SharePoint is a complex product with a complex pricing model. In an attempt to try to clear things up, I talked to Microsoft’s Subsidiary Product Marketing Manager for SharePoint, Åren Ekelund about how much SharePoint 2010 will cost in a web content management scenario.

Products such as Windows, Office and SharePoint are typically bundled, the different products have different license models and prices depend on your organisation’s license agreement with Microsoft. Customers can always contact a Licensing Specialist to figure out how much they actually pay for their Microsoft solutions. For web managers however, it can still be a challenge to figure out how big a part WCM is of the total bill. This is also the case for the recently released SharePoint 2010.

As with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007), many believe they have the licenses already as a part of their existing license agreement. If your organisation has a so-called Enterprise Agreement with Microsoft, Client Access Licenses (CALs) to SharePoint are indeed included. This means that internal users have access to SharePoint.

However, when it comes to web content management, you will have to buy additional licenses for the external facing servers. These vary widely in price depending on many factors, but here a few realistic indications:

• Standard Internet Server: The price for a SharePoint 2010 Standard Internet server lies around EUR 5.500 – 9.500.
• Enterprise Internet Server: The prise for a SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Internet server lies around EUR 20.000 – 32.000. The major extra features in the enterprise version include Access services, FAST search enhancements (note these also require a FAST server license), business intelligence, InfoPath Services & web analytics. You can see a detailed comparison of the editions here.

These prices are one-time expenses which you need to pay up-front for each server. If you choose to get an optional – but recommended by Microsoft – Software Assurance (SA), you will have to pay around 25% annually of the initial license price. Most significantly an SA will allow you to upgrade to new versions as they come out.

Note that many organisations will need several servers if they have significant web requirements (e.g. 2 front-end servers and a search server). UK SharePoint expert Ari Bakker has made some useful pricing examples for SharePoint 2010, which illustrate how much it will cost in both internal end external scenarios. As an example, Bakker writes that a large website on SharePoint with FAST search would cost EUR 82.000 (for 2 Enterprise servers and a FAST search server).

The best advice from Microsoft is to talk to your existing license partner in order to figure out how much your SharePoint projects will cost. Microsoft themselves will also be happy to answer any questions on pricing. As Åren said:

“SharePoint 2010 pricing can be hard to explain, but actual price quotes are easy to get via Microsoft or a licensing partner. We are always happy to help”

My advice is to contact Microsoft early on in any large project, before you decide on one system or license model over another. Many have burnt their fingers on SharePoint having thought that they didn’t need additional licenses. As a comparison, licenses for other .NET based systems such as Ektron, EPiServer and Sitecore start around EUR 30.000 – 40.000 for enterprise projects (see our CMS shortlist from 2009). So even if you have an Enterprise Agreement with Microsoft including SharePoint CALs, SharePoint might not be the cheapest option, if your WCM requirements are significant.

Thanks to Søren Laurits Nielsen, Kristoffer Munch, Niels Højdahl (@hoejdahl), Shawn Shell (@shawnshell) & Åren Ekelund for constructive input.

This week Microsoft officially launches Office 2010. While the final release version has been available for download by customers with software assurance for a few weeks, the “official” launch means the marketing machine will really crank up as Microsoft tries to create excitement for the 14^th version of the world’s most popular productivity tools suite. Given there were more than 7 million downloads of the beta version, it’s evident there is interest in the latest version, and early user feedback has been positive.

But are businesses ready to upgrade to Office 2010? What about at home? A lot of firms recently went through an upgrade to Office 2007 – 80% of firms surveyed by Forrester last month say they support Office 2007. For many information workers the pain of adjusting to the Office 2007 Fluent UI is still fresh. And a lot has changed in the market since 2007 when Google was just launching Docs & Spreadsheets. So what do you need to know about Office 2010 to inform your upgrade decision? To start:

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Okay, so I'm a sucker for nostalgia. But being on the same stage as Gilda Radner and John Belushi and John Candy and Tina Fey was a thrill. And being in the same studio where Elvis Costello and the Attractions stopped "Less Than Zero" after a few bars and jumped into "Radio Radio" in defiance of NBC's wishes brought a rebellious, empowered smile to my face.

