Did Microsoft Sharepoint conquer the Intranet and e-collaboration market?

When Microsoft launched its two platforms of Sharepoint Technologies (Windows Sharepoint Services and Sharepoint Portal Server 2003) in October 2003, it probably did not realize how important these products would become in the company's product portfolio.

Sharepoint got off to a rather slow start. The confusing positioning of the 2 products was one of the reasons: it was difficult for people to get a clear view on the differences between Sharepoint Portal Server and the Windows Sharepoint Services which come free with Windows 2003 Server. Adding to the confusion, there was the availability of another product, Microsoft Content Management Server 2002. Last but not least, in order to adopt the Sharepoint technologies, your IT-environment needed some dramatic upgrading (Windows 2003 Server, Active Directory and to get the full functionality on the end-user’s site Office 2003).

But a year after the launch, Sharepoint gained some really serious momentum and became a major player in the field of intranets, portals and collaboration environments. Because of its low price, it also forced some long-time players in the field of content/document management and e-collaboration to adjust their pricing levels.

Probably the major driver for the succes was the ability of Microsoft to attract several hundreds of software companies to develop 3rd party add-ons for the Sharepoint platform. By adopting these 3rd party add-ons, Sharepoint customers can get the exact functionality they really need from the platform without having to do complex and hard-to-maintain customizations.

Amplexor Webwatch - Useful ECM resources on the Web

What kind of CMS to select for an organization-wide deployment?

If an organization is planning to deploy a content management system on an organization-wide level, one of the biggest hurdles is to get the end-user acceptance. James Robertson of Step Two Designs Ltd is giving his view on what the best CMS options are for a deployment across a whole organization.
(Source: Steptwo by James Robertson)

How to improve the content authoring and composition process in your company?

DITA is an open XML-based architecture for planning, authoring, managing and publishing technical content in print and on the Web. Developed by IBM and approved as a standard in June by OASIS, DITA promises huge savings for organizations that publish user manuals, maintenance documentation, catalogs and other technical content. What to expect from it? (see also our FREE seminar on DITA on the 15th of September !).
(Source: Intelligent Enterprise by Doug Henschen)

Setting up Intranet kiosks

Intranets have become crucial information resources for employees. But quite a lot of companies have a significant number of very valuable staff who don’t have a fixed work area or access to a PC. Factory workers, facility maintenance personnel and mail room staff are typical examples of people not having immediate access to the Intranet. That is why these organizations have started to set up Intranet kiosks on the work floor. Let's have a look at the typical implementation issues.
(Source:Intranet Journal by Paul Chin)

2 different publishing models for Web Content Management

Techniques are models for web publishing often leading to heavy debates but the comparison between two high-level models - 'placed' vs 'dynamic' content - provides definetely some interesting insights.
(Source: CMSWatch by T.Regli and C.Donner)