Response to “What the heck is Microsoft SharePoint 2007?”

  • Article

John Newton wrote an article about SharePoint last October and a customer was asking me about it today.  I know that a lot has happened since John wrote the article, but I was also intrigued by his reference to and his association with Alfresco, a competing content management software package.  So, I made the below two comments to my customer and thought I'd re-open some of these discussion items here.

Most of John's article is opinion, and he's welcome to that.  There are two items in this article that are questions and I'll answer those below.SharePoint is not a very good platform?

Windows SharePoint Services v2 and SharePoint Portal Server 2003 were difficult for programmers.  That has been changed for Windows SharePoint Services v3 (WSS v3) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007), in that the architecture below WSS v3 and MOSS 2007 has been converted to ASP.Net v2.0.  Today, your ASP.Net developers no longer ask whether an application should be designed around ASP.Net or around SharePoint, they determine which SharePoint services and APIs should they include within the ASP.Net application.

There is a LOT of developer-focused information in the SharePoint 2007 Developer Center.Scalability?

The whitepaper that is referenced in the article has now been released and can be found here:

  • WSS Performance and Capacity
  • MOSS Performance and Capacity

Now that that's out of the way, I'd like to know if you think that people in industry are able to see through the other comments that John makes in the article, or if the other comments also need to be addressed.

As to what SharePointIS, I can certainly say that SharePoint is HUGE.  When I have only 2 hours to spend with a customer discussing SharePoint in detail, I still have to utilize the first 10-15 minutes of the meeting narrowing down the scope of the presentation so it will be relevant to the business problem that the customer is experiencing and so that we will fit within the allotted time.  Remember, the mind can only absorb as much as the seat can endure.J

For more detail, and if one is able to investigate the features and the pieces of what SharePoint is, instead of trying to capitalize on a gap between customer interest and released product, Here is a link to the SharePoint product overview.  Yes, it is only skin deep, but SharePoint is HUGE.