Research To Measure State of Hybrid SharePoint Market
While SharePoint Server now lends itself well toward hybrid deployments with Office 365, it's unclear to what extent organizations are doing so. A research project underway hopes to measure how many organizations are actively pursuing hybrid SharePoint deployments, what's motivating them or holding them back.
Graduate students at the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University and Christian Buckley's CollabTalk are conducting the research, which is sponsored by Microsoft, a number of ISVs and several media partners including Redmond magazine. The research includes an online survey of SharePoint and Office 365 customers and MVPs, and customer interviews with contribution from outside research firms.
When Buckley, a Redmond contributing author and well-known MVP in the SharePoint community, reached out to me about our editorial cosponsorship to this research project, he noted that the size of the hybrid SharePoint market remains unclear, along with why organizations opt to remain on-premises. In addition to getting a better measure on hybrid deployments, the research aims to understand what fears many organizations still have about moving SharePoint to the cloud, as well as what technical issues are making it difficult to migrate existing server infrastructure, custom apps and third-party solutions.
A report based on the research will also explain how customers that have implemented hybrid SharePoint deployments are addressing those various challenges including management and security considerations. Buckley said there's no accurate data that explains how many customers are actively pursuing SharePoint deployments as a strategy versus a means toward displacing their on-premises deployments to the cloud.
"Whether you are already well into your cloud journey or just getting started, this study will help us understand where you're at and what we can do to help," Bill Baer, Microsoft's senior technical product manager focused on hybrid SharePoint deployments said in a statement.
The report will be released next month in various forms, including webcasts by some of the sponsors. In addition to Microsoft, the corporate sponsors include PixelMill, B&R Business Solutions, Rencore, Crow Canyon Systems, tyGraph, Focal Point Solutions and AvePoint.
Of course, we'll share the findings and analysis as well. If you'd like to weigh in, the deadline to participate in the survey is March 22.
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 03/16/2017 at 10:30 AM