September 12th, 2013
Originally published in CMSWire, August 29, 2013
Office 365 has made SharePoint available to the masses due to its aggressive price point. But is a low monthly cost per user enough for an organization to really facilitate enterprise collaboration and ultimately justify the ROI? Will SMBs be able to successfully implement and adopt SharePoint Online without substantial investments in expert assistance?
January 17th, 2013
Originally published in CMSWire, January 3, 2013
Microsoft has crafted the latest edition of its Web Content Management platform to make it more appealing as a solution for building public websites. SharePoint has long been the go-to platform for intranets and document management solutions for small to large businesses. But now SharePoint 2013 is poised to make dramatic inroads as a WCM for internet sites.
November 13th, 2012
To borrow an old, bad joke; “When is an app not an app? When it’s a document library!”
It’s obvious that Microsoft has invested a tremendous amount of time and mindshare into making the Wave 15 (SharePoint 2013) products “app friendly.” This is an exciting shift in focus for the SharePoint platform, as well as for the Office products, and especially Office 365. The investment they’ve made in enabling developers to build solutions that can function in hybrid cloud deployments with online and offline capabilities is critical, and is likely to yield a fantastic App ecosystem in the future.
October 19th, 2012
It’s not rocket science these days to create and publish web pages, using relatively simple WCM tools like WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla. Widespread availability and adoption of free tools like these have removed the barrier to entry for just about everyone who’s interested in publishing anything (no complaints on my end as I type this very post into WordPress).
There’s a trap here, though. The simplicity of creating basic pages like blogs and wikis has somehow led many to conclude that WCM is generally less important than it used to be. One point I’d argue: if you’re trying to foster collaboration and deliver knowledge management via your intranet, your WCM tools and strategy are still very important.
CMSWire recently published my article exploring this idea: The Evolving Role of Content Management in Modern Intranets.
What do you think? Has WCM been completely disrupted by the social web and cheap or free tools? How does your response change in the context of an intranet?
Your thoughts and comments are always appreciated!
September 19th, 2012
Originally published in CMSWire, November 07, 2012
As discussed in a previous article (Making SharePoint WCM More Adoptable for Content Contributors), a thoughtful and usable contributor experience is critical to the successful adoption of a SharePoint WCM experience. Content drives the site, so making content contributors comfortable in the editing environment is essential. Here are just a few ideas for simple improvements that can make a world of difference in adoptability.
September 4th, 2012
The proliferation of web content management platforms promises to put content creation rightfully into the hands of subject matter experts, but the editing experiences of many of these platforms remains a mixed bag. Microsoft’s SharePoint platform, which is becoming a major player in the WCM arena since its release of SharePoint 2010, provides seemingly endless opportunity for creating and publishing content. However, it still presents some significant adoption obstacles to content contributors.