Sharepoint as an Intranet
Sunday: August 19, 2007 8:11 AM
Imagine a spectrum where on one end is social software and the other is the Intranet. The social software is a centralized service that acts as a many-to-many communication medium. Centralized in the sense that all of the weblogs, wikis, and other components sit within single environment. The Intranet, on the other hand, is a one-to-many communication medium that is decentralized where every business unit or group has their own server. Since the service is decentralized, there will be a wide variety of designs and style standards.
Now in an ideal situation the answer would be that Sharepoint is closer to the social software since we want to have a collaborative Intranet but many organizations just aren’t there and can’t see the value of having that type of representation. Although we use themes and master pages to match the style guide perfectly, we struggle to convince managers to exchange their HTML site for a collaborative one. Many of these organizations will adopt Sharepoint as a team collaboration tool but not as a customer facing engine. The correct answer is that Sharepoint can be both a one-to-many and a many-to-many communication tool. It’s the first one that many people struggle to see value in. The value of using Sharepoint as an Intranet tool without the collaborative aspects is that anyone in the department can update the content and very little training is needed. This eliminates the expense of HTML web developers, separate hardware environments, and most importantly, the latency of updates by using third parties for content management.
I can hear the collaborative crowd screaming, “THAT’S NOT HOW IT’S SUPPOSE TO BE DONE”. You must make the Intranet environment collaborative. No, the goal is mass adoption of collaborative tools not some collaborative ideal. Remember, you want to get people use to collaboration and if this is the first step then you created business value where there would be none. Not to mention, that if you replace a high profile Intranet with Sharepoint you have created a showcase for Sharepoint.
Imagine a spectrum where on one end is social software and the other is the Intranet. The social software is a centralized service that acts as a many-to-many communication medium. Centralized in the sense that all of the weblogs, wikis, and other components sit within single environment. The Intranet, on the other hand, is a one-to-many communication medium that is decentralized where every business unit or group has their own server. Since the service is decentralized, there will be a wide variety of designs and style standards.
Now in an ideal situation the answer would be that Sharepoint is closer to the social software since we want to have a collaborative Intranet but many organizations just aren’t there and can’t see the value of having that type of representation. Although we use themes and master pages to match the style guide perfectly, we struggle to convince managers to exchange their HTML site for a collaborative one. Many of these organizations will adopt Sharepoint as a team collaboration tool but not as a customer facing engine. The correct answer is that Sharepoint can be both a one-to-many and a many-to-many communication tool. It’s the first one that many people struggle to see value in. The value of using Sharepoint as an Intranet tool without the collaborative aspects is that anyone in the department can update the content and very little training is needed. This eliminates the expense of HTML web developers, separate hardware environments, and most importantly, the latency of updates by using third parties for content management.
I can hear the collaborative crowd screaming, “THAT’S NOT HOW IT’S SUPPOSE TO BE DONE”. You must make the Intranet environment collaborative. No, the goal is mass adoption of collaborative tools not some collaborative ideal. Remember, you want to get people use to collaboration and if this is the first step then you created business value where there would be none. Not to mention, that if you replace a high profile Intranet with Sharepoint you have created a showcase for Sharepoint.
Comments (1)
Even if I consider myself as part of what you call the "collaborative crowd" I am not screaming, “THAT’S NOT HOW IT’S SUPPOSE TO BE DONE”.
I am in agreement with you since I've implemented Sharepoint as an Intranet where I used to work previously and it worked perfectly, so yes, its feasible to use SPS as an Intranet.
Posted by: Stephane Cheikh on August 20, 2007 06:21