SharePoint Has Become the New Lotus Notes According to New CMS Watch Research

CMS Watch Cites Collaboration Pros, Proliferation Cons
BOSTON--(Business Wire)--
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is repeating history as it
mimics the allure and pitfalls of Lotus Notes, according to research
released today by CMS Watch, an independent analyst firm that
evaluates content technologies.

SharePoint exploits traditionally underserved collaboration needs
for information workers laboring within Office tools, and fulfills a
common desire to easily create disposable workspaces, CMS Watch found.

Like Notes in a previous decade, IT often embraces SharePoint as a
simple answer to myriad business information problems. But the
platform can easily morph into a technical and operational morass, as
repositories proliferate, and IT comes to recognize that various
custom applications require highly specialized expertise to keep
running properly.

CMS Watch also found:

Prior to the advent of SharePoint, simple collaboration services
were remarkably clumsy or absent in many content management and
knowledge management systems. "By focusing on basic file sharing,"
argues contributing analyst Shawn Shell, "SharePoint addresses an
immediate need for many small and mid-sized businesses, as well as
autonomous enterprise departments."

As a collaboration platform, SharePoint does have its drawbacks.
Explains CMS Watch founder, Tony Byrne, "Customers readily shared
their frustrations: Redmond's rather belated embrace of Web 2.0,
SharePoint's poor support for individuals working on multiple
different teams, as well as its cumbersome and incomplete integration
with Outlook."

Unfortunately, as you grow very large SharePoint environments, the
controls that enterprises would want to see simply don't exist
natively within the platform. "Whether it's the lack of a
workflow-based provisioning process, or enterprise-level
administration, or the ability to effectively categorize large numbers
of documents or PowerPoint slides, SharePoint remains ill-suited to
enterprise-wide collaboration and knowledge management," notes CMS
Watch analyst, Alan Pelz-Sharpe.

These findings stem from "The SharePoint Report 2008," a 190-page
evaluation of SharePoint from an enterprise perspective, which
assesses the platform's suitability for different business scenarios
across various customer tiers. CMS Watch evaluates technologies from a
buyer's perspective, testing tools and debriefing licensees about
actual implementation experiences.

The SharePoint Report 2008 concludes by advising customers to
establish clear boundaries on SharePoint services, to keep it from
becoming their new Notes - the platform that everyone loved, but then
loved to avoid.

The Report is available for purchase online from CMS Watch at
http://www.cmswatch.com.

About CMS Watch

CMS Watch(tm) evaluates content-oriented technologies, offering
head-to-head comparative reviews of leading solutions. Through highly
detailed technical evaluations, CMS Watch helps sort out the complex
landscape of potential solutions so that buyers can minimize the time
and effort to identify technologies suited to their particular
requirements. To retain its independence as a totally impartial
analyst firm, CMS Watch works solely for solutions buyers and never
for vendors.

CMS Watch
Kristie Hughes, Marketing Director, +1 202-966-6999
khughes@cmswatch.com

Copyright Business Wire 2008