It's not often one is given a chance to work with highly talented and well educated people with deep experience in such an important field and information management. I want to thank the folks at AIIM for this opportunity to be an expert blogger on the SharePoint platform.
As background, I actually worked as a Psychologist for nine years before moving into technology as a career. If you meet me, you need not worry that I might be analyzing you...unless, of course, you need it. :-)
I moved into technology in 1997 and worked in desktop support at 3M in St. Paul for roughly a year. Then I worked as a contract trainer here in Minneapolis for roughly 3 years before I was giving the opportunity to write on the Microsoft Press book, Administrator's Companion for Exchange 2000 Server. It was a wonderful experience and I found that I really enjoyed writing. In fact, over the last 10 years, I've been part of 14 book projects and will be starting my 15th in October. I guess once the writing bug bites, there is no cure. I've finally given up training in the classroom. My work as CEO now occupies much of my time and gives me more experience in understanding how SharePoint integrates (or doesn't integrate) with business processes.
I've written extensively on Exchange 2000 and 2003, SharePoint 2001, 2003, 2007 and 2010. In recent years, I've branched outside of the Microsoft bubble and have taken some AIIM certifications, having picked up reading the Harvard Business Review on a monthly basis and am taking some business courses at various colleges. I enjoy learning more about business in general and how SharePoint can be used as a legitimate business tool.
SharePoint has received alot of guff in it's early years - well deserved, I might add. But the 2010 release holds much promise for those who can map it's feature sets to their business needs. Its' price point is attractive to many in the mid- to upper-mid market. SharePoint will continue to make inroads into the information management sector as it matures.
I've been working exclusively with SharePoint since the summer of 2001. My focus these days is on learning more about the integration of this product with information management deployments. But unlike most who are reading this post, I come to this conversation from the SharePoint side of the river, not the IA side. Already, I've found that both sides think very, very differently about the same concepts. I anticipate that there will be much "bridging" over the next few years as those on the product team at Microsoft dive more into the IA world while those accustomed to more mature software products learn how Microsoft has implemented common concepts in different ways within SharePoint.
At a minimum, let me share some universal truths about SharePoint deployments that I've learned and that I can count on to be true and transcendent in every deployment:
1. SharePoint can't do all things, nor should it: Be sure to define where SharePoiunt starts and stops in your overall enterprise application architecture. Just because SharePoint *can* do this or that doesn't mean that it *should* do this or that in your organization.
2. SharePoint is not an ontology tool nor was it desgined to be one. Those who blast SharePoint as lacking in this area are accurate in their criticisms. But to be fair to the product team at Microsoft, they have never claimed it was an ontology tool.
3. SharePoint is here to stay. Microsoft is not moving away from SharePoint anytime soon. When you take a long step back from the Microsoft world, what you'll find is that they are trying to get as much information into SQL, secure it through Active Directory and present it through the SharePoint interface.
4. You can't *hope* your way into success with SharePoint. This product requires planning, governance (an overused word to be sure) and change/configuration management to be healthy for the long term. Training is also needed - untrained users will either avoid using SharePoint or use it incorrectly.
5. SharePoint is not the enemy. Contrary to popular beliefs, SharePoint itself is often not the reason a deployment fails. In nearly all cases that I've been associated with where SharePoint didn't do well, it's "failure" was really a result of a lack of planning, lack of connection to business requirements and technical requirements, a lack of proper training and/or a lack of governance.
So, I hope to make new friends here and I anticipate that I'll learn much more from you all than you'll learn from me. Thank you for inviting me into your world. I look forward to our interactions!
Bill English, MVP
Mindsharp