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Shane O' Neill of NetworkWorld recently did an insightful article that sheds light upon the perplexing phenomena that is SharePoint. One thing is for sure, the scope of SharePoint is vast, which is why nobody is quite sure what it does. It is out of the box collaboration software, simply a document collaboration tool, a business intelligence tool, an enterprise search application and an application platform all at the same time.  It's power is also one of its failings, which is what leads some studies to conclude that "SharePoint does a lot, but not too easily or well". Shane had identified different stages of SharePoint users, depending on how deeply they have gone into the product's capabilities. He cites from a Microsoft report which identifies three phases of SharePoint users as follows:- Phase 1 - Ramping Up : These are typically users who use the out of the box features of SharePoint like document sharing, social networking, blogs etc. These companies use SharePoint in response to an immediate need. I suspect a huge majority of SharePoint users are part of this phase, which is indicated by some studies which have found that SharePoint is used primarily for file sharing. Many companies who are in this stage remain in this stage, because they don't need capabilities beyond this. Companies who are in this market would do well to consider sharepoint alternatives, which do a better job of offering out of the box collaboration features.  Phase 2 - Building Momentum :  In this stage, SharePoint is seen as more than a tool which solves an immediate problem, but is a strategic tool which is essential to the business' processes. At this stage, users don't just throw content at the software, but think of it in terms of long term implications for business, and set governance policies for categorizing content, tagging it in terms of importance and implementing policies. Phase 2 - Driving Business Value : In this stage, companies don't just think of SharePoint as a solution which will help them improve current processes, but think of it as a powerful technology which can help them built new technologies and think of innovative news ways to drive business results. Companies in this stage extensively use SharePoint's application development capabilities. However, although the "phases" make it seem like companies grow from one stage to the next, that is not necessarily the case. As Ted Schandler of Forrester said, "SharePoint is a hammer, but not everything is a nail", meaning, some companies, especially SMBs, simply have no need for the deeper features of SharePoint.
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