Let me firstly qualify this post by saying that I’m not inherently anti-Microsoft. I don’t use a Mac, I do use Microsoft Windows (even the mobile version) and Office and I’m using the beta version of Office Live Workspaces. But I just can’t fathom why people choose to use SharePoint.

As a pure document repository it is mostly harmless. It follows Microsoft security models so will only show users documents from file systems and folders they should have access to. Unless you’ve been unbelievably rigorous and consistent in your file naming and metadata conventions, however, its search will be utterly useless. Just search a MOSS intranet for “agenda” if you don’t believe me. The search is also hampered by some strange behaviour when looking at external systems with case sensitive URLs, so try before you buy. No wonder Microsoft have bought Fast.

There are some nice collaboration features: user homepages, instant messaging; but these are bound up in inaccessible HTML. So are the Web Parts, Microsoft’s equivalent of Java-based portlets. This is also true of many Java portals which are heavily dependent on JavaScript functionality and HTML table layouts.

There is a big difference between SharePoint and other portals, however. Java portal technology is built to the JSR standards, notably JSR168. This means that you can take pre-developed portlets and simply expose them through your portal. You can even send these to other portals through WSRP. But not with SharePoint. It doesn’t comply with Java Content Repository standards, so you’ll struggle to put develop a service oriented architecture around it. If you needed a single point of entry for web services that you can develop in .Net, you’d have to look at BEA’s AquaLogic, not SharePoint.

So what is SharePoint for? It doesn’t fit into a service oriented architecture, uses security models from file servers, doesn’t do federated search well and isn’t built to open standards. Do you really want to put that sort of technology at the hub of your organisation?

You can try out SharePoint through the Microsoft Online Customer Portal, although you’ll need a Windows Live ID.