How is SharePoint perceived in your company? -

update There is an interesting time to see this question again. Is it still the assumption that SharePoint 2010 is starting to catch? Of course, applying 2010 is not without its challenges, but is the concept of business one of them?

Update: Our implementation is now kicking in high gear in which some high profile projects are live in the coming weeks, so I'm very interested in seeing whether the environment Has changed from there.

Basic Question

We have an issue in our work environment where SharePoint's perception is either:

a) Golden Bullets, answer all of our problems.

b) An application that fixes a specific problem or does not

c) A frustrating device that does not distribute its exact requirements.

Now in my opinion, SharePoint (or more specifically Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 in our case) has a framework at the top of various lower level Microsoft Technologies (IIS, ASP.NET, WSS 3.0, Net Framework , Windows Workflow Foundation among others) and thus the most any (given time and resources).

What's the behavior made in my organization (and others I am sure) to say in the Microsoft marketing machine and 'golden bullet' to as many people as possible? 'Or' Why? ' Or in some cases 'how?'

Is it an attitude and shared perception shared by other SharePoint devs?

The organization for which I work in is completely Depending on the level of technical understanding that a person has, the business staff see it as an opportunity to take pre-built platforms and slip on relative minor changes in relative ease. Its reality, however, is for technical employees, this is a nightmare to work. Trade offs are often from one extreme to another, which means that if we use built-in functionality, then it is relatively easy, but the end user experience is not satisfactory. At the other end of the spectrum, we can usually come up with a better user experience, but at the cost of excessive labor.

Personally, as a person on the technical side, I do not recommend SharePoint for any environment because when you factor in the cost of licensing, nothing other than the time of development To make meaningful (which in my experience, always takes longer than the custom ASP.NET application). You can get rid of a ridiculous net loss with most intranet sites relative ease free edition (WSS). Are able to survive; However, they are generally not very optimizing and only use it as a document repository.

For whatever reason, business employees have a totally distorted view of the product. He believes that SharePoint ultimately saves them money. I say this is a distorted opinion because every project I have ever seen is that SharePoint has been used away by custom ASP.NET My estimates have been exceeded for applications (both long and short periods). In a special case, I am associated with a project in a custom ASP.NET application, which will be really taken for the most one month (including development time, QA, etc.). The same application in SharePoint, however, has been done under development for almost a year. The bottom line is that the project was not only in SharePoint, even though businessmen refused to accept it unless they had any choice was not.

If you are considering SharePoint for your organization, then I advise you to do your homework, first expect a great learning curve and a lot of frustration. Most of your technical employees will immediately recognize the flaws in the product and will tell them with great disappointment. If this is normal in SharePoint development environment, in the end, if you are ready to prepare these sacrifices to achieve less or something, SharePoint is the right solution for you.