section-by-section walkthrough I'll be doing on how to create a SharePoint SOG.  This handsome poster is about 2.5 by 3.5 feet, full color, on thick paper:

Oracle WebCenter and Fusion Middleware 11g

Blogger: Craig Roth

Oracle's analyst summit in mid-June provided a good look at their plans for Fusion Middleware 11g and WebCenter (released July 1st for download; see summary of features here).  Now that we're out of non-disclosure mode (and into "please disclose!" mode) I'd like to share my high-level impressions.  They covered a ton of stuff, but my view is biased towards my coverage area of portals with connections to search, productivity, and collaboration. Other Burton Group analysts were also in attendance from our Identity and Privacy Strategies team and our Application Platform Strategies team (see Anne Thomas Manes' thoughts here).

First, although Oracle owns 4 portal products, all the portal-related time was spent on WebCenter. Sure, other portals were mentioned in bullets as examples of how they can plug in (or consume WebCenter's social software), but it was clear WebCenter is the leading actor here (and supporting actor in the stories of the SOA, identity, and enterprise application teams). This confirms what I (and Oracle) has been saying: that WebCenter is the primary portal and that the other 3 (Oracle Portal, WebLogic Portal, and WebCenter Interaction née Plumtree) will be supported and have their die-hard fans but will not be best for new portal projects.

It was helpful to hear Oracle frame its collaboration/portal/search/productivity/social software ambitions in relation to Microsoft SharePoint.  For all its plusses and minuses, SharePoint provides a common point of reference against which to measure.  They described how they line up with SharePoint as an alternative, can coexist with it, and where they surpass it.  This is what IBM should have done with Quickr+Connections at Lotusphere.

As with SharePoint, WebCenter provides an impressive set of functions in one box. There is often better integration between WebCenter and other Oracle assets (like their applications and development tools) than Microsoft where other groups can sometimes get away with ignoring what the SharePoint and Office group does.

There are numerous SharePoint analogies in WebCenter.  From conversations with the execs there I found that some are intentional and in other cases they say SharePoint copied them (well, copied AquaLogic User Interaction)!

• Business Dictionary as a role based catalog of information assets. Seems like SharePoint's Business Data Catalog.  This should be an interesting battle since SharePoint's BDC is clearly a version 1.0 work-in-progress and Oracle has a lot of expertise to bring here being a database company at heart.
• Federated search. 'Nuff said.
• Office integration. Clients I speak with expect Microsoft will always have the best Office integration, but there are cases where Microsoft's internal silos or some good ideas can expose openings.  Oracle showed a nice Word sidebar for document management that had people, versions, etc.
• Slide sorter. This was a neat feature that SharePoint offered, but Oracle's version seems to leapfrog it. They demoed picking all the slides for a sales deck. Oracle calls this a "folio" or compound document. Oracle acquired a neat little company called "Outside In" that has sophisticated filters for productivity files.  Blending this into Web Center can provide for some good Office integration.

Oracle did a fine job of acknowledging the need to work with SharePoint and others.  But the meat boils down to their WSRP producer running on .NET, selective metadata consumption, and Ensemble (a reverse proxy solution).  Hopefully this gets beefed up with more programmatic integration, discovery tools, and guidance so it requires less reliance on WSRP.

Of all the competitors, WebCenter is the newest architecture from the ground up.  Being the youngest has its advantages.  Since WebCenter is newly architected it feels like it more seamlessly integrates new concepts like tagging, linking, social connections, and REST services than IBM and MSFT where it's more bolted on. So they're better at utilizing these features across the suite that Microsoft and a little bit better than IBM.

But will Oracle - the whole company - give WebCenter the resources it needs to win the marketplace(not just the resources required to be a good and useful product)?  In the Q&A session, Oracle President Charles Phillips said there are "No plans to have middleware broken out in reporting. We have lots of product lines, we're getting more with Sun... " This hits at the perennial knock on Oracle's efforts around knowledge infrastructure - lack of push and commitment.  Oracle did talk about how much revenue Fusion pulled in, the growth rate, penetration, etc.  That would indicate the company would have to care.  But still, Microsoft manages to report on four breakouts (Client, Server and Tools, Online Services Business, Microsoft Business Division, Entertainment and Devices Division).  Oracle sticks to two (Applications, Database and Middleware).  Sun will add at least one more (servers and hardware).  If Oracle is dedicated to the enormous space between enterprise apps and the database, breaking out middleware from the database would be a great way to track and prove this commitment.

Oracle Enters Beehive in Collaboration Tournament

Blogger: Craig Roth

Oracle announced its release of Beehive 1.5 today.  They are hoping that a technology refresh of the Beehive collaboration assets (along with additional assets acquired along with BEA) can give Oracle another shot at the collaboration market after the moribund Oracle Collaboration Server has fizzled. 

The announcement comes at a good quiet spot between IBM's collaboration announcements at Lotusphere in January and Microsoft's announcements on SharePoint 2010 that will probably come to a peak at their conference in October. Likewise, its most attractive feature is that its platform and standards offer an alternative to a Microsoft stack (Windows Server, SQL Server, SharePoint) and an IBM stack (Notes/Domino and/or Quickr+Connections with WebSphere).  Beehive offers more standards than you can shake a stick at (although I don't recommend shaking sticks at beehives generally): WebDAV, IMAP/SMTP, JSR 170 for content repository access, XMPP for IM and presence, LDAP or AD for directory, and JMX for management.  You can use Solaris, Windows Server, or Linux for the serve and any development tool desired.  From a technology point of view its appeal is likely to be based on architectural decisions about what standards and stack an organization wants to embrace (or stay away from).

But technology aside, the key for Oracle (as always) is whether they can utilize their channel to sell this stuff and whether organizations can be persuaded to pay real money for it after previous false starts.  In the past, Oracle hasn't had much voice left to talk about collaboration and portal after yelling about database and ERP.  But since the Stellent acquisition, content management has been a bright spot for them and I think it has changed some minds. 

Personally, I want to see the collaboration market stay competitive.  End users win when vendors compete hard on features, quality, and pricing.  Lately it seems like Microsoft SharePoint has gotten a lion's share of attention from organizations.  Microsoft has been the main attraction at this tournament  and I'm glad to see Oracle showing up to play.  IBM Lotus still feels to me like they haven't shown up to the tournament and are setting up a parallel exhibition match for the same sport in another part of town.  They didn't mention SharePoint by name in the Lotusphere main tent (although it was clear who they were talking about and Jive got a mention). But as an analyst I'm like an unaligned spectator at a sporting event - you just want to see a diverse set of skillful challengers compete really well and bring up the level of play.