The Sharepoint Dilemma

A recent ZDNet blog post from Dion Hinchcliffe entitled "Sharepoint and Enterprise 2.0: The good, the bad, and the ugly" discusses Microsoft SharePoint within the context of Web and Enterprise 2.0.

Frankly, outside the impressive adoption rates for SharePoint in corporate America today, the story ends up being mostly about the "bad and the ugly" from a feature perspective. SharePoint is good at some things and not so good at others, which is not unlike other products. When it comes to mashups, I think it falls somewhere in the bad-to-ugly area.

I think it is very important to realize, especially for an organization that is hoping to capitalize on SharePoint as part of their Web 2.0 initiatives, that Sharepoint's out-of-the box feature set simply does *not* support dynamic integration of disparate information sources, nor is it an open, cross-platform solution.

We think alot about Mashups and SharePoint here at JackBe. The dynamic integration capability of Enterprise Mashups is critical for leveraging SharePoint to its fullest. Not coincidentally, we are in the middle of a 10-part blog series on Mashups for Sharepoint that includes such topics as:

- SharePoint Mashups using standard SharePoint Web Parts
- SharePoint Mashups using Custom-built SharePoint Web Parts
- Using C# and ASP.NET UI Controls to build Mashup Applications in SharePoint

Presto, JackBe's Award Winning Enterprise Mashup Platform, lets you create mashups that are reusable within and across Microsoft and non-Microsoft environments, including reuse of the same mashups within SharePoint and your Enterprise Portal. These mashups are secure and governed, working within your company's access control and Single-Sign-On (SSO) infrastructure, and focus on user-driven solutions that support more rapid and more intelligent decision making.

SharePoint may not be the one-stop shop for your mashup needs but you can add enterprise-grade mashups safely and efficiently. You can try out Presto Mashups for SharePoint through our free Developer Edition from our Mashup Developer Community and be up and running immediately doing SharePoint mashups.

I encourage you to give Enterprise Mashups on SharePoint a try and let us know what you think! And if you'll be at SPTechCon (The SharePoint Technology Conference in Boston on June 22-24), stop by our booth for a demo and one-on-one tech-talk.