Rumours of on-premises software's demise greatly exaggerated Microsoft has let it be known that it will create another version of SharePoint, and release a version of it for on-premises operations. “We know that the move to cloud doesn’t happen all at once,” Microsoft writes , adding “While we’ve seen growing demand for SharePoint Online, we recognize that our customers have a range of …
And now I have two problems. Yes, it's the classic regexp joke, but true as well.
Remember: Sharepoint is not a magic fix that is going to make your business processes more efficient (fix the process THEN think of automating it) Sharepoint is not a cheap way of bypassing your ERP to do something that requires ERP integration later (remember the two problems?) Sharepoint is not your shadow IT system where you can give and take access rights and skip these pesky SOX restrictions. Sharepoint is not a means to bypass file server size limitations and have a place to stuff twenty versions of 20Mb PowerPoint presentations. Sharepoint is not nice with non Microsoft tools. Sharepoint is not a file server, even if it tries to appear as one.
Sharepoint is the place where anything, be it calendaring, file repositories, approval workflows, discussion boards, metadata editing, dashboards or wikis, will be available out of the box with 80% functionality, with the remaining 20% either being impossible or too cumbersome and expensive to bother.
For the love of god, don't. And if you do, try first the cloud version. At least you won't be afraid of throwing up the four or five carefully crafted and patched machines/VMs that took you so much time and money to set up.
"I find Sharepoint invaluable for sharing TFS data with clients."
There are about a million different ways of sharing data without Sharepoint. Care to mention what exactly Sharepoint provides that those others don't?
"Rule #3 of software - Just because you don't know how to use it doesn't mean it doesn't work."
Not saying that you can't use it, just that for each possible use of Sharepoint there are easier and cheaper alternatives.
There aren't really. For example, the case I mentioned above. It takes about three minutes to set up an externally accessible SP2013 site and about a minute to enable our current burndown charts, task list and test plans on it. Another three minutes adding email addresses to AD locks it down to the relevant users. Another thirty seconds enables comments, requests and push notifications. Could I code that in HTML, JavaScript and CSS? Sure. Could I do the back-end stuff in node.js or MVC? Totally. Would it take me less than ten minutes? Not a fucking chance.
Sharepoint joins up a lot of the dots that are not hard but unwieldy and expensive to implement well. And given that our Action Pack license includes it at no extra charge, it's a no brainer.
Of course you can claim it sucks because of $REASONS_YOU_MADE_UP and that $LOL_USE_LINUX_LOL but that doesn't make you right.
It just means that you're missing out. You can actually do loads of really quite cool stuff with SharePoint. You don't HAVE to use it but in many cases, particularly intranet cases where AD/LDAP runs the security, it does all the integration and saves a lot of time. And it's already tested so you don't have to code-your-own and then test it.
Unless you don't test in which case remind me never to employ you.
You could share files to your clients via Sharepoint, but most companies I've worked with will just use the free version of Dropbox (or similar) without going anywhere near their IT department.
(Although we'll still be expected to help them when all their files get deleted I expect).
"It takes about three minutes to set up an externally accessible SP2013 site and about a minute to enable our current burndown charts, task list and test plans on it. Another three minutes adding email addresses to AD locks it down to the relevant users. Another thirty seconds enables comments, requests and push notifications"
Have you checked GitHub? It works with any type of file, not just with source code. And it does exactly that. And I'm sure there are other workflow apps out there. No need to get your hands dirty with any programming at all.
Not saying that Sharepoint does not have its place, althought I've yet to see one and this could be just my limited, anecdotal evidence. My point is that there are a lot of use cases where Sharepoint is either overkill, adds nothing of value or -even worse- creates a lot of overhead without any actual value.
"Of course but GitHub does not provide burndown charts to our clients and is, er open to everyone."
You are not aware that GitHub has private (paid) repos?
Re. burdown charts: big assumption here, but seems that what you're doing is publishing some parts of a customized dashboard using Sharepoint. If that's the case, publishing and sharing the dashboard truly takes you a few minutes. But note that the actual value you're getting from Sharepoint in this case is just the authentication and user management layer, the reports themselves come from somewhere else that has nothing to do with Sharepoint, except perhaps expose reports in a way that Sharepoint can consume.
"Sharepoint is the place where anything ... will be available out of the box with 80% functionality, with the remaining 20% either being impossible or too cumbersome and expensive to bother."
Perfect summary of SharePoint. I used to be a fan many years ago until I learned the hard way.
The first thing is that there are tons of cheap or FOSS options to solve most problems that are no more effort to set up and much easier to customise. My second issue is that (at least in the past) SharePoint has also been way too reliant on MS-specific tech (broken IE HTML, ActiveX, Silverlight, Office) to be of any real use as a proper web platform, although later versions have improved somewhat.
Cloud is not an option in many industries and / or countries.
The data has to be held securely and often there are industry restrictions about storing them off-premises.
Likewise in Germany financial data has to be held within German borders (or you need a special authorisation from the German Tax Office to store them outside of Germany). Likewise all personally identifiable data has to remain within the EU borders.
that a 'cloud only' option would mean a Microsoft cloud only option, given that lots of enterprise clients outsource their Sharepoint platforms to a variety of hosting vendors with licensing procured from MS by one or other party.
For Microsoft the cloud is a way to sell more software, rather than the software being a way to sell more cloud, so I don't see them shutting off any of their products as cloud only for fear of alienating their enormous channel and eroding the ubiquity which is the main thing that keeps Microsoft in business.
I know they've pissed off their channel quite a bit lately, but this seems like it would be a step too stupid, which is why they're not taking it.
Customization, not subscription revenue sharing, is where the channel actually makes real money and if the channel does the care and feeding (MSP), so much the better for the channel and Microsoft. Those channel opportunities are drying up in other parts of the Microsoft move to cloud and mobile nirvana.
"that sounds like an enhanced search facility"!?!
OTOH, it could be a new approach to "Delve" into wallets, purses, and bank accounts courtesy of the knowledge provided to MS by the new proprietary APIs.
KISS with a tighter API grasp for more vendor lockin; and then go TELL Microsoft what you've been up to...(you naughty boy).
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