Microsoft’s Perestroika: SharePoint 2010 and the Restructuring of SharePoint Products & Technologies

Perestroika (Russian: Literal meaning: "restructuring"; now indelibly linked with attempts to restructure the Soviet economy in the late 1980s)

Perestroika means overcoming the stagnation process, breaking down the braking mechanism, creating a dependable and effective mechanism for acceleration of social and economic progress and giving it greater dynamism.

I stress once again: perestroika is not some kind of illumination or revelation.

To restructure our life means to understand the objective necessity for renovation and acceleration. And that necessity emerged in the heart of our society.

The essence of perestroika lies in the fact that it unites socialism with democracy and revives the Leninist concept of socialist construction both in theory and in practice. Such is the essence of perestroika, which accounts for its genuine revolutionary spirit and its all-embracing scope.

Mikhail Gorbachev, 1987
General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

 

A Silent Revolution

As a postgrad student in the late 1980s, like so many students in Soviet Studies at the time, I was fascinated with Mikhail Gorbachev and his far reaching programme of political and economic reform in the Soviet Union.

We all knew that perestroika was a brave and radical programme of internal reform coming at a time of maximal stress in the Soviet system; what we didn’t know – and what no-one could have possibly predicted at the time – were its consequences for the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) and its political counterparts throughout Eastern Europe.

In late 1989, in a few short months, a remarkable “Velvet Revolution” swept throughout the Eastern European satellite states, and then in August 1991, and almost unbelievably to Western observers, the Soviet Union itself suddenly ceased to exist.

And while perestroika – and its complementary political programme of glasnost or “openness” – were merely symptomatic of the fundamental political and economic problems facing the Soviet Union; there is little doubt that, once started, the process led indirectly to the dissolution of the Soviet state, the end of the Cold War, and a radical shift in the geo-political landscape.

Such is the force and power of an idea ….

 

Restructuring SharePoint

Switch to mid 2009, and while the rather unflattering analogy is probably unwelcome in Seattle, we find Microsoft now actively preparing for a “restructuring” of a different kind as they gear up for forthcoming release of “SharePoint 2010” – the latest version of its SharePoint Products & Technologies family.

On 13 July 2009 Microsoft publicly announced that SharePoint 2010 had reached the technical preview engineering milestone for the product, and simultaneously they issued a public website detailing some of the features of the new software release in the form of a “sneak preview”.

SharePoint 2010 - Sneak Preview Site

And, make no mistake, this is very significant news indeed from Redmond.

Arguably, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, was the first release of the SharePoint Products and Technologies family that could be called anything like “mature”.

In both its scope and product architecture, MOSS was radically different from its immediate predecessor: SharePoint Portal Server 2003, which to be totally frank was a constrained and limited product, best used for enabling Departmental-level information portals and little else.

(By the way, the less said about SPS 2001 the better ….)

By contrast, MOSS was a much broader and solid product release, wrapping up genuine website and intranet portal functionality within a single platform (built on WSS 3.0), whilst incorporating Enterprise Content Management (ECM) features such as collaboration, EDM, ERM, business intelligence, electronic forms processing, etc. to varying degrees of success.

And these days, at reputedly $1+ billion of sales per year, MOSS 2007 is big corporate business – not just for Microsoft, but also for the many thousands of clients and partners that use and specialise in it.

Thus, from its humble beginnings in 2001, SharePoint is now transformed to the status of a flagship product for Microsoft, akin to both Vista and Office in the Enterprise space.

And it’s no exaggeration to say that SharePoint 2010 is a fundamental product release for the company.

And what’s more SharePoint 2010 comes at a point where many analysts might be tempted to say (again) that Microsoft is struggling to re-invent itself in the face of bitter competition for primacy on the Internet (if not yet for the desktop) from companies like Google.

(Although to be equally fair to Microsoft, the analysts who study these things for a living have been telling us this for years ….)

 

Transitions …

Working extensively as I do with MOSS 2007, I have always had a nagging feeling that, while good, this version of SharePoint was a slightly immature product release by Microsoft.

And, as such, it papered over some fundamental solution problems – from both an implementation and deployment perspective.

This, in itself, is old news.

Ever since MOSS 2007 was released to market in late 2006 many analysts and experts have written balanced – and not so balanced – judgements of its capabilities and shortcomings.

See, for instance, that respected US web consultancy Prescient Digital Media’s judgement on the matter.

But as a strong and positive supporter of the platform, my absolute hope is that now (and finally) in SharePoint 2010 we will see a truly mature release of what is now – by sales, at least – one of the leading ECM products in the world.

Microsoft’s product restructuring, therefore, is of great interest to me.

 

Openness

Although clearly a marketing gear up, I was intensely interested in this “sneak peak” of SharePoint 2010 and this is what I gleaned from it.

(Note: in the interests of brevity – i.e. this will get way too long if I am not careful – and for the personal reasons explained at the end of this post, I am limiting my comments to merely the Overview section of the website.)

Video:

Generally, I found this interesting in that the 2010 marketing “value chain” is much more focused on end users, rather than workflow functions (as in MOSS). And while one could cynically argue that this is just marketing spin; equally, it could indicate a genuine and welcome change in emphasis on user experience and interaction with the product.

