It's a truth universally acknowledged that Microsoft SharePoint has really shaken up the content management market since it burst onto the scene a few years ago. Well, according to the latest piece of research by independent analyst firm CMS Watch, the arch disruptor is really going at it in the enterprise portals space.
SharePoint has made the huge impact it has thanks to a few factors, according to CMS Watch founder Tony Byrne. Microsoft has done a great job of evangelising the product, so that the vast network of developers and consultancies under its wing, for right or wrong, think that SharePoint can basically solve all of their problems. The truth, of course, is slightly more mundane - it can't. In addition, the commonly-held perception that SharePoint is free may have helped to drive its popularity, Byrne suggested. The reality, yet again, is somewhat different - although the underlying service comes at no cost, the pounds can quickly mount up as extra functionality is piled on top.
CMS Watch's Enterprise Portals 2009 report which was released last week notes that SharePoint's rivals are desperately trying to claw back their share of the market by adding high-end functionality that Microsoft cannot currently provide, in a bid to differentiate. Specifically, deep integration with heavyweight, and more importantly, non-.Net based CRM, ERP and other systems is one area where Oracle, IBM and the rest have a chance, because Microsoft's offering is widely regarded to be too lightweight in this area. Web 2.0-type functionlity was also mentioned in the report as one area where the high end portal vendors are looking to capitalise on areas SharePoint has traditionally been weak in.
But that strategy may turn out to be a tad problematic for them, because you can be pretty sure that this hasn't gone unnoticed in Redmond. As Byrne commented, it's only a matter of time before Microsoft improves what it's doing in the social software space, perhaps with the release of Office 14 in a couple of years. And it will also be working SharePoint's ability to integrate with non-.Net enterprise systems - it can technically be done via BizTalk, says Byrne, but it's still not ideal.
One other interesting trend to note from the report that make Microsoft ever so slightly worried though - the open source firms seem to have SharePoint firmly in their sights for "simpler scenarios", with Apache, eXo, Liferay, and uPortal all recently undergoing major upgrades and rapid expansion.
