Information about SharePoint, Microsoft 365, Azure, Mobility and Productivity from the Computer Information Agency
Even if you don’t need them yourself I bet you know someone who does!
I have just completed the free SharePoint webinar – ‘An Introduction to SharePoint on SBS 2008’ which I have uploaded to YouTube in three parts, which are linked below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YR38TPndDI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5aIuuPE8b4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c482xsaJg_Y
Alternatively, you can download the whole 30 minute presentation in WAV format from my SkyDrive.
I’m now working on a webinar schedule from November 2009. My aim to is do a webinar every 2 to 3 weeks. These webinars will be available in both free and paid versions, with the paid versions running longer and going into much greater depth. However, I will continue to also do as many free webinars as I can. Hopefully, all the webinars will also be available for download as well after the fact making them a good source of information.
So I’m currently developing a schedule of upcoming webinars that I’ll be publishing soon. If you have suggestions of what you’d like to see, drop me a line (director@ciaops.com). If you’d like to stay up to date with webinar schedule as it becomes available simply keep reading this blog or send me an email (director@ciaops.com) and I’ll add you to the mailing list.
As always, I welcome any feedback you may have on what I have created and keep you eyes posted for information on the upcoming webinar schedule.
After many requests and a desired to cover the entire SharePoint product spectrum I have decided to now include information about Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) into my Windows SharePoint Operations Guide offering.
At this stage I’m unsure whether I’ll change the name or simply have 2 distinct products but what I will tell you is that from now until January 1 2010 the MOSS information will be in ‘beta’. That simply means I want to get it up to a certain volume before I release it commercially as well a getting feedback from subscribers. I will also tell you that all existing Guide subscribers will automatically receive all this new MOSS information as part of their existing subscription and will continue to do so as long as they continue to subscribe. I have also decided that I will make this offer available to any subscriber until the 31st of December 2009. This means that if you become a subscriber before this date you’ll not only get all the existing Windows SharePoint information but you’ll also get all the MOSS information that I create.
Aside from all this don’t forget that SharePoint 2010 is due soon, with a beta expected in October, and that too will all be included in the Guide (for Windows SharePoint and MOSS) as it becomes available. Best of all you’ll still get all this for $299! Chances are that after 31 December 2009 the MOSS offering will require a separate subscription so if you have ever thought that you may need information about SharePoint in the future now is the time to jump on board.
The new MOSS guide will include many of the same topics of the existing Guide such as installation, database management, search and so on, however it will also incorporate a whole new range of topics specifically geared to MOSS including portals, advanced document management, Excel services and more. For as much information as I have created for Windows SharePoint (over 1,400 pages now) I reckon I can easily double that for MOSS.
For more information about the Guide visit www.wssops.com or send me an email (director@ciaops.com). Don’t forget you have until 1 January 2010 to jump on board to receive all the benefits before the content starts to split.
As a further aside, I’m also contemplating (well almost certain now about) creating a guide dedicated to the SharePoint offering in Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS). If you think that would be worthwhile please let me know as well (director@ciaops.com).
“We don’t use Sharepoint. We hate it.”
Why would I ever say this is the most encouraging result? Simply it means one less reseller who going to bother with SharePoint. In essence this means there is more opportunity and revenue for me. Along the same lines here is another comment I find encouraging:
“I don’t typically promote SharePoint unless my customer specifically asks for it.”
Excellent I say. Taking this attitude allows someone with SharePoint skills the potential to drive a wedge into the business by helping the customer understand the power that SharePoint can provide. Once another reseller has created a wedge within your customer, chances are it isn’t going to be the only thing they can leverage away from you.
The survey also illustrated to me that nearly everyone using or selling SharePoint still really doesn’t understand where the power of the product lies. Sure it is great at handling documents, knowledge, and structuring ad hoc data but in my mind the key aspect of SharePoint for any business comes down to one word – SEARCH.
Everyone knows that to find something on the Internet they use a search engine like Google or Bing. But what do they use to search their internal information? Wouldn’t you say that most businesses place greater value on their internal information than that found on the Internet? You bet they do, so where are the tools to search it?
SharePoint and Search Server Express allow you to index just about every document on your internal network and make it searchable, in many cases without having to change the location of the data. Now, here’s what separates the successful from the pack. Out of the box Windows SharePoint and Search Server Express don’t automatically index Office 2007 documents, Adobe PDF’s and the like. But guess what they can! Also, with the release of Windows Server 2008 R2 will also be able to index scanned documents.
I can’t see how this is really any different from other technologies, they all need tweaking to extract the most benefit. However most resellers simply throw their hands up and cry that it is all too hard, which as I said before is absolutely fantastic for me.
Another massive over sight by most resellers is the opportunity presented by combining OneNote with SharePoint. Firstly, many probably don’t realize that if you capture documents in OneNote they are automatically indexed (even graphic files). If that OneNote file resides on SharePoint (which has been configured correctly) guess what? That information also gets index by SharePoint. So using OneNote you can get just about any information into SharePoint and make it indexable for the business.
Even better, as a recent Microsoft case study on the combination of SharePoint and OneNote highlights:
“Essentially, we’re using Office OneNote 2007 to provide an intuitive, user-friendly interface to the SharePoint Server 2007 document library,” Gardner explains. All content added to or created in OneNote 2007 is stored in SharePoint Server 2007. Users can continue to work in shared OneNote 2007 notebooks even when they’re offline, and the notebooks synchronize automatically when the users connect to the network. “All of the complexities are managed in the background, so the user experience is seamless,” adds Gardner.
Utilizing OneNote as front end for SharePoint removes a huge amount of the complexity for users. It allows them to be productive much faster by using something that is breeze to understand. I can’t figure out why other people can’t see this as the following survey comment illustrates once again:
“MS examples tend to lean toward the enterprise and that just isn’t the same.”
