November 20 2009 Friday

Connections vs $harepoint

I'm no fan of MS Sharepoint, it provides very little value in almost everyplace I have seen it. Now with Sharepoint 2010 (and no doubt with the forced addition of Office 2010 and Exchange 2010) they are touting "social software" components. Yesterday Brian O'Curran posted about the long and interesting feature set that Lotus Connections has. There is a comment (number 3) on his blog in which "tonyo" quips:
have a look at the 2010 offerings.

probably the biggest reason to go to Sharepoint is that's it's overall an integrated platform for information management, search, collaboration and ECM. to get that from IBM, you need multiple, mis matched products. :)

(I'm pretty sure SQL server, MS Office and MS Windows are mis-matched products but I'll let that go for now)

Now, you don't need to have a long memory to figure out anything that MS "claims" to be an "integrated platform" will be a royal pain in the backside. Every second Tuesday of each month is now known as Patch Tuesday. We see security fix after security fix dropped on netbooks, laptops, desktops and servers. Why? Because Internet Explorer and Windows are integrated together. Because SQL Server and Windows are integrated together Because Office and Windows are integrated together. You find a security hole in one, you will probably get execution rights on the entire machine. Because they are all "integrated together".  

Now MS are doing to enterprise software user, exactly what they have been doing for 20 years to poor desktop users! Forcing reboot after reboot. Forcing patch after patch. That is an advantage? This is the price for "integrated"?

Sorry users, it is patch Tuesday. We have to install patches for SQL Server, IIS, Windows Servers, Sharepoint, MS Office, desktops laptops and netbooks. Hopefully this won't impact you too much. Check back tomorrow (Wednesday) to see if your business critical systems are back up and running. Remember, patches can occasionally cause a computer to not start but we have our fingers crossed.

If you have anything important you are working on, please copy it to your "My Documents" folder so you can continue to work should the system be unavailable.

If a security exploit opens up your "integrated platform" for ECM, search, collaboration and information management what do you think will happen?

2010. That's not the product name. That's the number of servers you will require to run it.

Darren Duke   |   November 20 2009 11:27:37 AM   |    connections    |  
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Comments (2)

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1 - Ibby Basaran       11/20/2009 1:18:36 PM

Your viewpoint regarding the need to continually patch all things M$ is spot on. I don't know about you but another aspect that leaves me scratching my head (and leaves others opening their chequebooks without even thinking about it's long term drain on their organizations. ) ... just think of the add-on products that have been purchased to help administrators manage the patching of all these security holes. Oh ... right, I forgot about this too. One has to pay the administrator to manage the product that manages the patching of the servers and notebooks and workstations. Oh right ... then you have to upgrade to the latest version of the patch management product which requires downtime and most likely some sort of yearly license fee(s). All the additional products, licenses and people required to manage and plug these holes that miraculously occur - every month. So ... just how cost effective and secure is the M$ world?

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2 - Ibby Basaran       11/20/2009 1:18:43 PM

Your viewpoint regarding the need to continually patch all things M$ is spot on. I don't know about you but another aspect that leaves me scratching my head (and leaves others opening their chequebooks without even thinking about it's long term drain on their organizations. ) ... just think of the add-on products that have been purchased to help administrators manage the patching of all these security holes. Oh ... right, I forgot about this too. One has to pay the administrator to manage the product that manages the patching of the servers and notebooks and workstations. Oh right ... then you have to upgrade to the latest version of the patch management product which requires downtime and most likely some sort of yearly license fee(s). All the additional products, licenses and people required to manage and plug these holes that miraculously occur - every month. So ... just how cost effective and secure is the M$ world?