Sorry, I don't buy your perspective. Jive, Telligent and many other vendors are today proposing e2.0 suites not single pieces (blogs, wikis, etc) that are quite complete and extremely superior to Sharepoint, not only if you look at the functionalities, but especially if you look at real collaboration issues: user experience, customization, integration, scalability, findability, reactivity to the market. Everyone can see it.

Of course this is true if we are talking about e2.0. If you are looking to content and document management, well there are better tools like Documentum and Sharepoint.

What customers shouldn't accept is buying Sharepoint as an e20 solution, because this is not what Sharepoint is. Let's focus on strategy? Well user adoption is the single most important concern that every company should put into the list when you are thinking to e2.0. Sharepoint imho is not helping with this.

Given that, Sharepoint will continue to be for a long time the most sold solution into this area, but everyone of us could try to use a car to sail the sea..

Great Post... Been a few of these going around lately - glad that some people actually get what SharePoint is and what it's for.

Often I'll hear that the blogging feature is weak compared to WordPress. Ummm - sure, but what else does WordPress do? ;)

Thanks for posting a bigger picture view.

- Dan

Thanks for the post - useful contribution to the debate.

Let me just briefly address some of the questions you raise:

> So then why is Sharepoint the highest selling product in Microsoft history?

Because they are bundling it and virtually giving it away. It is being lined up as their next lock-in play.

> Why then does the business user pick Sharepoint over the competitive (E2.0 included) products 9 out of 10 times?

Let's be honest, it is ignorance mostly. But also IT's desire to have something that suits them, regardless of its value for end users.

> ... In most cases the business wants a solution not a tool...

I agree with this, of course, but Sharepoint cannot be called a solution. A solution to what? It is a generalist DMS / file store platform. There are very few meaningful use cases that you could say it addresses as a solution.

Enterprise 2.0 *can* be deployed with Sharepoint, but only if you stick with the basic out of the box functionality and then build social features on top using real E2.0 tools. The structure, philosophy and technical limitations of Sharepoint plainly prevent it from being a 'social business' solution.

Posing the question the other way around also helps? Why would anybody want to use Sharepoint for a social business solution when there are significantly better (and often cheaper) products out there. The answer to that question rarely starts with a consideration of merits or suitability.

I agree, however, there is one more reason why companies go for SharePoint rather than a range of specialized tools, anmely the uniform development model. Companies investing in SharePoint development need to have specialist training in a range of tools, but can focus their resources on a single platform.

.b

Of course, my last comment should state that 'Companies investing in SharePoint development DO NOT need to have specialist training in a range of tools'

.b

if integeratedness is the criteria, there are other solutions which do this as well, but are easier to implement, configure, customize and run. and these are web based applications which do not need servers or ongoing maintenance. One example is HyperOffice - it includes collaboration features (document management, wikis, workspaces which allow customization, calendars, task management, forums etc), messaging features (web mail, outlook integration, mobile mail, shared contacts/tasks/calendars), and web conferencing.

it could be argued that such solutions dont have the power of SharePoint, or the scalibility. that does hold true, but they do fulfil all the needs that exist at a departmental or small to mid sized business level. and most importantly, they wrest the power in the hands of content owners.