Because here is a Microsoft example, to my mind, of exactly the benefits SharePoint and OneNote provide to a large business that also apply equally as well to a small business.
The most common response to what I’ve said here is going to be ‘this is all well and good but obtaining all the information about customizing SharePoint is just too difficult’. Again I couldn’t agree more and I thank my stars every day that it is because it means only people who see the opportunity are going to take advantage of it and put in the effort to learn. Only people who see the opportunity are going to subscribe to my SharePoint Guide for only $299. Only people who see the opportunity are going to attend my sessions at SMB Nation 2009. The fewer of these people there are the more opportunity for my business.
The final good bit of news I took from the survey was the following comment:
“Robert Crane’s guides rock”
At least I know someone else out there understands it like I do and to them I say thank you and I look forward to providing you with more way to make money with SharePoint.
As I get asked the question all the time I think the best answer I can give is to have look at “Which SharePoint technology is right for you” from Microsoft that provides a side by side comparison of all the different flavours of SharePoint. Be warned there is a lot of information to digest here. Perhaps an easier way to understand the different features set is to download the SharePoint product comparison spreadsheet that sets out the comparison using Excel which makes it much easier to understand.
In all of this don’t forget that a new version of SharePoint is on the way which will mean changes again to these charts (hopefully not too much).
One thing that all these documents don’t cover is the price. In simple terms, Windows SharePoint Services is available as a free download, while Microsoft Office SharePoint Server requires purchasing the appropriate licensing.
Hope that makes things a little easier to understand.
Here’s a nice little document from Microsoft called “Five ways SharePoint can save you money”. Although it deals more with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) than Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) many of the concepts remain valid.
If are looking to understand the business benefits of SharePoint in general then I’d certainly have a look at this document and the resources it points to.
I’ve always been a big fan of the YouTube videos that Common Craft have created. Ones like RSS in Plain English and Blogs in Plain English provide a really simply introduction to these technology in a fun and entertaining manner. In many cases these videos help explain some of the technology that comes with SharePoint. Well now there is a Common Craft video specifically about SharePoint called SharePoint in Plain English.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s12Jb5Z2xaE
It gives people a good overview of what SharePoint can do and I like the way that is especially targeted at the typical use a business person would require from SharePoint, managing a project. I’ve always found SharePoint can be hard to explain to people because it accomplishes such a wide variety of things but I think this video does a pretty good job of at least making it a little clearer.
As always, don’t forget that my Windows SharePoint Operations Guide contains a whole swag of SharePoint videos and training as well as almost 1,500 pages of technical content on Windows SharePoint. The Guide is designed to help you get up to speed with not only using SharePoint but also helping your customers and business partners understand the benefits that SharePoint can provide them.
Finally, don’t forget that I too have created some free demonstration SharePoint videos which can be found at my old YouTube Saturn Alliance account or my new Director CIAOPS account. Also, visit Common Craft for their range of videos on a huge range of topics (not just technology).
If you wanted further confirmation that a major business opportunity exists in and around SharePoint then “Microsoft’s SharePoint Thrives in the Recession” from the New York Times is worth a read.
“We don’t claim we do everything,” said Chris Capossela, a senior vice president at Microsoft. “If we do 50 percent of the functions that these other companies do, but they’re the ones customers really want, that’s fine. The magic is that end users actually like to use the software.”
No technology can honestly claim to do everything and SharePoint is no different. Given how flexible it is you do have to say that it does a great many thinks pretty well and that is what makes it such a great solution for many businesses.
Microsoft declines to break out the exact sales figures for the software but said that SharePoint broke the $1 billion revenue mark last year and continued to rise past that total this year, making it the hottest selling server-side product ever for the company.
So if it is still growing while other software is declining why aren’t more people considering it? Imagine what will happen when more businesses find that Windows SharePoint is free to download or already included with their systems (i.e. for Small Business Server). When this happens the demand certainly isn’t going to decline.
Microsoft has managed to undercut even the panoply of open-source companies playing in the business software market by giving away a free basic license to SharePoint if they already have Windows Server. “It’s a brilliant strategy that mimics open source in its viral, free distribution, but transcends open source in its ability to lock customers into a complete, not-free-at-all Microsoft stack – one for which they’ll pay more and more the deeper they get into SharePoint,” Mr. Asay said.
This is exactly the reason that Microsoft provide Windows SharePoint for free, because it locks the customer into using more and more Microsoft products which is fine because they provide a solution and a great return on investment. Given that Windows SharePoint is also free it means there are far less hurdles to implementation.
By making these more sophisticated tools available to customers, Microsoft thinks it can keep pushing niche software makers out of the way and give business people, rather than just the tech folks, a way to work with business applications.
Again, here’s another key feature. SharePoint can easily be utilized by business users to suit their needs. As I have always said SharePoint is tool just like Excel or Word, it starts out blank but you really create something fantastic using it. Most business owners fear that if they implement something they will need to keep paying for any change required. With SharePoint they can do it themselves.
If you are a technology provider and you haven’t looked at the opportunity SharePoint presents then you are missing out on the hottest game in town. If you want to get up to speed fast with Windows SharePoint consider my Windows SharePoint Operations Guide (www.wssops.com) which is packed with all the information that you’ll need to install, maintain and manage Windows SharePoint. I’m pretty sure you won’t find another single location with as much information on Windows SharePoint as the Guide.
No matter what the economic conditions there are always opportunities for the savvy and clearly SharePoint is one of them. I’d also tell you not to forget the opportunity that OneNote presents but that is a topic for another post.
CIAOPS 