One of the key things any analyst looks for when analyzing technology vendors, is evidence that they practice what they preach. That they use their own software and that they have learned through their own experience what works and what doesn't. It has been a point of pride for many years that ECM vendors follow this path - though some are less rigorous than others - most of the vendors really do use their own software internally, for expenses, accounts payable etc. It's important as even apparantly simple document management workflows can become tortuous to implement in the wrong hands with the wrong tools. To their credit most vendors learn the hard way, and most have pretty efficient document management activities - with low duplication of information and little redundancy and regular archiving in place. They are not perfect, but they practice what they preach.

What then to make of Microsoft.....in a recent presentation they claimed to have over 112,000 SharePoints sites within the company - running over 12 Terabytes of content. Well one take away is that SharePoint is popular at Microsoft just as it is in the broader commercial environment. But we can also surmise that Microsoft themselves may have fallen victim to SharePoints 'success' - for what might an auditor or regulator make of 112,000 content silos - what kind of eDiscovery nightmare might that evoke? How much duplication of content is there in those SharePoint instances - how much of the 12 Terabytes is relavent, active and managed? Microsoft is a big company, but I have worked with many big companies over the years and this amount of content silo's represents near total chaos in terms of information management - 112,000 sites and another 245,000 web sites creates a total number that raises a lot of question. SharePoint is a powerful and impressive toolset, but just as Microsoft them selves are learning there is a need to plan SharePoint groups carefully from the outset, have effective policies and governance in place.