Happy 25th Birthday SharePoint – you were challenged by Cynics and Naysayers …….
Insights from a veteran SharePoint consultant, after over 25 years of evangelising, designing and deploying, I’m still here and so it appears is SharePoint!
You might assume SharePoint disappeared years ago – perhaps in 2007, 2010, 2013, or the day Teams arrived. Yet despite all those predictions, SharePoint is part of billions of users everyday work, storing content and sharing ideas.
The journey with SharePoint began before it was even a standalone product, back in the days of SharePoint Team Services (STS). That evolved into Windows SharePoint Services, and eventually SharePoint Portal Server 2001 emerged. Since then, SharePoint has moved through many incarnations: MOSS 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and SharePoint Online.
What ultimately delivered the greatest value was the power of the out-of-the-box capabilities not the snazzy custom development. Clear Information Architecture, Governance and staying true to Users being at the centre of the outcome matters most. Even as predictions of SharePoint’s demise resurfaced again and again, it’s alive and thriving, those fundamentals continue to pay off.
Sticking with SharePoint and helping organisations really use it well has paid dividends over the years. We have seen SharePoint capability and suitability constantly questioned, we have also watched supposed “SharePoint Solutions” (off the shelf solutions) fade away, while SharePoint quietly keeps delivering.
SharePoint endures because it consistently handles the dull but essential realities of providing an organisations collaboration and information platform.
SharePoint Online underpins Teams files, provides context for Copilot, combines with Purview to satisfy Compliance and information Governance with automation through Power Platform. Delivering Intranets, File Collaboration, Co-Authoring, Granular Permissions model, Version Control all out-of-the-box.
SharePoint is extensively used – over a billion people rely on it, proving its effectiveness whether you love it or not.
What is your Scenario?
- You’re still on file shares and want to migrate to a Modern working
- You’re on Google but want to migrate to M365
- You have SharePoint/Teams, but it’s information chaos
- You have M365 but don’t really know where to start, how to best architect/use the collaboration workloads (SharePoint/Teams/Viva/OneDrive)
- Your current M365 implementation isn’t fit for purpose – it lacking Governance and control
- You need a new Intranet alongside efficient Collaborative working
Why ElysianIT?
- We have decades of experience, we’ve been there, done it, know what works, what doesn’t work and we “have the tee shirt”
- We have migrated organisations to M365; Off of file shares, out of Google, out of Cognidox, M365 Tenant to Tenant migrations, delivered Intranets, refreshed chaotic implementations.…….
- We have a clear staged approaches, we don’t start from waffly workshops with a “blank page” – we start with a baseline architecture model and adapt to the way that works for your organisation
- We always start with out-of-the-box, sweat the asset, extend capability with Power Platform, Purview
Words by Lewis Baldwin, Principal Consultant, ElysianIT
