Enterprise 2.0 Offerings that Integrate with SharePoint Technology - Why SharePoint?
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If there's one thing that any I.T. pro knows, it's the value of "maximizing their investment" in whatever servers they run, technology they use or services they've signed up for. With strict budgets in place, no I.T. purchases are bought on a whim. Instead, each decision is researched, tested, thoughtfully considered and -- if worthy -- purchased, then rolled out to become a part of the I.T. infrastructure.
SharePoint is no exception. Deciding to ditch SharePoint when building an Enterprise 2.0 infrastructure would not only be incredibly wasteful, but ridiculous, given how well the two could work together. It should be pointed out that SharePoint isn't just the obvious choice for Enterprise 2.0 software because it's the Microsoft server product most commonly used by businesses worldwide, thus making new software purchases and installation unnecessary.
Business leaders interested in building an Enterprise 2.0 infrastructure within their companies need to keep an eye out for a few specific qualities in order to truly reap the benefits of the social software. According to many experts, these qualities should be inclusive of the following: Bottoms up, an organic structure, standards compliance and mash ups.
This is where Microsoft comes in; the SharePoint platform comes equipped with many of these necessary criteria, thus making the union between it and Enterprise 2.0 a match made in heaven that has nothing to do with sticking with SharePoint out of financial obligation. Just how perfectly do they match up? Let's take a look.
"Bottoms up" essentially refers to giving more power to the people using the software, which is a very Enterprise 2.0-related concept. One of the core features of SharePoint is its ability to delegate site administration to the users, thus reducing IT administration tasks and empowering users.
SharePoint also seems to be more than okay with utilizing an organic structure. Through administration delegation, users of SharePoint are able to build countless sites and sub sites, and all of these sits may embody a wiki.
In terms of standards compliance, SharePoint and Enterprise 2.0 don't fit perfectly quite yet because SharePoint is not yet fully XHTML/CSS compliant (thought it is possible), but the platform now works flawlessly in Firefox and Safari -- which is a step in the right direction.
Now, for the final illustration as to why SharePoint and Enterprise 2.0 make as much sense together as peanut butter and jelly: mash ups. SharePoint provides an RSS feed for each list, news and document library and it's also capable of displaying aggregated feeds through a dedicated web part. SharePoint is known for its ability to mash up with other business applications, thus making it the perfect pairing for Enterprise 2.0 software.
Today more than ever, CEOs are asking their CIOs and IT organizations to play a bigger role in the company's growth initiatives by providing tools to enhance collaboration and foster dynamic communication across departments, ultimately to engage more customers and bring more goods and services to market. Using rich blog, wiki, RSS, mash up and social-networking solutions combined with the enterprise content management and search capabilities of SharePoint, SharePoint customers are well positioned to create a competitive advantage in good or bad economic times by leveraging the benefits of Enterprise 2.0.
New software is constantly being developed and changing the way business operates. Microsoft, the largest software company in the world, always seems ahead of the game. Which is why it should come as no surprise that it's chosen to implement an Enterprise 2.0 solution that provides a comprehensive business platform combining traditional collaboration solutions with newer social-computing technologies in an enterprise environment.
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