Similar Paths Taken By SharePoint, Lotus Notes
Office SharePoint Server 2007 is a healthy cash cow for Microsoft and its channel partners at present, but a recent study suggests SharePoint contains limitations that could eventually damage its popularity.
A Maryland-based research firm, CMS Watch, thinks there are fundamental similarities between the growth paths of SharePoint and Lotus Notes.
The point being that Lotus Notes had its heyday in the 1990s.
The company's view is that with both Lotus Notes and SharePoint, this so-called flexibility can function as a double edged sword.
The ease with which custom application design can be built on the platform, some experts believe, poses challenges for IT staff.
SharePoint also suffers shortcomings with regard to its capabilities and lacks the scalability and administrative controls necessary to make it viable for enterprise deployments, according to industry experts.
One prominent CEO believes that SharePoint is getting critiqued under the weight of its own success, and that Microsoft has failed, at least until now, to learn how to be a vertical software company.
Another executive believes that the same scenario was observed with Lotus Notes once organizations in the field began trying to extend the software, hardware, and network architecture.
"In the late 1990s, when Lotus Notes started getting immensely popular, we saw a proliferation of applications that were departmental solutions, not enterprise wide solutions," said the exec.
"Before IT knew what was going on, there were about 100 Lotus Notes applications running in the organization with no visibility to IT, and we're seeing the same thing happening today with SharePoint."
One local South Florida computer repair expert, when asked about the proposed arrangement, agrees with the premise that SharePoint's flexibility could in fact pose distinct challenges for IT staff going forward.
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