Microsoft SharePoint 2010, was released to manufacturing in April, but, according to a new market survey by BPM vendor Global360, the new version has not yet gained a loyal band of followers in the enterprise.
According to the study, 80 percent of current SharePoint deployments are still based on SharePoint 2007, and only 8 percent of those surveyed have already deployed SharePoint 2010.
So what’s the hold up? First of all, it's still early days. But also, those surveyed pointed to several deployment challenges, including the time and effort required to build real business applications (30 percent). Also a big deterrent was the “lack of intuitive, easy-to-use SharePoint-based interfaces for business users (21 percent).”
One of the issues with deployment business applications within SharePoint is the limited BPM functionality that comes with pre-packaged workflows that are perceived as simple, as well as limited development tools that require custom coding within SharePoint to meet the objectives of enterprise users.
Companies like social knowledge networks company Inmagic and Global 360 aim to solve the issue with tightly integrated SharePoint solutions that maximize the benefits of SharePoint but provide additional value and benefit for enterprise deployments of document management-type solutions.
"Real business problems are complex and often need many workflows in order to deal with exceptions. Organizations need visibility into what's happening end-to-end, and the capability to make changes quickly,” said Deborah Rosen, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Global 360.
Right now, the majority of enterprises have extended SharePoint’s content repository or portal technology to manage document workflows (67 percent) as well as to support general business processes (56 percent). Only 27 percent of organizations utilize over half of the documents stored in SharePoint to support “mission-critical” business processes.
SharePoint is a cash cow for Microsoft, and is in wide use by enterprises and offered in some manner through many VARs and MSPs. In March 2010 Forrester said “SharePoint's strengths as a collaboration environment have made it one of Microsoft's shining stars, with 2008 sales of $1.3 billion, growing at about 25 percent per annum" in its SharePoint And BPM - Finding the Sweet Spot.
Microsoft Partner 
