Went out for a rather nice Thai meal last night with two fellow SharePointers, Paul Gallagher and Mark Wilson. It was great to catch up as I hadn’t seem them for ages. It was also worth it to see the sweat pouring down Mark’s face as he ate the world’s hottest Thai salad! We chatted about many things, but naturally SharePoint was mentioned on more than one occasion. (I know, geeks, on a Friday night as well!)
We have all been working with SharePoint for many years and have enjoyed both the opportunity and reward it brings. SharePoint has been the horse to back for a very long time (in technology terms anyway). Happy days!
However, how long is it going to last for? I remember a time when Lotus Notes was the dominant collaboration and email tool, but that’s now dropped off the radar, all good things come to an end I guess…
The things that SharePoint can now do are incredible. It’s a document management tool, CMS, Social network tool, application platform, BI tool, Intranet, collaboration tool… the list goes on! Once it gets properly “mobile” so that users can work with it from home (BYOD), it should become even more dominant and probably put Microsoft well and truly on the map in the mobile market. (Who wants 2 phones?)
So seemingly, on the face of it, SharePoint is set to last for a very long time. No point in re-training just yet. No need to look at other technologies…
However, something that Notes didn’t have to worry about is coming. The “Cloud”! It seems to be the intent of all the big software companies to move the “IT” that we are currently doing on premise into their data centres. And if you follow general opinion, nothing is going to stop this juggernaut from hitting. It happened to electricity, water and gas so it must make sense for it to happen to all of our one’s and zeros as well! It’s pure economics. Isn’t it?
Ok, the Cloud for Microsoft still means “SharePoint” but a SharePoint they completely host, govern and run for us by someone who doesn’t work in our organisation. But! What does this mean for the people who work in organisations now who are installing, maintaining, developing, designing and analysing our beloved on-premise SharePoint?
Will the Cloud bring more opportunity for you, or less? After all – one canned solution won’t fit all of a customers needs, so there’s going to be a need to develop and customise, isn’t there?
How long do you think SharePoint “on-premise” is going to last for? If you are a SharePoint Admin, is it time to look for the next SharePoint, or are you good for another 10 or 20 years ? If you are a developer, will simply learning how to do the new App Model be enough? Will the App Store mean that there are less things to build as one vendor takes the market with their solution?
Discuss….
Here’s two good posts around this subject…
A perspective on SharePoint Yammer and Microsoft
http://www.buckleyplanet.com/2013/04/a-perspective-on-sharepoint-yammer-and-microsoft.html
The year that SharePoint died
http://blog.furuknap.net/the-year-that-sharepoint-died
Not really on topic but I just saw that tweet and had to laught
FYI: deploying “on-premise” means based on a belief or position. deploying “on-premises” means on your land or building#cloud
— erickraus (@erickraus) 1. Mai 2013
so which one are you talking about 😉
I think there is also the proof-points required on whether the new Cloud App Model really works and just how many different App Catalogs we’ll see on-premise and cloud. I think one of the areas that organizations still struggle with leveraging is the tight coupling between Office and SharePoint. I still don’t see many organizations using that deep integration to their advantage. The other important point is that on-premise provides such a different dev/test model than what you can finely control in the cloud. Microsoft has Visual Studio TFS in the cloud but it’s not connected to SharePoint Online which is part of the real interesting integration for development teams. Indeed interesting times.
It’s would also be great to see some REAL figures and the types of systems / companies that have gone already. Not sure we can ever really get that thought. All we get is the marketing headlines.
The proof will be in the next versions of SharePoint. If O365 earns its stripes in the next 2-3 years I think SharePoint as we know it (on-premise) will change greatly. If it doesn’t they will continue to improve and refine on-prem.
Very interesting times.