NBC's Studio 8H, home of Saturday Night Live, is where Microsoft launched SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 yesterday. It was a short, punchy, customer-filled event. These products are the latest in the "Wave 14" product set, a ginormous (as my 9-year old says) overhaul of the Office product line. And they're beauts. Here's my (admittedly enthusiastic) analysis of what Microsoft has accomplished with this product.

• The lion awakens and roars.

  Microsoft's Office business has taken a battering in the press as journalists chase stories about the important innovations from nimble startup competitors, open source alternatives, and Web-based productivity tools. But let's face it. Microsoft doesn't have 500,000,000 people using its tools for no reason. And while three years is a long time to wait for a product release (especially in this era of instant innovation via the Internet), Microsoft has re-confirmed its position as the most important driver of business productivity on the planet. This launch will crush the dreams of a 100 entrepreneurs and force another 1,000 to rethink their companies. That's okay. It's what happens when Microsoft turns a niche product for a geeky few into a global feature that anybody can use. As an economy, we need it.

• The empowerment is real.

  Categories:

  • Collaboration
  • Microsoft
  • Office 2010
  • SharePoint 2010

  read more

The news today?  CMIS is now an official standard! I’m pretty stoked about the whole thing.  When I started this blog, after I got through my initial list of topics, it was the desire for a SOA-based standard for ECM that provided the desire.  Now that my desire has been met, almost three years later, what will I do for inspiration?

Simple, push for CMIS 2.0! In all seriousness, that is a post for another day. I want to focus on the actual release of the standard and the Demo where you can see it in action.

Stage One Complete

I’m not going to say “Mission Accomplished” for many, MANY, reasons.  I am going to say that I am pretty happy with the progress and would like to savor progress for a few days.  74 companies voted for the standard, making for 23% acceptance (15% is the minimum required).

John Newton wrote a blog post about his Irrational Exuberance on CMIS.  It is a great post for anyone with doubts to read.  I don’t think his exuberance is irrational.  While the future of CMIS is not carved in stone, I think the forward momentum is great.

• Alfresco has a supported release for CMIS, their Community Edition 3.3.  Support for the Enterprise Edition is planned for this month.
• EMC has announced that their latest early release candidate is the actual release candidate.  CMIS will be part of the core platform in their 6.7 release at the end of this year.
• Microsoft announced that the CMIS Connector for SharePoint will ship as part of the SharePoint Administrator Toolkit by the end of June 2010.  This will include using SharePoint as both a consumer and supplier of content.
• Day Software has announced their release of CRX 2.1 with full CMIS support.

Other official announcements are likely to follow quickly now that CMIS 1.0 is final.

For more information, check out the recent post AIIM 2010 CMIS article on Fierce Content Management and my 8 Things You Need to Know About CMIS article on AIIM’s Digital Landfill.

Want to See CMIS in Action?

STOP!!!  This is more than just a plug for you to play with the demo.  I am offering you a chance to download the code and play with it yourself.  You can even point to repositories that weren’t officially supported for the demo

Here is what you need:

• Object Model: This is a spreadsheet that describes the object model. This is what each vendor used.
• Source Code: This is Visual Studio 2008 project (you can try and see how it works in VisStudio 2010 trail).  All of the code is in C#.  I have removed the host servers and the authentication information from the CMISCalls.cs file, but if you look in the setConnectionInformation method, you can see where you need to go.  Note that if you want to add a sixth repository, you will need to make edits in the DefaultSearch.aspx.cs file.  If you try that and need help, leave me a comment.
• Documentum DAR File: This is the object model for the Documentum repository.  Just load it up and away you go.  You can get Developer Edition for free and then download CMIS separately.

