News
Study: SharePoint Poorly Suited for Traditional Web Publishing
The latest semi-annual release of "The Web CMS Report" examines Microsoft
Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 and concludes that despite its strengths
in managing documents in a collaborative environment, the software isn't a smart
choice for managing traditional Web sites. MOSS 2007 replaces SharePoint Portal
Server 2003 and Microsoft Content Management Server.
The report was published by CMS Watch, an independent analyst firm that evaluates content technologies and strategies.
"SharePoint has always been a good platform for managing Office documents
and the new version is even better at that," said CMS Watch founder Tony Byrne
in a statement, "but managing Web content represents a very different challenge,
and here, Microsoft has not hit the mark."
Among the other conclusions:
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MOSS generates non-standard HTML code with "extraneous JavaScript
and table-based layouts, which is problematic for enterprises wanting to
employ standards-based design and code conventions." The report notes
that licensees must "pro-actively strip this extra code from their
own websites."
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MOSS 2007 generates a folder-based navigation structure by default; this
must be re-coded or replaced if an enterprise wants to use "traditional
Web site navigation schemes"
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MOSS lacks strong native support for translation workflows, so its effectiveness
for multinational Web sites is limited
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MOSS is expensive. For public-facing Web sites, the product lists for
$41,000 per server (in U.S. dollars), "making it one of the most expensive
licenses in its mid-market class."
There were some bright spots in the report, however. For example, it notes
that MOSS 2007 can be heavily customized and extended through traditional .NET
approaches.
"MOSS 2007 might make sense for certain document-heavy Intranets," Byrne said, "but prospective customers should not assume that its ease of deployment for simple file sharing will equate to ease of implementation for managing complex Web publishing operations -- for Web Content Management, MOSS is really more of a development platform."
The research firm conducted hundreds of interviews with Web content management
system (CMS) customers worldwide. The report compares 30 vendors across 18 major
feature categories and evaluates the suitability of each product for a dozen
scenarios. Though it does not name a "best" vendor, it does detail
the strengths and weaknesses of each supplier and explains the suitability of
each product.
More information is available at http://www.cmswatch.com.
About the Author
James E. Powell is the former editorial director of Enterprise Strategies (esj.com).