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Topic: Growth Charts
I've been refraining from digging into Sharepoint very much since I don't go looking for trouble. But, when I see a "bridge out ahead" sign, I can't restrain my curiosity. I simple must go see what a bridge out ahead looks like.
So, now that we see Raymond Niro saw fit to draw a bead on Sharepoint, I thought we should use our free and public information source aka The Internet to see just what dingle berries have been hanging off our fair Sharepoint over time. Like I've said many times before, people are careless and clues fall off all the time.
Let's educate ourselves about the kind of issues Sharepoint brought over its development history shall we? Perhaps we can divine just where the moorings for that bridge that fell off into the river were anchored.
(I'll depend on you doing your homework and reading the entire article below, but I'll provide some specifics we'll use as markers in our study of where Sharepoint's been and where the breadcrumbs lead.)
Here's a useful place to begin:
http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=391848
Five Things Wrong With SharePoint
Collaboration is what Microsoft's SharePoint is best at. But there are several real problems with it... and somehow, nobody's been talking about them. That is, until Mike Drips arrived. And boy, does he have strong opinions.
1. It's a crappy mish-mash of multiple technologies.
[Microsoft] behaviors certainly did not build much goodwill in the [Java] developer community. ...the inner workings of SharePoint, you find a great many of the core files are written in JavaScript! Jscript supposedly is a supported .Net language...but certainly not enough to educate or support developers. ...any Microsoft courses on programming in JavaScript? No.
2. The development team is playing the Longhorn card.
the next release of SharePoint will probably occur in 2007. That's four years of no product improvement. Microsoft is besmirching its reputation as being market driven by allowing its development teams to sit on their hands waiting for Longhorn to ship. How do these teams justify getting a paycheck? (me: fascinating. Developers sitting on their hands? Why would they not be aggresively developing?)
3. There are two SharePoint products, which is confusing.
...SharePoint Services is a subset of SharePoint Portal Server...Microsoft fails to adequately document and differentiate between the two products throughout its Web site. ...consistently fail to clarify the differences between the two products, even though they have white papers on this very subject on the Microsoft Web site... SharePoint Services is like the junior edition of SharePoint Portal Server. (Hmmmm. Very interesting.)
4. Support for SharePoint is lacking.
My insider tip is to look for references on why you shouldn't use FrontPage (the SharePoint kiss of death editor) and explanations of "ghosting;" don't buy a SharePoint book that doesn't explain "ghosting." (me: something we'll return to in time, no doubt)
5. Microsoft has not stated a strategic direction for SharePoint.
...Microsoft hasn't laid out a roadmap for SharePoint's future at all. Originally, SharePoint was a competitor for pure portal products like PlumTree, with some document library features stolen from Documentum. Now, SharePoint has been positioned as a team collaboration tool.
(more at URL)
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OK. So far no smoke but we're looking for patterns for marking so we can track them through time. Now, look at what we see in a reply to Mister Drip's commentary:
http://www.andrewconnell.com/blog/archive/2005/07/08/1699.aspx
RE: Things Wrong about "Five Things Wrong With SharePoint"
Here are some of my main "issues" with SharePoint:
1. Minimal seperation of presentation and data (see: ghosting/unghosting). WHY this is even in SharePoint. Once a page is opened in FrontPage and saved, the UI is now locked. If your company has a rebranding campaign or wants a uniform look and feel, you're stuck... (me: OK let's bookmark that because it rings a bell)
Microsoft Dogged By Sharepoint Support Issues - Study
4:36 PM EST Wed. Jan. 30, 2008
Office Sharepoint Server 2007 is a workflow and collaboration engine that integrates with the Office platform and features Web content management, enterprise content services, enterprise search, and business process and business intelligence tools. Increasingly, it's also being used as an application development platform.
http://www.crn.com/software/205801189
Revving Up The SharePoint Engine
12:00 AM EST Mon. Jan. 28, 2008
From the January 28, 2008 issue of ChannelWeb
The fact that organizations are using SharePoint to develop mission-critical applications for both intranets and extranets...shows that SharePoint has come a long way from its roots in collaboration.
"What we're seeing with SharePoint is that people finally see it as a platform to build applications on, as opposed to it being seen as just a collaboration tool," said Eamonn McGuinness, CEO of BrightWork, a Boston-based SharePoint ISV. "I think people are realizing they can build serious business applications on SharePoint 2007."
(me: ahhhh, now we're getting somewhere. From a mess for collaboration to an application development platform within a few years and no doubt Niro's people would want to discover the background for development here.)
Many ISVs are also developing tools that automate business processes for day-to-day tasks like purchase, policy and document approvals.
SharePoint includes functions for all the different parties involved in the process: ...
(more at URL)
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There are a field of items in the above article alone that can be seen to relate to the things taught by SiteFlash and the 6826744 patent.
I won't drag it all out in this one post but there is certainly enough to indicate some striking similarities to the way SharePoint has grown from "collaboration" to "application development platform" that will illuminate what something equipped with the kind of claims in 744.
We'll do much more digging since I do believe Microsoft has been careless in their headlong rush to dominate a market before they are called to account for how they got that market.
No wonder the MSFT claims construction is so delicate not to call 744 "obvious". That would harm their own claim to any IP they've developed while creating the different versions of Sharepoint over the past few years.
And, no doubt, there is a mountain of information amongst MSFT clients and partners that could have informed the Niro campaign without having to crack a single book inside MSFT.
This sounds like we're getting into some interesting territory now.
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