SPTechCon SF: Owen Allen Makes the Case for SharePoint as a Platform for Business Applications
Published 02/09 courtesy of Bamboo Solutions Community
Owen Allen joined Microsoft in 2002 and departed to form SharePoint Directions in 2010 after having spent the previous two years on the SharePoint product team working with ISVs. In other words, Owen is ideally suited to present a session on SharePoint as a platform for business applications. Owen freely admitted at the beginning of his session yesterday that he's a "convert to the 'component-ization' of SharePoint," and that that would be his focus his session.
Owen began by acknowledging what he referred to as the "paradox of empowerment versus control" that exists between the business and IT with regard to SharePoint. As to how to break this paradox Owen suggests thinking about the "value gap" by identifying what SharePoint provides out-of-the-box, and the gap between those features and what you need to achieve your business process requirements. What are the pieces that are missing and how should they be filled? It's Owen's contention that "business users need to be champions of figuring out where the gaps are."
Owen acknowledges that "there are gaps in the whole ecosystem around SharePoint," and suggests that when your organization is looking for solutions to fill those gaps, "You'll be able to pull on a whole range of resources," both internal (primarily developers) and external (primarily third-party vendors).
Addressing the notion of bringing business process to SharePoint, some of the areas Owen touched on as beneficial components included: the Ribbon ("As business users, you need to think about it as a way to expose functionality as needed"); mobile ( "You need to understand where mobile browsers play with SharePoint, and where you will need partners to help fill the gaps," and at this point Owen clarified that when he speaks of partners, he means both custom coders as well as third-party providers of software solutions); SharePoint communities ("You need to know what the pieces [of SharePoint] are that can combine into these communities"); social tagging ("The trick is how do we get users to want to use this stuff?"); user profiles ("SharePoint applications have knowledge about users built in that can be used to maintain additional information, companywide, to support your business process"); and people and expertise finding ("A great component to help you bring business processes to SharePoint").
Discussing PerformancePoint, Owen suggested that organizations "Show your user communities the possibilities of what can be done [with PerformancePoint, which] can augment team sites and project sites." In the context of PerformancePoint, Owen also first made a point that he would reference again in regard to case management, stating that "Benefits that used to apply only to high-end business process can now be brought down to smaller, lower-value business processes." As a concrete example of its usefulness, Owen said of creating a program management dashboard using Web Parts and PerformancePoint, "You can deliver this type of application much more cheaply with SharePoint than you can by custom-coding it."
Speaking of composite applications in SharePoint, Owen defined them as consisting of three characteristics: no-code collaborative solutions (noting that this doesn't mean there can't be any custom code); the ability to leverage enterprise data and surface it throughout the organization; and the ease of maintaining control over end user solutions. Of SharePoint applications, Owen said they are "People-centric, inherently collaborative, and composite."
Owen concluded the session suggesting some areas to consider and questions to ask, including: "It's not just content management... or is it?"; How do we enable external integration with our SharePoint applications to help our users become champions?"; "If we build these applications, will users use them?"; "What is Office 365 and what does it mean for my users?"; "What tools do I have at my disposal? Architects? Consultants? System integrators? VARs? Software vendors? Online networks?" In response to that final question, Owen pointed out that "SharePoint is just too big ... you're going to have to access other networks and other resources to get answers to your questions."
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