Over the last few months I have attended many conferences, seminars and client meetings at which one of the main topics of conversation has been Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS07) implementation. The 2009 Global Intranet Trends report from NetStrategy/JMC has a special section on MOSS07 implementation. Based on a sample of over 220 organisations the survey shows that over 55% of these organisations have implemented MOSS07 or plan to implement it in 2009. Even in the case of organisations with more than 15,000 employees the adoption figure is 48%. At one meeting recently the European intranet manager of a $11billion company with one of the most widely recognised brands in the world said to me that they were looking forward to their MOSS07 global implementation next year as it would solve all their technical problems in one go. I asked if they had been involved in a requirements-gathering exercise, but was told that the IT people were totally confident that MOSS07 would meet every requirement so there was no need to carry out an formal study.  

I've spent a lot of time and effort over the last year trying to make sure that I knew enough about SharePoint to be of assistance to my clients. All the evidence I have suggests that MOSS07 can be an excellent departmental/small business solution but that large scale deployments on a global basis carry a very high degree of risk. This risk can be reduced through very high standards of governance, but most companies are not positioned structurally or culturally to be able to attain these standards. Microsoft itself provides an excellent range of papers and checklists to support MOSS07 implementation but few I have spoken to are aware of them, much less read them.

There are some excellent resources from a range of organisations that are essential reading for any organisation committed to MOSS07. Pride of place must go to The SharePoint Report 2009 just released by CMS Watch. This is the most detailed and balanced report available and is an invaluable resource for both business managers, intranet managers and IT managers. In Europe Janus Boye and his colleagues know a great deal about MOSS07 and have set up communities of practice to support organisations moving towards the platform. Many companies are seeing the collaboration applications as providing the business case for implementation. In my view no one understands these better than Michael Sampson based in New Zealand.

At a time when, faced with a major recession in 2009, organisations are going to have to work smarter and harder with probably fewer staff I have a serious concern about the disruptive impact a MOSS07 implementation is going to have. There is no doubt that there is much of value in MOSS07as an information management platform and for smaller implementations the value for money is excellent. Somewhere there is a tipping point, perhaps around 5000 desktops, when the levels of complexity and cost increase substantially. If you plan for these then solutions can emerge. In the end the success of a large scale MOSS07 implementation is about 30% technology and 70% the ability of your organisation to manage both expectations and a very complex project.

Martin White