Intelligent Enterprise

Microsoft SharePoint continues to grow apace. In a presentation to financial analysts earlier this week, Microsoft stated that in the past year it has seen 35-percent year-over-year growth and revenues of a staggering $800 Million. The company claims is has shipped 85 million seat licenses to 17,000 customers since the beginning of SharePoint time (in 2001).

If there was ever any lingering doubt that SharePoint was having an impact on the market, these numbers put that argument to rest. Nevertheless, although the product has some real strengths and has come some way since its first release (see the CMS Watch ECM product review), we continue to see it purchased for the wrong reasons. Procurement departments love its low costs — and certainly the seat price of SharePoint versus an IBM/FileNet or Open Text is dramatically lower — but there is more to the equation.

Nobody can say with accuracy, but for sure a large percentage of the 85 million SharePoint seats sit idle, and an equally large percentage have been deployed without the knowledge or control of IT or corporate governance. In effect, this leaves firms with hundreds (and in a few cases thousands) of hidden content silos to manage and legally account for.