There’s a new SharePoint coming, and it features a load of upgrades; particularly to the editing interface, social media, cloud services, and file synchronization service via the cloud. The new upgrade is tentatively called SharePoint 2013, but that’s not the definite, confirmed label; the new release is due to come in early 2013, but no hard date is set (and the last version, SharePoint 2010, was months later than the promised date); and how the new SharePoint will integrate the $1.2 billion acquisition of Yammer is also unclear.
All of the above fuzziness raises some cautionary flags; don’t run out and commit yet, this should be considered a wait-and-see project.
There are some notable pros, cited improvements, that if delivered upon, are certainly welcome:
PROS:
- Cloud – feature parity cloud version (of course this was supposed to be the case, in large part, for 2010)
- Mobile – enhanced mobile access experience (of course, this was promised for SP2010, and it fell embarrassingly short)
- Social – enhanced social networking (nearly completely lacking in prior versions)
- Web CMS – enhanced publishing and management interface
CONS:
- Branding – although it’s apparently easier to implement new custom designs on SP13, MS has openly cautioned against customizing the home page
- Search – to be honest, I really don’t know how to gauge this yet, but they improve search in every release and have thrown billions at it, and yet its always underwhelmed its audience
There’s probably a lot more good, and far more pros than cons, but there should be at the price MS charges. At Prescient Digital Media, we will be investing and using SP13. And yet, I still feel burned by Microsoft for all of the functionality and function that did not live up to the hype, marketing and promises in the last two versions of SharePoint (this better not be another Windows Vista… because I will freak out, man).
Yes, I use SharePoint for our intranet, and most of our clients do too, so I have nothing to gain by bad-mouthing SharePoint, but I would like to hold them accountable. Admitted, I am disgruntled investor in SharePoint 2010 which has been mostly an awful experience. I’m yet further dismayed and troubled when I hear of more caveats and contradictions from Microsoft, particularly when I read the following warning from its own SharePoint team, on it’s own blog:
“We designed the new SharePoint UI to be clean, simple and fast and work great out-of-box. We encourage you not to modify it which could add complexity, performance and upgradeability and to focus your energy on working with users and groups…”
I don’t know a single client, not a single user, who would agree to buy and install SharePoint, if they could not modify the design, and were forced — or strongly encouraged — to only use the out-of-the-box version. I mean, 50% of CIOs and IT heads already say SharePoint fails to live up to promises and requirements (Gartner) — why would anyone want to simply use SharePoint out-of-the-box? This is such a head-shaking red flag, I’m having trouble believing Microsoft finally admitted to it.
Of course, all of this news of a new SharePoint, and the billions invested into it, should give IBM some pause for thought. And yet, their response has been extremely underwhelming, despite the very quiet — almost stealthy release of a new beta version of WebSphere Portal — and a new Intranet Experience Suite (though it might not fit the packaging).
Read more in my column Sharepoint 2013 and IBM’s Lame Response
Seems like you completely forgot about IBM Connections, which is the real counterpart to Sharepoint. In fact even in the latest version of Sharepoint it cant compete with the functionality of Connections as a social business platform.
I’ve not forgotten about Connections — I mentioned it in my article if you click through to it on CMS Wire. However, Connections is not in the same ball park as SharePoint — one is a pure social media solution; the other a portal – web development platform. It’s like comparing a car to a motorcycle. I had a long talk with IBM on Friday, and an in-depth demo, and they don’t even consider their new, uber Intranet Experience Suite, which features all of the Connections functionality, as pure play competitor to SharePoint.
I use sharepoint (2010) and IBM connections (3.0). They’re basically the same thing except connections is way better. in all fairness most people just rollout sharepoint and don’t configure it besides adding folders, but sharepoint out of the box is a hindrance. At least connections is usable and configurable by a typical user. There is only 1 aspect of sharepoint that is better than connections and that is Office integration. Connections can still handle Office files, but you need to use download/upload rather than doubleclick and save.