If any of the vendors wish to make their repository that was used for the CMIS demo publicly known for everyone to use, please leave the necessary information in the comments below.

I started this on Monday discussing the importance of goals in general, using the setting of goals for yourself as a starting point.  The same logic applies to a company, and its industry, as well.

Think about it, why is a company in business?  Yes, to make money, but that goal will only get you so far, just ask the gnomes.  You have to have something to offer and the ability to convince your customers that you can deliver and still be around in the future.

So in order to inspire your employees and your customers, you create a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG).  For example, maybe you want to create the market leading ECM solution.  Ten years ago, that was a challenge.  No one company had all the capabilities in house and the leadership of the market was in flux.  Now, to hit the same goal, you just take aim at the big boys and go forward.

But what does that really get you?  Are you leading or just following the trail already blazed?

What Do You Give the Person that Have Everything?

Out there in the greater US, there was a newspaper organization that set an impressive BHAG in the 90s.  They wanted to own advertising in their market.  For a large market, that is a heck of a goal, especially with the advent of more national sources moving into the region.

Well, a funny thing happened, they achieved their goal.  It was a most impressive achievement.  The question then became, “What now?”

That is a dilemma that companies face when they become successful, how do you define the next step?  Trying to maintain leadership for the sake of maintaining leadership will only leave you reacting to the competition.  That very process cedes the leadership position to other companies.

If you don’t have a destination, how can you lead anyone anywhere?

What is Next for the ECM Guys?

So the question is, what is next for the large ECM vendors?  They have big honking platforms that can do everything (if you know where to look) and are constantly comparing themselves to each other.

At the same time, they are flirting with Microsoft because they see a product and a company that may not have a vision for the future, but does have a vision for the knowledge worker’s desktop of today.  They are flirting because they are hoping to buy time for SharePoint to become the next Lotus Notes and collapse under its own weight, or become inspired to be the next big thing.

The future is closer than you think.  The industry needs a vision, something to aim for collectively.  This is a call to the vendors to articulate a vision that we can identify with and see progress against.

This is a question for all of the vendors and the industry as a whole.  If you think that any company in the industry is immune from what I am saying here, then share.

People need to know.

After all, if you don’t know what you want to be in 5-10 years that is more than what you are now, are you a company in which I want to invest my company’s future?

Not a rhetorical question.

A Starting Point

We have talked to death about what ECM means.  We are pretty much working on the nitty-gritty details now.  We all know the WHAT.  It is time to look at the HOW.

How should people be interacting with their content in 5-10 years?  We know there will be more content, so let the engineers keep working.  The key is how will workers interact?

I’m telling you that we’ll be using our smart phones and tablets more.  We’ll be wireless and not always on our network.  That is obvious.

Forget the “cloud” and all the hype.  If a vision depends upon a cloud, that is pandering.  The cloud is a tool, a platform.  A vision may leverage the cloud, but it shouldn’t be central.

I wrote about Omnipresent Content Management (OCM) a while back.  The term is a little pretentious, but it had the virtue of being new, unclaimed, and applicable.  We might not be there in 10 years, but pick a point along the way.

The ECM vendors need to think about how to achieve that vision, or create their own vision that has power and evokes a new way of solving problems.  I listed three things, Storage, Identity Management, and Tagging as things needed for that future.  The middle item will not go away, the others will change as the future and visions evolve.

Pick a vision.

Define the vision clearly.

Map a path towards achieving that vision.

Share the vision.

After all of that, start work.  Don’t worry if we are following you.  If it is a good vision, and we believe you can get us there, we’ll follow.

Just lead for a change.

[Note: I said it in the post, this applies to all the vendors.  I'm not just saying that.  Right now, the grass doesn't look greener on the other side.]

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It is already happening, and I couldn’t be happier.  There are CMIS-base custom clients being developed and released that are taking some of the pain out of using ECM systems.  I’m not talking about open source clients, but commercial clients with dedicated teams and one goal, to make money.

