Revving Up The SharePoint Engine

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server is hotter than a Phoenix sidewalk in July, and ISVs are using it in an ever-expanding variety of ways. What used to be viewed as a collaboration application has morphed into a full-blown application development platform that ISVs and solution providers are leveraging to streamline business processes.

The fact that organizations are using SharePoint to develop mission-critical applications for both intranets and extranets, as evidenced by companies such as Hawaiian Airlines and TV Guide using it to develop their customer-facing Web sites, shows that SharePoint has come a long way from its roots in collaboration. And many SharePoint ISVs believe the innovation engine that SharePoint represents is just now starting to heat up.

"What we're seeing with SharePoint is that people finally see it as a platform to build applications on, as opposed to it being seen as just a collaboration tool," said Eamonn McGuinness, CEO of BrightWork, a Boston-based SharePoint ISV. "I think people are realizing they can build serious business applications on SharePoint 2007."

In the early days of SharePoint, ISVs filled the gaps that existed in the platform with relatively simple applications.

But over time, the role of ISVs has evolved into that of a customized application development tier that sits on top of SharePoint.

"It's a pretty vibrant space, and there's a long list of things that people are doing with SharePoint. It is very much an application platform, and that's enabling ISVs to be innovative," said Doug Davis, director of product management for SharePoint at Quest Software, Aliso Viejo, Calif.

Newer features like presence in the Office 2007 environment are beginning to have an impact on the SharePoint ISV ecosystem, and the potential synergies between SharePoint and unified communications is also starting to resonate within the ISV community, according to Davis.

"SharePoint is all about teams: Your teams might be on instant messaging or other IP systems, and the technology allows you to do that within the context of Office," Davis said.

Project management is an area in which SharePoint ISVs are increasingly focusing their application development efforts. That's because a great deal of project management today happens through applications like Excel, which is a decidedly "1.0" way of keeping track of who's doing what.

But SharePoint offers a repository where companies can host and share project information, provide visibility into what different departments are doing and allow management to oversee the pace of progress, said Larry Roshfeld, senior vice president of marketing at CorasWorks, a Reston, Va.-based SharePoint ISV. "We're seeing a lot of organizations choosing to build applications that allow people to work on projects together," Roshfeld said.

Many ISVs are also developing tools that automate business processes for day-to-day tasks like purchase, policy and document approvals. Used in this way, SharePoint can help firms avoid the expense and long deployment times that typically accompany niche point solutions.

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