“Social networking tools will accelerate the decision making process in the enterprise”
 No other product in Microsoft’s enterprise portfolio is perhaps as successful as SharePoint or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS), as it is popularly known. The product accounts for a neat $1 billion in revenue for Microsoft, with more than 17,000 customers across the world. But Jeff Teper, who heads the MOSS business globally, is far from satisfied, and says that he wants to make the product as ubiquitous as the e-mail application. Some excerpts from an interview with Srikanth RP from the Network Computing team:
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It’s been more than a decade since you led SharePoint’s development since its inception in 1998. What did Microsoft do differently from its competitors, which has made this success possible?
Unlike many of our competitors, we took a long-term view. For instance, when we started, we observed that the failure rate of intranets was very high. Something as simple as publishing a document, took nearly 16 steps. We went back to our customers, looked at how they actually used intranets, and used these inputs and insights to build the foundation for SharePoint. We were patient, and recognized that integration and ease of use were the two main pillars which were crucial to the success of SharePoint. We reasoned that our customers must be able to approve a workflow within regular daily usage tools such as Outlook or Excel, and not an external system, which will take a person time to learn and adapt. For example, a feature called ‘Excel Services’ allows organizations to use the power of business intelligence, using Excel as the front-end tool, and create dashboards or scorecards. The same tool is also being used by many banking institutions for their risk compliance needs.
To summarize, our advantage comes from the fact that unlike traditional document management tools, information workers do not have to go through a learning curve for our products. SharePoint 2007 Server is tightly integrated with a day-to-day application such as Microsoft Excel, which ensures that users can start using the features right from day one. Apart from the ease of use, our focus on interoperability, through web services and XML, has made it possible to connect to disparate systems, thus enhancing our value proposition. In essence, our approach has been to simplify the process of using business productivity tools, by embedding technologies such as BI and workflow into day-to-day tools such as Excel, so that more users can avail and realize the benefits of technology.
How do you see the role of Social Networking in enterprise applications? Can you elaborate on Microsoft’s strategy to combine the power of Social Networking tools, with enterprise applications such as SharePoint?
We have always believed that there is a natural synergy between social networking and enterprise applications. Traditionally, most organizations have struggled to balance these two worlds. For example, while enterprise applications are high on governance, they are low on empowerment. Conversely, social networking tools are high on empowerment, but low on governance. With SharePoint, we have given enterprises the best of both worlds, by allowing them to create blogs or wiki sites, and governing them through appropriate workflow or authentication mechanisms.
This combination will accelerate and encourage innovation, as more power is put into the hands of knowledge workers. As an example, consider a retailer in a region, which is witnessing a cold wave. Warm clothing would naturally do well, in such a situation. A salesperson with access to social networking tools, can immediately flag off this situation, by posting related information on a blog or wiki. His peers can tag this recommendation, and even rate it. At the end of a particular period, say a week, the blog post is seen by the senior management, due to the high rating and recommendation by peers. In a traditional business intelligence system, this type of insight can only be possible after months of analyzing information. In contrast, due to their interactive nature, social networking tools will accelerate the decision-making process in the enterprise.
Today, with features such as enterprise content management, search, portal, workflow and business intelligence, SharePoint is much more than a product, and more likely a platform. Do you see SharePoint making inroads into the traditional bases of enterprise applications, with its ease of use?
Rather than a competitor, we see ourselves as complementary value creators. While we compete with many established vendors in many areas, a majority of these vendors also recognize the importance of collaborating with us for providing more value to the end customer. For example, an alliance with SAP has made it possible for organizations to easily access SAP data and processes from within the familiar Microsoft Office environment. Similarly, PLM vendor, PTC, has developed a solution using Microsoft SharePoint that will enable teams to share and manage structured product content in CAD formats. The solution allows users to incorporate Web 2.0 technologies, and effectively use tools such as blogs, wikis and instant messaging to speed up the product development process.
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