Wanted 15 year old with 30 years "extensive" experience with SharePoint 2007 !

Some days I think things are really going crazy. SharePoint 2007 was released on the 30th November 2007. Sure there was lots of interaction with betas, however the fact remains that the production release is 14 months old.

So why do I feel that a lot the job adverts that are running seem to be asking fo a 15 year old with 30 years experience in SharePoint!

Generally these adds are wanting "extensive experience" I am beginning to wonder what the word "extensive" is supposed to mean, especially to the people who are writing these adds?

Does it mean that if you have run "setup.exe" you have extensive installation experience, or if you have looked at the Admin console you now have extensive admin experience. Or if you have dabbled with ASP.NET and webparts that you have extensive development experience?

Now don't get me wrong there are a people out there with extensive experience, but these are generally not the norm.

People with "extensive expereince" will have worked with SPS2003 and beeen through the transition pain to 2007. They will have been through the alpha, beta, TAP's and then the RTM migrations. They understand the WSS 3.0 and SPS 2007 API's and some.

They will have been through the SP1 and the infrastructure upgrades and will probably have written books and been on the speaking circuit. They build add on products to enhance SPS 2007 for breakfast and then re design the product over lunch.

For the rest, well we are all doing well and getting up to speed becoming comfortable with the product and learning that there are areas that need some extensions to really get things moving.

But I forgot O14 is on the way, so I better get off now and get "extensive" in advance.

Microsoft Citizen Service Platform

I have been on partner training for the Microsoft Citizen Service Platform (CSP). The CSP is a framework that looks to leverage project activities that have been delivered across Local and Regional Government customers and brings it all together as a model and set of guidance and templates that can be leveraged to solve business problems.

The cynic might say that it is marketing to sell Microsoft licences, in one way that is true. However, what is real is that Microsoft are really trying to show some leadership by getting above the pure product drop and providing real world experience on how the products are brought together to form solutions that deliver real business value. Sample the CSP at the Microsoft site Citizen Service Platform.

Search FASTer

Announcement by Microsoft at FAST Forward 09 a detailed road map of FAST Search for SharePoint and FAST Search for Internet Business.

FAST Search for SharePoint, is a new "search server" that will bring the portions of the search capabilities of the current FAST ESP into Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server. This functionality will be available as a part of the next release of the Microsoft Office system, currently named O14 release. Some will say, it's about time !

For those who are interested in the product today, Microsoft also announced ESP for SharePoint, a special offer that allows customers to purchase high-end search capabilities now, with a defined licensing path to FAST Search for SharePoint when it becomes available.

Overall this direction from Microsoft is a significant advancement in the world of search. We are beginning to see the $1.2b acquisition of FAST now being leveraged to bring great value to the SharePoint interface, as well as provide a path to include the power and versatility of the full FAST engine as required. The Search market is going to heat up very quickly.

Enter the year Autonomy in acquisition mode

So welcome to 2009.

We are in the midst of a global recession. There is a new US President. And the day after inauguration Autonomy has moved to acquire Interwoven. What a start !

So Autonomy has now moved into the ECM space with this acquisition and places them on the Gartner MQ as a serious player. The rationale for the purchase from Autonomy is as follows:

The combination of Autonomy's Meaning Based Computing technologies (IDOL) (with
its ability to understand content) with Interwoven's suite of products (focused
on managing the interactions of people and content) will create a new set of
technologies, updating and enhancing Interwoven's products by significantly
reducing the levels of manual effort now required. These technologies are ready
to address the new need for manage-in-place and extend Autonomy's reach into a
new customer base. Interwoven's products know what the customer interactions
are, and Autonomy's IDOL will allow them to know what they mean.

A full press release is outlined on the Autonomy site

http://www.autonomy.com/content/News/Releases/2009/0122.en.html

IT is from Mars and your Information is from Venus

"Information structure , Sure, no problem , got that covered" says the Enterprise Architect as you ask about the alignment of the Business Classification Structure and metadata to the IT technology that has being proposed for the Pan Galactic rollout that you have just heard about.


"It's all just a quick review and we get on with. The vendor told us it will be easy", he adds, almost without taking a breath. After wondering that maybe you are in different solar systems, or different companies you race off to see how wide spread this IT selection disease has become.

Does this sound like your situation? Scary as it is, it is still be played out across companies of reasonably large size as we speak.

IT selection alone will not solve an information problem that you have. In treating the information just as a bit or a byte ultimately the thinking will by default go to a technology only "Storage Bucket" view.

Maybe this is why most technology only selections seem to fail, or why IT seems to get impatient with information management people who see the need to get a clear understanding on the complex mess of connections and associations between information in a contextual way.

By focusing only on product (technology) not the capability that it can provide you to assist in the management of your information in context you will replay the IT solution that fails over and over again. Only when you realise that there are two planets involved will you start on the right path to providing a working solution.