Analyst Breakfast With Microsoft Execs: Good Food, Insight Pending

Jeff Teper, Corporate VP; Kirk Koenigsbauer, GM

• Question: A follow-up to a response during Steve Ballmer's keynote that was somewhat evasive. My follow-up here this morning was:
  • What architectural change has been implemented within SP 2010 so that clients can expect quicker release cycles for application layer capabilities vs. lower-level infrastructure/platform modifications?
  • What development life-cycle change internally was made to support a faster cycle-time (vs. 3-3.5 years between releases now)?
• Answer: None. There was absolutely no additional insight. Microsoft is trying to "have it's cake and eat it to". You cannot make the case that the value of SharePoint to organizations is that it provides this massive all-encompassing platform that supports a wide range of capabilities unlike any other solution in the market - and then, turn around and say "well, because it's so large and complex it takes time for this platform to change and move forward in a manner that is stable consistently over time". It begs the fundamental question - when does a platform become too large? Is SharePoint getting so complex and so inter-twined that no one should expect a more streamlined release cycle - regardless of cloud. Cloud does not make it any easier for Microsoft to deliver business capabilities defacto any faster if (1) internally, the development cycle remains the same and (2) there are no specific architectural changes to allow different collections of components to be released at different pace rates. 

I'm left thinking that we will be talking about SharePoint 2013, SharePoint 2017 and so on - a release cycle of 3-4 years - even with Cloud/SaaS and BPOS. Should business and IT decision makers pause for a moment and take a long-view perspective on SharePoint over time.

While there is a level of irrational exuberance right now at the conference given all the changes in this release (there is a lot in SP2010 to like), business and IT decision-makers should think long and hard about committing too much of their business to this type of slow-moving platform infrastructure since Microsoft seems incapable or articulating how this release is a more adaptive platform for Microsoft itself to deliver capabilities more rapidly in response to customer needs.

For instance - even with this release there is still a lack of parity between on-premises and BPOS. As you listen to some Microsoft execs is sounds (not all the time but often) that SaaS follows on-premises vs. having BPOS as a first-class release target (that SaaS will "catch up to" on-premises) - I could be off here - but that's my perception. Microsoft still seems to be reacting to the Cloud from a SharePoint perspective versus treating it as a peer. And this gets back to the development life-cycle internally.

The other angle here is mobile - mobile seems to be consistently marginalized or treated as an after-thought. Responses are somewhat flippant and seem to avoid discussing much more popular platforms like iPhone and Android.

Perhaps there are certain solution domains that should NOT be on SharePoint if those solution areas require more business agility in the market. One space where this might be true is the social computing area as an example.

The eggs, bacon, and sausage however were excellent.

Comments

[Doug Cornelius]

Mike -

You're pointing out the inherent weakness in the SharePoint platform. People complain about the weaknesses in the 2.0 features of SharePoint 2007. (I was one of them.) But they were pretty good for 2005 when they locked in the features.

I fear the same will be true for the 2010 version. It will be pretty good for last year, but the marketplace will have passed Microsoft by once again.