Pelz-Sharpe Alan Pelz-Sharpe

Measuring SharePoint Growth

28-Jul-2007

Tags: Document Management (ECM), Marketplace at Large, Selecting Technology, Vendor Viability & Financials, SharePoint 2010

MS SharePoint continues to grow at a pace - in a presentation to Financial Analysts earlier this week, Microsoft stated that in the past year they have seen year over year 35% growth and revenues of a staggering $800 Million US. They also claim that they have shipped 85 million seat licenses to 17,000 customers since the beginning of SharePoint time.

If there was ever any lingering doubt that SharePoint was having an impact on the market, these numbers put that argument to rest. Nevertheless, although the product has some real strengths and has come some way since its first release (See our ECM product review), we continue to see it purchased for the wrong reasons. Procurement departments love its low costs -- and certainly the seat price of SharePoint versus an IBM/FileNet or Open Text is dramatically lower -- but there is more to the equation. Nobody can say with accuracy, but for sure a large percentage of the 85 million SharePoint seats sit idle, and an equally large percentage have been deployed without the knowledge or control of IT or corporate governance. In effect leaving firms with hundreds (and in a few cases thousands) of hidden content silos to manage and legally account for.

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