While Microsoft continues to push SharePoint 2007 as the answer to nearly all information management problems, it seems that not all local Microsoft offices and the partners have the same inflated expectations.

I recently came across two local Danish companies trying to overhaul their web publishing systems. Both had settled on MOSS 2007 for their Web CMS and wanted a proposal for an implementation. Surprisingly, here's what they got back:

• In the first project they approached Microsoft directly, which then passed the opportunity onto 2 preferred partners. After a while the local Microsoft office came back and informed the customer that the partners had both declined making a proposal for MOSS 2007 as they did not consider the project a good fit for SharePoint 2007. Instead Microsoft suggested that Microsoft partner Sitecore had more suitable WCM capabilities in this case.
• What happened in the other project was even more surprising. Here a well-known and considerably large Microsoft system integrator firmly argued for going with the old SharePoint Portal Server 2003 instead of MOSS 2007. They felt much more experienced with the old version, where they could also rely on a range of custom modules to help the project.

We should commend this Microsoft office for being honest, at least. But clearly there is a disconnect between the powerful marketing from Redmond and product realities on the ground around the world. We've documented this based on countless customer interviews in the detailed reviews of SharePoint in The Web CMS Report, The Enterprise Portals Report, and The ECM Suites Report.

It is quite unusual for loyal Microsoft partners to recommend another vendor, but even more unusual to recommend the 8+ year-old SharePoint 2003. While many other Web CMS vendors constitute a better fit than MOSS 2007 for most website scenarios, I can't imagine any situation where I would support installing SharePoint 2003, in particular considering a complex future upgrade and completely absent WCM features.