I know that there is pain in the use of ECM systems, and not just because I use them.  I know this because of one simple metric; In my list my most successful ECM projects, the top of the list is dominated by systems that do not use the default user interface.  I’m not talking about customized clients.  I’m talking CUSTOM clients.

A Market is Born

Well, there are some companies that are addressing the problem.  As I said in my Fierce Content Management guest piece on The Future of CMIS, two companies are leading the way by taking existing custom ECM client applications having them use CMIS to create a broader market for their software.

Generis updated their existing common interface, CARA, to leverage CMIS to work against multiple repositories.  WeWebU has announced plans to follow suit with their OpenWorkdesk interface in the second quarter of this year.

This is great!  Companies are looking to address the largest pains out there with ECM systems.  We may actually be entering the time of true Application Separation!  I’ll address some impacts shortly, but first, let’s look at what I saw over the past couple of weeks.

There is a Market, Now

So, three things triggered this post.  The first was watching Generis’s CARA application being shown to a continuous flow of prospective clients at last week’s DIA EDM conference.  Many were Documentum users, but there was a healthy collection of SharePoint users as well.  The response was consistently positive across the board.  Even those that said they were happy with their existing interfaces were impressed.

The second was talking to a company that was starting over fresh.  They had written a set of architectural principles that they wanted every component in their new Knowledge Architecture to meet.  Documentum’s interface didn’t cut-it.  The platform may have cut it, but having spent years being ignored by EMC, they were moving on to another platform.  They did feel that CARA, using CMIS and being browser neutral, met the bill.  They still had tests to run, but they were enthusiastic about the prospects.

Those two events showed me that there is not only a market for applications, but potentially a strong market.

The final triggering event is this Implementation Spotlight on CARA3 on the Ext JS website.  They used the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) to build CARA, using Ext GWT to round out the functionality.  This allowed them to build CARA very quickly, allowing them to hit the market quickly and to throw in all sorts of cool features with very little effort.  The result is quick, light-weight, and browser independent.

The important part about the article, while it has a healthy amount of marketing, it gives you more background into what led them to develop a CMIS-base interface and about the underlying technology.  The first is important from a market perspective.  The second is pretty cool from a development perspective.

Enough on that, on to what this means…

The Landscape is Shifting

This is actually part of a perfect storm.  Look at this:

• ECM Platforms have gotten stronger to keep up with the increasing volume and more diverse nature of content.
• ECM interfaces have been steadily falling behind the innovation curve.
• CMIS allows a common way to communicate with a repository.  Chemistry is providing a common implementation for those that already support the JCR standard.
• Documentum and FileNet were bought by EMC and IBM.  Oracle bought Stellent, but they aren’t the user-friendly people.  Open Text bought everyone, leading to a shifting product lineup that leave people wondering if they are coming or going.
• Open Source ECM has matured, providing multiple options for an ECM platform.
• Microsoft has been Microsoft.  They are fixing every problem with SharePoint, but they haven’t caught-up to the curve yet.  Meanwhile, their biggest flaw remains, Works best with Microsoft products. (IE and with SP2010, Silverlight).

Fun fact: Did you know that many ECM vendors charge a separate license for their user client?  I wonder if they could take that money and buy a better client for less?  That is what we are about to find out.

We are now looking at vendors creating custom user interfaces.  Generis may have been first to release, but they are going to be far from the last.  WebWeU has been aggressively marketing their interface and I am looking forward to seeing it when it is released.

History says that the first couple of vendors typically don’t win the war in software (Wordstar, Novell, AOL).  When you take that into consideration, you can see why it is way to early to make any judgments regarding either of these offerings.  What we can say is that unless things change, this may become a permanent market niche.

Until Open Text buys them all.

