SharePoint, Mystical Grids, and Enterprise Social Computing

If you’re a client of one of the leading IT analyst firms, you’re likely to see their new market assessment grid soon. If you’ve never seen one of these before, what I will call “Mystical Grids,” they have four squares identified by certain criteria rating market players within each zone.

One axis relates to the size of the vendor organization and demonstrated performance in the market. One axis relates to existing features in a product versus this analyst’s list of the most desirable set of features for this space. This format provides an easy way for technology buyers to get a quick scan of the market.

Some prospective buyers will consider only the vendors in the upper-right square. This analyst firm doesn’t recommend this approach. If you talk with one of their analysts, he or she will always ask about your goals and requirements and will then recommend the most applicable vendors.

So how do companies actually choose the right enterprise social computing solution? Based on feedback from several analysts, including the subject of this blog post (and my own personal experience managing technology acquisitions for a $2B company), most companies factor in several key considerations:

• Use cases – What the company wants to do and how well the technology enables it
• Fit with infrastructure – Especially for enterprise-scale decisions, this is a must
• Total cost of ownership – Both the acquisition and the operation of the solution

That “fit with infrastructure” point is very significant. For some organizations, the goal is to get everything delivered on a SaaS basis – in that case “fit” means having the application run someplace else. But for the majority of companies making enterprise-wide deployment decisions, keeping this data secure on internal platforms is a critical requirement. This, in turn, leads to the question of whether an existing platform already inside the enterprise can actually satisfy the new desired use cases. 

Interestingly, the “fit with infrastructure” criterion is not really reflected in this particular analyst’s Mystical Grid. The square does include some major platforms. And we are thrilled to see Microsoft listed in the highest position in the top-right position. The SharePoint 2010 product has substantial advances in it, and Microsoft augments this value by tightly integrating it with the rest of its product line. NewsGator, in turn, created Social Sites 2010 to run within SharePoint and add more social capabilities to it.  Contrary to what customers are currently actually looking for, this analyst firm’s criteria forbids inclusion of any product that does not run on a completely standalone basis. Therefore, Social Sites for SharePoint can never be included in the Mystical Grid based on their rules.

We understand the analyst has to draw the line somewhere. It would be very complicated to come up with scoring criteria for every possible combination of products and companies. But, in conversations with analysts from every leading firm (including subject of this blog), we hear an amazingly consistent theme: The majority of companies looking for an internal social computing solution consider the fit with SharePoint as one of their key decision-making criteria. As a result, the Mystical Grid really isn’t a perfect vehicle for driving major technology decisions. Now, if you look at the Mystical Grid this year, you will actually see “NewsGator” listed. Confused? That’s because in teaming up with Tomoye at the start of this year, we added the Ecco product to the NewsGator family. Unlike Social Sites, Ecco can run as a standalone solution, or integrated with SharePoint (a capability that is central to NewsGator strategy to help customers at any level of SharePoint adoption). The Tomoye Ecco product also has a ton of great features, and many customers have enjoyed using it for several years in very large scale deployments. NewsGator’s “dot” in the square represents only the Tomoye Ecco product and only that part of our business. And this is the only way the analyst firm would let us participate in this very important research.

For the simplest possible representation of the world, allow me to present my own square. NewsGator’s Social Sites adds highly valuable and innovative capabilities to Microsoft’s SharePoint platform like microblogging, social profiles, communities, activity streams, ideation, advanced RSS, expertise scoring, and mobile clients for iPhone, iPad, and BlackBerry. In the world where these matrices are created, the more features you have, the more your dot moves to right.

In a world where everyone has a ton of information to manage, having a simple graphic can often bring clarity. In the case of the Mystical Grid, companies need to understand the criteria and logic behind this chart to apply it to their decision. We encourage everyone who has access to the report to look at the chart, but, more importantly, read the entire report. None of my graphics are intended to convey the exact positions of any vendors in the report, and this analyst firm does do a good job of explaining their observations of the market and how each vendor fits compared to their analysis framework.

If your organization, like the majority of large enterprises, is looking at how SharePoint fits into an enterprise social computing strategy, we believe you’ll find the report helpful. But if you’re looking to augment SharePoint’s social computing capabilities, please contact NewsGator. Our dedicated focus on adding value to SharePoint, a key requirement for the large majority of enterprises, as cited historically by this specific analyst, actually excludes Social Sites 2007 and Social Sites 2010 from being included in the famous Mystical Grid. But that focus is what has enabled NewsGator to deliver a ton of value to customers such as Accenture, Biogen Idec, Deloitte, Fujitsu, Novartis, the United States Air Force, and the United States Army. You need external research, like that provided by analyst firms, to make educated decisions, but you need the whole picture to make the right decision.