Why Microsoft Sharepoint is turning the ECM industry on its ear

Given Microsoft claims well over 80 million Sharepoint users, no one in the business computing world is unaware of Sharepoint and how popular it’s become.

Microsoft has cleverly used its virtual monopoly power, its ability to give things away for free (at least to start), and leverage of its familiar user interface to leapfrog into a powerful position in the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) space. Though the word Enterprise may be an exaggeration for most of the users, who are thought to be storing departmental documents, it is easy to see and project scaling upwards.

A recurring theme from Microsoft is to capitalize on its strengths and position. They can afford to give things away, they can afford to take the long view (to when they can make money on it), and for almost any product they create, they can get instant mindshare by bundling it with Windows.

Clearly Sharepoint is a hit. Cheap entry, familiar interface and easy installation lead to instant utility. Some of our customers already have thousands of Sharepoint installations that are spreading virally – with very little control by central IT.

What should you do? Well, if you’re not in the mood to budget for large steps into ECM, this is any easy way to get started. You simply need a Server 2003 or higher platform and MS Office clients. Basic Sharepoint including database is a no charge download for that audience. So it’s free, it’s effective and it’s easy to use. It may not be compliance ready but for many departmental scenarios, that’s irrelevant. If you need to scale, there’s a higher-end Sharepoint available now and more features will be coming.

And because the established vendors can’t ignore this phenomenon, they offer integration to their higher-end enterprise oriented systems, and that will also get better with time. Meanwhile Microsoft is offering an enterprise growth path as well …and competition is good for you.

So why am I writing this blog? Well it’s exciting to see such change and such rapid acceptance of a new product, but it’s also an opportunity. No ECM vendor does it all. If you need Sharepoint to access more than MS Office documents , you can use our Virtual Viewer to scale up to a greater range of documents including MS Office, PDFs, TIFFs, JPEGs and legacy IBM Plus documents. Other needs that we satisfy include universal tools for annotation and page manipulation functions or for dealing with very large or confidential, repository documents that shouldn’t be transmitted to the client. Specialized viewers like ours and those from other companies fit that niche. And because we can be more nimble than a Fortune 2000, we can be responsive to your special needs.

Comments or suggestions? Pres2008@snowbound.com