Disclaimer

This time, there really is something to disclaim.  Generis is a partner of my company, Washington Consulting, Inc.  While my company, as policy, does not accept any revenue from any technology vendor if their software is used/purchased by a client, there are still some co-marketing efforts and lead-sharing that takes place.

That being said, this post was entirely MY idea, not my company’s or Generis’s.  I heard about the spotlight and thought it would be a good time to highlight the first commercial CMIS client already in the market.  In six months, there will be more competitors and it is entirely possible that one will be better.

None of this changes the fact that the release of this client shows that CMIS is already changing the Content Management landscape for what I hope is the better.

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We just had another of our regular cloud research meetings at Forrester. In these meetings, we cut across our research organization to examine cloud computing from every angle.

Compared with even just a year ago, it’s amazing how important and pervasive cloud computing analysis (as opposed to cloud computing guesswork) has become in our research calendar.

You can see the existing cloud/*aaS research here and our planned research here. As the meeting host, I mostly listen, probe, and take notes, but ocassionally I get to jump in with a thought.

To wit: We are often asked about whether cloud-based collaboration (email, team sites, instant messaging, Web conferencing, social computing, etc.) works best on multi-tenant, dedicated solutions, or both. The answer is both, but trending towards multi-tenant. Our clients are interested in both multi-tenant and single-tenant or dedicated cloud solutions — as long as the price is right.

The future of cloud-based collaboration is clearly multi-tenant for two economic reasons:

1. Multi-tenant enables the fundamental economic benefits of a shared resource. We can see this in the price war going on in email right now — a 50% price cut in the last 12 months with multi-tenant cloud email. The floor on email cost keeps dropping, fueled by the better economics of multi-tenant solutions and high capacity utilization.

2. Multi-tenant is a much faster way to deploy improvements. With multi-tenant, Gmail can add features overnight; Exchange only once every three years. Multi-tenant Cisco WebEx gets a quarterly update; IBM Lotus Sametime can’t (though LotusLive.com can). Because there is a single instance of the code in a multi-tenant cloud solution, the innovation is continuous, incremental, and globally available.

Multi-tenant is also the path that every major cloud collaboration vendor is on. Microsoft, for example, is running Exchange Online for $5/mailbox/month in a multi-tenant solution that now scales past 25,000 seats. Salesforce.com and Google have always been multi-tenant. And Cisco WebEx Mail and IBM LotusLive.com are also multi-tenant from their core.

So when does a dedicated (single-tenant; servers dedicated to you) solution make sense?

1. If you aren’t yet comfortable with the security assurances of a multi-tenant solution. This is what keeps most companies away from the cloud at all. It’s the number one concern in our surveys of IT decision-makers around the world.

It’s also what led Google to build a dedicated data center for government workloads. At least there, the government data won’t mix with the data of the hoi pollois. But this is mostly about getting the security assurances nailed down. I view it as a short-term limitation.

2. If your content & collaboration application must be highly customized and integrated tightly with other applications. This doesn’t apply to most collaboration solutions today. But for SharePoint or Notes applications it does. And while it has kept SharePoint off of Microsoft’s solution so far, even SharePoint will go multi-tenant in 2010 with a sandbox to keep your custom application walled off from other apps. We also expect some Lotus Notes and Connections features to show up on the multi-tenant LotusLive.com in 2010.

3. If you workload won’t run in a virtual machine. Okay, so this is a bit down in the technical weeds. But applications do run on silicon. And limitations around memory, buffer space, processing speed, and the like define what kinds of things you can actually run in a virtual machine, hence in a multi-tenant cloud. For more on this, see Frank Gillett’s report on scale-out workloads.

Disagree? Agree? Have other thoughts? Please share.

We just had another of our regular cloud research meetings at Forrester. In these meetings, we cut across our research organization to examine cloud computing from every angle.

Compared with even just a year ago, it’s amazing how important and pervasive cloud computing analysis (as opposed to cloud computing guesswork) has become in our research calendar.