Microsoft is moving towards a matured product with the deployment of the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007. For a quick introduction on MOSS 2007 visit MOSS 2007 Review - Six Pillars of MOSS.

However, Microsoft took significant time (starting SPS 2001 to now MOSS 2007) to get SPS as Content Management System and to provide a collaborative platform. Still it is not a true content management system facilitating true content/document/record/email management.

At present MOSS has been placed at the right place on the Microsoft product roadmap. The MOSS 2007 seamless integration capabilities with other Microsoft products and services - Office 2007, Forms Server, Business Data Catalog (BDC), Workflow Engine, SQL Server - makes it more promising from IT implementation strategies point of view.

The good thing about trusting SPS is that it is surely going to get better in short term (along with Office 14) and as well in the long term (with Microsoft acquiring FAST Search in January 2008 and possible future acquisitions).

So shall IT put all eggs in Microsoft SharePoint basket? The answer is, it would be a good idea to wait for some more time but at the same time do not be too late on implementing MOSS based solution where it is a best fit in your organization.

Ashish Ghoda
http://www.technologyopinion.com

Regarding the following:

From an IT perspective, buying into the "SharePoint for everything" vision seems reasonable on the surface, but I wonder how end-users will feel about such a strategy.

That kind of lock-in has the potential to backfire for enterprises, because one vendor and one product can’t keep up with all the innovations in the consumer space. When that gap becomes wide, end-users rebel and grab what they need from the Web.

I have been around all three versions of SharePoint over the years, and except for open source purists, I have yet to see typical end-users shun SharePoint. As a matter of fact, the grassroots nature at which it is apopted within organizaitons can be alarming to IT Managers. Without proper planning of an enterprise class SharePoint environment IT departments are typically woefully underprepared for the demands that users place on the SharePoint environment itself as well as all the underlying subsystems (e.g. network, storage, etc.).

SharePoint is a part of the Microsoft Office System, and therefore, you can count on quite a few out-of-the-box integrations with common desktop applications like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. Those integrations only enhance the adoption rate of SharePoint in most organizations.

My advice is simple, worry less about adoption rates and revolts and more about proper planning prior to rolling it out. Start with a well thought out governance plan (MS has a SharePoint Governance Template that you can download to get you started). This will help ensure your organization is well prepared to support an enterprise class SharePoint environment. There are quite a few planning guides and templates to assist with the proper planning of the environment as well.

Good luck to you!

Regards,

ba

SharePoint users AND IT staff need powerful reporting, document generation or B.I. systems that SharePoint alone doesn't offer. With Arrow for SharePoint, you have those capabilities.

It's a natural fit. You don't have to wait on IT, because you can design and edit reports in Word, Excel and PowerPoint. You save a big chunk of time in report design, and you can run, schedule and share files easily. (No more bugging the tech group for what you need.)

Our customers are using Arrow in a number of different ways. Some use Arrow for designing, generating and distributing reports such as invoices, inventory tallies, financial statements, insurance policies, customer account summaries, product usage reports, certificates and more. Others use it for doc gen and mail merge – an automated way of producing letters, forms and contacts.

Then there are companies that use Arrow for business intelligence. Companies harvest in-depth data and generate BI reports for internal and external use with reporting, analytics and data mining. And organizations use the Arrow's dashboard features to present their data in an up-to-date visual summary that's easy to grasp.

That's the what. Here's the how.

One of the biggest expenses in the report creation process correlates to the design tool's ease-of-use. There's little learning curve because you design templates in Microsoft Word, Excel or PowerPoint. Our customers have found that creating and revising reports is at least 10 times faster than with other reporting systems.

And you don't need to learn complicated code in order to insert data into your reports and other documents, because wizards and drag-and-drop functionality connect templates to their data sources (SQL databases, XML files, and Excel spreadsheets). You run or schedule reports with the click of a button from within SharePoint, and you can generate documents in a wide array of outputs. To sum it up:

* Report design in Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint – the logical place to design in SharePoint
* Version control, permissions, and folder capabilities
* Full-featured charts, graphs, and other visuals
* Easy access to data for non-programmers
* Capable of handling data from a wide range of sources, including Excel spreadsheets, XML files and SQL databases
* Preserves security features of existing database provisions
* Reports run at the click of a button from within SharePoint
* A powerful and flexible automated report scheduler
* A wide array of available outputs, including DOCX, PDF, RTF, HTML, XLSX and PPTX

You don't have to take my word for it. Check out our SharePoint reporting system for yourself.