Byrne Tony Byrne

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SharePoint 2013 is really SharePoint 2015

19-Jul-2012

If past experience is any guide, SharePoint 2013 is really SharePoint 2015.

Do the math:

    Time to go into general release: 6 months
    Time for most people to learn how it really works: 6-12 more months
    Time for good practices and avoidable pitfalls to emerge: 6-12 more months after that (don't just take my word for it)

If SharePoint is important to your organization and you want to do it right, this schedule has you migrating in Q1/2014 at the earliest. Most of you will not migrate until 2015.

What this means

It means: don't wait for it.

Don't wait to fix your current SharePoint implementation. Don't wait to decide on a supplement-versus-complement strategy for enterprise social networking beyond SharePoint. Don't wait to procure solutions that your colleagues need today. Carefully weigh SharePoint against its myriad of (typically more agile) competitors.

SharePoint 2013 will offer a marked improvement over the current version. But it is unlikely to be qualitatively different, even in the hosted Office 365 version. There are certain fundamental limitations and opportunities inherent in a massive single platform for omnibus information management and collaboration.

In today's environment, two years is a long time. Promising to address business needs via SharePoint 2013 constitutes an open invitation for more "Shadow IT," with business units solving problems with their own chosen tools in their own timeframes.

Tags: Evaluating SharePoint, Marketplace at Large, Selecting Technology