Disqus - Latest Comments for walmslan

Re: Building Up a Microsoft Intranet in a Box

Andrew Walmsley — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 01:09:25 -0000

Interesting read. Having been around long enough to have seen several 'intranet in a box' solutions launch from various solution integration partners, and all fail after 2-4 years, I concur with you're final paragraph sentiments.

The fast pace of underlying change in SharePoint or Office365, make anything based on it a constant moving target of new features customers want you can't commercially driver quick enough or old features they will lose, not being managed properly by said partner, making it commercially difficult to maintain cost effectively.

I've always struggled to see the commercial value proposition in the 'wrap of the solution' in top of the existing underlying cost model (of Office365).

Re: Should Microsoft kill SharePoint? [Gartner]

Andrew Walmsley — Thu, 19 Sep 2013 16:56:40 -0000

It's a bit of a headline grabbing article to be blunt, with little substance and arguably some large portions of naivety on the analyst part.

One has to wonder if the analyst thinks of products like Oracle, SAP or other enterprise based platforms. Should these be killed off also?

It by design, does a lot of things for a lot of audiences, and I'd agree it's become a very large product over the last couple of major releases.

But like any large system, good planning, design and overall maintenance coupled with some common sense approaches to customisations will reap rewards.

Re: Making the Most of SharePoint AND Yammer

Andrew Walmsley — Fri, 30 Aug 2013 01:39:23 -0000

Matt, unless I have misunderstood your last point, there are several options for bringing your Yammer content into your SP2010 environment.

I wrote a this up here earlier in the year:http://www.workshares.co.uk...

The article itself shows to some extent the features that are for both SP2010 and SP2013 (it does get to be a more convoluted story with cloud version, as this is where the monies/focus is)

Unless you mean more than just exposing a rudimentary web part, I.e like the fuller integration offered by the newsgator product you refer too?

Re: Will Office 365 Change SharePoint?

Andrew Walmsley — Tue, 20 Aug 2013 07:12:33 -0000

The decision to go for cloud based offerings, driven arguably by market forces, (read price!), opportunity, supported by advancements in IT to make it possible, have arguably been the reasons many of the SMB have been able to consider (and take up) a move to Office365 platform.

The traditional medium to large enterprise users of SharePoint haven't necessarily go 'all in' to the cloud either as Microsoft would like, but I think this is largely down to a typical reservations aligned with culture, risk, compliance, and in some cases technical constraints. It's happening, but just on a slower burn.

With that in mind, the experience and input from SMB's especially with other drivers such as bringing 'social' engagement capabilities (read, Yammer) will absolutely have an impact on the roadmap of these services. But i think the mix of on-premise, cloud and hybrid options will continue for some time yet as it looks to serve as many customers as possible. The question for me is how much profitability (or lack of?) will impact these offerings and how soon?

Re: Top 10 reasons your SharePoint 2013 Migration FAILED

Andrew Walmsley — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 14:04:54 -0000

A great write-up and interesting read. As a relative veteran of the industry and also of migrations, these tips resonate completely; A must read for anyone about to look into migrating from older versions of SharePoint.

I would also add I have found it useful to agree a 'success criteria' for migration that all interested parties know and agree as to what this means for them – it will have different criteria for different stakeholders. Thinks what ‘success’ looks like for IT, as it will be very different for those in communications or the end user communities and it will help ensure your migration to SharePoint 2013 isn’t a failure.

Re: Reflecting on Yammer and Office 365: SharePoint is Definitely Dead

Andrew Walmsley — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 10:55:09 -0000

I think I would have to agree with the sentiments made from majority of the others
that have commented so far; SharePoint isn’t dead, and is a fundamental core component along with email (Exchange) and IM (Lync) of the Office365 suite.

It will also continue to be sold separately within the Office365 suite for a long time yet and in my view be supported and updated in the on-premise arena for some time to come.

For the simple reason that the majority of organisations we have spoken too, have no plans to move to the cloud, for variety of reasons (legislative, security and culture…) well documented not just for Microsoft products but for others in general in the same space. Hence the standalone SharePoint platform and name will continue, all be it perhaps not on par with its cloud based offerings in terms of features.

This article whilst ‘headline grabbing’ is thought provoking but isn’t really supported with any substantial evidence to support it's intent, but nice try anyway! ;-)

Re: Why Your Traditional Intranet Is Killing Your Company

Andrew Walmsley — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 05:20:07 -0000

Great article, as its advice that’s arguably independent of
any specific technology and more a way of doing things better.

Re: Office 365: Top 10 Upgrades to SharePoint, Exchange, Lync for Business Productivity

Andrew Walmsley — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 11:34:19 -0000

Hi,

I am surprised you didn't mention the FAST server technologies being built into all of these offerings now by default and powers many wider features of the overall platform. This was a standalone product previously, and quite an expensive option too, so it's great to see this built into the product by default.

Search is a critical aspect of finding information across all of these platform, not least SharePoint 2013, which has seen big improvement in this space (especially for those who are just used to 'normal' SharePoint search).

Regards
Andrew

Re: Successful SharePoint Projects, Myth or Reality?

Andrew Walmsley — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 04:42:03 -0000

CCarter, they vary so differently depending on the needs of the project.

You don't say what type of SharePoint project (The 'sharepoint site development' name unfortunately means very little) it is in terms of scope, (Intrant, extranet or internet), which products you're using - WSS, MOSS, etc.

Hence difficult to respond with specifics as such. Based on what you have said however, use the enterprise one as a starter and strip out the irrelevant stuff that sounds completely out of scope for what you are doing - It's often easier to take out, than put back in so to speak.

Ensure there is a 'design stage/sign off' process, infrastructure ratification step, release cycle(s) planned in, launch/adoption activities.

Some basic PM stuff, make sure you have a scoping document (Project Initiation Document (PID) - this needs to be signed off/monitored regularly, Issues/Actions list reviewed weekly and actioned accordingly.

Finally review your team structure - suggest given your supposed lack of experience, avoid any branding changes, stick with features 'out of the box' for the first couple of phases, bring in bespoke stuff later once you have understood the wide features, constraints and therefore opportunities to add value later!

Hope that brain dump helps...
Andy

Re: Successful SharePoint Projects, Myth or Reality?

Andrew Walmsley — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 10:06:13 -0000

Thanks sharepoint_consulting for your comments. Small steps are important, but many businesses don't necessarily have the patience to take this approach!

As for treating SharePoint like 'any other technology project', agreed but at a more granular level they do present different challenges to say a traditional IT development project or email migration project.

In my view they have similarities & approaches that need to be merged as SharePoint can and will cut across such traditional project delivery methods.

Re: Successful SharePoint Projects, Myth or Reality?

Andrew Walmsley — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 10:01:05 -0000

Thanks JThake for your feedback. I have found all to often the lines between customisation/configuration/development is blurred and this I think will continue as organisations begin to push the boundaries of how SharePoint can be leveraged to improve upon current inefficiencies, together with a general lack of good SharePoint resources out there at the moment.

Re: Successful SharePoint Projects, Myth or Reality?

Andrew Walmsley — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 09:57:40 -0000

Thanks PCulmsee. It's also worth bearing in mind that the 'cultural mix' of an organisation staff will have a bearing here on user adoption.

For example, traditionally public sector organisations will typically put more effort/budget into training. This is because the transition is often more 'challenging' as employees are often more resistant to change than say private sector businesses in my experience.

All the best,
Andrew.