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Thank-you once again AIIM for your effort and accuracy in helping the broader world of information managers see the Big Picture around SharePoint.  Of course this thanks is directed towards David Jones and team for the AIIM survey: The SharePoint Puzzle, just recently published.

Although this report focuses squarely on SharePoint 2010, the waves of questions around SharePoint 2013 have also started to crash in from users, partners and customers asking, what is it?  How is it better?  What more does this do?  Have they filled the gaps?  Have they changed it all again? And so on. I for one am very happy to see what I consider a great review of our dear friend SharePoint 2010.  Now don’t get me wrong, although I’ve also already started to hear questions like should I wait for 2013?  Or am I wasting my time with my SharePoint 2010 deployment or upgrade from MOSS 2007? I don’t want people thinking this new research was all for naught… in fact for at least the next year and a half I would profess that this will absolutely be one of the most useful pieces of guidance any organization looking to invest in SharePoint could have at their disposal.

Yes we’re all eager to get the down-low on SharePoint 2013, but that will be a while yet.  First of all, it has to ship.  We can expect GA early in the calendar year 2013, realistically we are anything from 4-6 months away.  Also, we won’t know how to answer any of the questions I’ve outlined above until it has been put through its paces.  In smaller organizations that feedback will likely be immediate, but in large organizations (in the world of enterprise-class solutions) rapid deployment and understanding may be a wildly exaggerated phrase – heck most of the companies I deal with are just finishing their deployment of SharePoint 2010 right now and will only see the results of this effort in coming months.

From my perspective we saw much hype and bally-hoo when MOSS 2007 was released, and it took 18 months before the market and the analysts got a solid understanding of what it could do and what it needed partners to help do.  Then SharePoint 2010 came out and the hype cycle was renewed, but this time we had something to compare to and so it really only took a year before we once again realized where and/or how SharePoint fit within our broader information infrastructure.

Now, with SharePoint 2013 on the doorstep we are once again amidst the million dollar efforts (well realistically 10’s of millions if not 100’s) of the Microsoft marketing machine.  We will be confronted with messages professing bigger, better, and to paraphrase Mr. Jones from AIIM: straight out-of-the-box-ier. I believe once the marketing push subsides, which should be a few months after release, and once a few organizations and analysts get their hands on it for some deep discovery on features, functions and capabilities, we’ll be able to quantify and rationalize its value and once again understand where it fits within the broader information infrastructure.

I for one am well into the discovery phase of what SharePoint 2013 offers and how Microsoft has taken its platform to the next level. It’s pretty impressive so far, but I will blog (as will many, MANY others) about the new stuff another day.  Until then I behoove all of the people who read this to take the time and download the new SharePoint survey from AIIM, learn how people used and did not use the most current version of SharePoint as these details will be of huge assistance in terms of your current roll-out.  More importantly, leverage this report to get a head start around where you should really be asking the questions as you look forwards towards the process and effort of putting the puzzle pieces together for your deployment of SharePoint 2013.