Poll Results: SharePoint 2010 Implementations Focused on Collaboration

With the release of SharePoint 2010 looming, we were curious to know what your plans were — if you had any at all — in regards to implementing the next version of Microsoft's business collaboration platform. Our poll revealed that while many of you are not in a SharePoint frame of mind, those that are seem focused primarily on its collaboration and social media capabilities.

A SharePoint Frame of Mind

Is Your Organization Planning to Implement SharePoint 2010? That was the question we posed earlier this month. And 1,575 of you responded. Here's a snapshot of your responses:

SharePoint 2010 Poll Results

Is the market for SharePoint getting bigger by the day? Why are organizations primarily looking to upgrade or implement SharePoint 2010? We took this opportunity to get some feedback and insights on our poll results.

How Far It Has Come

SharePoint has been around for awhile, in one incarnation or another. Many may remember using Site Server (I do), others SharePoint Portal Server 2001 (been there, done that), others MCM (Microsoft Content Management Server). But the functionality in all these really paled in comparison to what came in SharePoint 2007.

Dan Keldsen, of Information Architected says, "Realistically, SharePoint 2007 was the first "real" version of SharePoint. By that I mean it was the first commercially stable/viable version." He believes 2007 was aimed at creating a solid foundation, setting the stage for a push to a bigger business-focused market.

The 3 year development cycle catches Microsoft up to the vibrant 2.0 ecosystem that has been fired up as a result of combination punch of a horrible economy, and a realization (finally!) by a growing universe of businesspeople, that content and collaboration matters - so how can businesses effectively empower their employees to take advantage of digital content? Make it all MUCH easier to use through tagging, better integrated search (via $1.2 Billion FAST acquisition), and more.

And of course Microsoft is pleased with the results SharePoint 2007 has brought them: over 100 million licenses and becoming a billion dollar business. Hard to argue with that success.

But Microsoft isn't one to sit back and let things ride. They may come late to the party sometimes, but they always come. And they always bring something new and exciting when they arrive. Thus the anticipation for SharePoint 2010 is driving many up the wall.

According to Eric Swift, General Manager of SharePoint at Microsoft, "We have continued to work closely with our customers to understand their needs and work with them to build SharePoint 2010." 2010 has several areas of significant investment, Swift describes as:

• Delivering the best productivity experience and driving end user adoption through Microsoft Office and the integration of the Ribbon into the SharePoint user experience.
• Driving down costs by delivering a unified infrastructure that customers can consolidate existing solutions onto, across the Intranet, Extranet and the Internet as well as providing unparalleled choice and flexibility between on-premises and cloud deployment.
• Delivering a platform and set of tools that developers can leverage to build rich solutions that can integrate and extend existing data and LOB applications as well as a rich tool set for the power user to build no-code solutions by customizing out of the box components.

The Top Reason for Implementing SharePoint 2010

Okay, so we know where we came from and where we are going with SharePoint 2010, but what's in this upcoming version that captured your attention? It doesn't seem to be web content management (4%), business integration (6%) or document management (8%). In fact the majority of poll respondents pointed to SP2010's collaboration portal/social media capabilities (24%). The question then becomes, what new aspects of SharePoint 2010 encourage this type of usage?

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Tags: collaboration, document management, enterprise 2.0, enterprise cms, enterprise collaboration, moss, sharepoint, sharepoint 2010, wcm, web cms

With the release of SharePoint 2010 looming, we were curious to know what your plans were -- if you had any at all -- in regards to implementing the next version of Microsoft's business collaboration platform. Our poll revealed that while many of you are not in a SharePoint frame of mind, those that are seem focused primarily on its collaboration and social media capabilities.