SharePoint & Wiki: Inevitable Convergence?

An interesting perspective on how Microsoft views best-of-breed wiki technology versus what is currently available in MOSS 2007 / WSS 3.0. My gut feel though is that this is a "window dressing" (no pun intended) statement. It is inconceivable to me that the next major release of SharePoint Products & Technologies would not dramatically improve its core wiki engine and application capabilities (ditto for blogging and tagging/bookmarking). If I were a vendor, I would expect my value-add to continually erode from release to release. This may or may not be good news for clients. It's easy for people to use "that function will be in the next release" to deflect support for business requirements that may result in tremendous short-term value. The need for IT groups to have a healthy amount of architectural discipline is greater than ever before. 

As I stated quick emphatically during my "SharePoint Collaboration and Community Tools" session at the European SharePoint Conference last Tuesday, the wiki functionality in WSS 3.0 was not designed to compete directly with best-of-breed wiki products like SocialText, but rather, it's the integration of a plethora of collaboration and community features that make WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 best of breed as a whole. My presentation slidedeck is available for download here.

In fact, SocialText is the process of developing a new version of their SocialPoint webparts that will be compatible with WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007. The key competitive advantage of SharePoint has always been and will continue to be in the foreseeable future the breadth of integrated collaborative and community-based applications that are provided out of the box or can easily be developed with SharePoint rich platform services. I believe that the built-in wiki functionality is sufficient for a very large percentage of our customer base, and many customers have indeed standardized on the SharePoint wiki as part of their overall standardization on SharePoint as the enterprise collaborative application platform. More and more SharePoint customers who want advanced wiki functionality are looking to the specialized wiki ISVs like SocialText to provide it with an integrated user experience in SharePoint by way of 3^rd party webparts.

Source: Home - Lawrence Liu's Report from the Inside

Comments

[Ross Mayfield]

Hi Mike --

Yes, we expect our value to erode release-to-release, if we don't continue to release ourselves. Which we do in a timeframe measured by days, not years. As first to market and first to feature, we have to keep moving to remain the best-of-breed vendor. Clients benefit from choice.

> "It's easy for people to use "that function will be in the next release" to deflect support for business requirements that may result in tremendous short-term value."

Isn't that the opposite of what Lawrence did in his blog post? I'm sure he could have, and your gut could be right. But I imagine it is based largely on an embedded reaction to prior FUD.

[Mike Gotta]

Hi Ross -- to clarify my comment - IT organizations need to consider best-of-breed or specialized tools based on business need not future vendor deliverables that might not happen for years. My concern is that "good enough" is sometimes not good enough.

IT organizations need solid architectural reference models when looking at MOSS 2007 and WSS 3.0. It should not be viewed as an all-or-nothing proposition -- for some enterprises, using MOSS 2007 alongside a specialized blog or wiki solution should be a viable deployment based on their business requirements.

But in 2-3 years, whenever the next release of MOSS occurs, I would expect that vendors will need to look at MOSS as a platform upon which they deliver blog/wiki applications. Competing at an infrastructure level will become increasingly more difficult.