Tuesday, January 06, 2009 9:34 AM
by
loufranco
Why there are 5 SharePoint Intranets in Jakob Nielsen’s top 10
My colleague, Eric Deutchman, shared Jakob Nielsen’s announcement of the 10 Best intranets with me yesterday, and pointed out this tidbit:
In total, the 10 winners were built on 26 different products — substantially fewer than the 41 used in 2008 or the 49 used in 2007. Most impressively, fully half of the winning intranets used SharePoint, especially the recent MOSS platform (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007). As the following chart shows, SharePoint use has grown dramatically in recent years. This is particularly impressive given that, from 2003–2006, the winning intranets didn't use earlier versions of SharePoint at all.
Another interesting finding of the report:
Some winners supplement their main platform with a few selected tools for specialized purposes.
If supplementation is a necessity, then it’s no wonder that SharePoint is doing so well. Back in October, I speculated on Microsoft’s Five Year Plan for SharePoint. In the post, I said:
Microsoft loves to build platforms. […] You can be sure that any successful Microsoft product will eventually morph into a platform. One way to know the platform is ready is when Microsoft starts delivering new functionality by just using the platform's public API.
Microsoft builds platforms because it knows how to build partnerships. Each of the platforms listed above have a thriving eco-system of ISV's delivering products to run on top of their platform.
SharePoint is a platform for provisioning web applications. Out of the box it comes with a lot of functionality, but its strength is in how easy it is to extend and the third-party market that is forming around it.