Key points:

• Support for websites: They state they have not forgotten that SharePoint is used for websites, not just the enterprise. Well done guys; I am looking forward to seeing how.
• Enhanced community and social networking support: A critical point as in MOSS 2007 these tools are poor (especially the latter), and yet arguably are of massively increased importance for both web and enterprise. 
• Support for connectivity whatever the device (i.e. desktop, browser, or mobile): Depending on what’s been done here this again is critical going forwards, and the product now needs great  flexibility across all devices.
• Search: Integration of FAST search technologies into MS Search, with an emphasis on improving search results (both content & people) and support for improved federated search. There is obviously a lot more detail to come here, and it should be interesting.
• Enhanced support for customisation via browser, SharePoint Designer and Visual Studio 2010: This is one of MOSS’s pain points, and when it comes to implementation it will be interesting to separate fact from fiction. 
• Enhanced business data integration: Depending on reality and the SharePoint usage scenario this could be truly significant.
• Support for migration between 2007 and 2010: Very interesting – I wonder how?

Feature Highlights:

• Improved user experience and support for Content Management life cycle: The page editing functions of MOSS have been given a significant makeover; introducing the concept of a Ribbon (first seen in Office 2007) used in a contextual way supporting web editing and list interaction in the browser. From both usability and content management life-cycle perspectives this is to be highly welcomed, and could be revolutionary in scope. I know from experience, for instance, that many ordinary users find MOSS a frustrating experience in interacting with lists and content items; thus enhanced support for users in this area is critical.
• Silverlight: A Silverlight web part has been introduced. This is a natural evolutionary path in terms of Microsoft technology integration, making it easier to expose this rich and dynamic media for users actually within the interface. And while according to our technical experts at Storm, in relation to SharePoint at least Silverlight is currently mostly being used for limited gloss at the moment, there is undoubtedly rich potential here as long as SharePoint 2010’s performance scales. See, for instance, the power of this technology in one or two of our recent websites that use Silverlight as the basis of the delivery medium: The Scottish Government: 2009 Summer Cabinet and The Drinking Water Quality Regulator for Scotland (you will need the Silverlight plug-in installed by the way).
• Site Theming Control in the Browser: At Storm we tend not to use themes as the basis of our SharePoint 2007 sites, finding them too limited and constraining. But nevertheless in the hands of a good designer (and depending on how it has been implemented) this may well be a useful addition, as the form (i.e. look & feel) of a SharePoint site has been the source of critique in MOSS 2007.  
• Cross browser support: Depending on how well this is supported going forwards (i.e. MOSS 2007 was relatively poor on cross-browser support), this is to be welcomed, but nevertheless in dealing with dynamic medium like the Internet this should be a minimum supported standard rather than being seen as an additional feature. Thus, I will be very interested in seeing the reality of this. (And no mention, as yet, of support for accessibility … one of MOSS 2007’s black holes.)
• Visio Services: This is a natural evolution of Microsoft product integration, and could be a very useful addition to some types of enterprises, as long as it truly de-couples SharePoint from needing Visio 2010 on the desktop.
• SharePoint Designer 2010: Also gets a makeover, with a ribbon interface. And depending on what they done under the bonnet this is could be highly significant in terms of ease of customising SharePoint, as both our designers (primary development interface) and developers (secondary) use SharePoint Designer 2007 extensively with MOSS.
• Business Connectivity Services: An evolution of the BDC, which according to one of Senior Developers at Storm (who took a close look at this for a project in MOSS 2007) was poor in implementation.  Depending on reality this could be a truly significant extension. It suggests a viable means for ordinary users (via browser and Office) to surface, share and manage structured data from databases and web services. As such, it could be of extraordinary benefit in certain settings.
• SharePoint Workspace (aka Groove): Looks promising as an individual user’s way interacting with SharePoint as a personal file store (from experience, a problem area with MOSS in some usage scenarios). However, not knowing Groove, at this point I am simply not qualified to comment further.
• Rich Media Support: Extensions within SharePoint in this area are highly welcomed, as both on the web and in the enterprise space the integration and consumption of rich media is becoming of central importance (and is now present in limited fashion in most implementations that I work on). (In fact, I was recently talking to one of my colleagues at Storm about this very point in relation to MOSS 2007; he said that he felt that Microsoft had missed a trick in “ignoring” this – especially in Internet usage scaenarios. If so, then it seems that Microsoft have been catching the zeitgeist.)

 

Microsoft’s SharePoint Perestroika

Gorbachev got it wrong.

In bravely setting in motion the changes necessary for the economic and political renewal of the Soviet system, he underestimated the power of an idea enshrined in a process, and the great political forces it unleashed.

Clearly Microsoft do not have this sort of problem. But nevertheless SharePoint 2010 is a highly significant product transition for the company.

In an attempt at a summary, my feelings are generally strongly positive at the user experience changes that this sneak preview of SharePoint 2010 indicates. From what we have been told here, and at least at the non-developer level, there seems enough to indicate a highly significant evolutionary shift in the product’s features and capabilities.

And, while this is not the end of the story in terms of MOSS 2007’s current weaknesses and foibles, unlike the many professional analysts out there that follow Microsoft I have deliberately chosen to remain silent on the more technical aspects of the changes to the platform indicated within this preview. Because of the importance of such comments to a product that I know well, and generally support and like, I would rather leave that task to people much better qualified technically than myself to comment.

What is obvious, however, that SharePoint’s perestroika has been underway for quite some time within Microsoft, and now that we are entering a period of greater glasnost with the product it will be truly fascinating to see what emerges from the 2010 SharePoint Products & Technologies stack and how this translates into practical solutions and to a market repositioning over the next 18-24 months.[1]

 

[1] Note: This will be my first and last post on SharePoint 2010 for some time. As a Microsoft Gold Partner, Storm ID have been fortunate to have been nominated and accepted as a participating organisation within the SharePoint 2010 technical preview. And while I have not yet seen the product working in action – hence this post just before I do – I now have to respect the Non Disclosure Agreement from Microsoft that comes with this nomination. Therefore, any subsequent posts that I make on SharePoint 2010 will be limited solely to comments on public announcements.

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