Effective Collaboration with MOSS


The rise of SharePoint 2007 as a Collaborative tool

May 2007  Print

Effective collaboration has been of considerable importance to businesses for many years now. A survey by Deloitte back in 2002 found that 75% of the executives considered collaboration a top priority. Real business value such as increased innovation and worker efficiency, improved quality of work and knowledge sharing can be delivered by effective collaboration.

An interesting point in the Deloitte survey was that 45% of the 3000 business leaders said that they were concerned about the complexity of implementing collaborative tools and 33% were doubtful of the maturity of collaborative software.

Speed forward to 2007, where Microsoft has recently released the update to its flagship collaboration platform; Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (aka MOSS 2007).

MOSS has seen remarkable growth in Australia in the last 6 months. Reservations about SharePoint as an effective collaboration technology are being addressed. The recent surge in uptake may very well be to do with the strength of the investment that Microsoft has made in SharePoint.

SharePoint has undergone some fundamental changes between versions 2003 and 2007. A lot of the issues in 2003 have been addressed, and the underlying development framework has been updated to .NET 3.0, with its increased utilisation of workflow technology. SharePoint is now a very strong product and a lot of organisations that were sitting on the fence with 2003 have found the necessary impetus to adopt.

Like any powerful tool, if MOSS is implemented or used incorrectly, then it can cause future headaches. While a lot of best practices are detached from reality, it is critical that a MOSS environment should be correctly scoped, developed, implemented, administered and adopted. Ironically, if any one of these points is not done effectively, then the very benefits of having a collaboration platform (which were the justification for the technology in the first place) are eroded.

Dimension Data Learning Solutions (DDLS) provides one of the most extensive SharePoint 2007 (MOSS) training offerings in Australia, including the world-renowned Mindsharp Summits for Administrators, Developers and Designers.

 

For more information about SharePoint 2007 (MOSS) training, please contact your Account Manager or the DDLS Customer Care Centre on 13 12 01.