Mike Drips published an article today on Informit.com titled "Five Things Wrong With SharePoint." I have a few issues with his points. Please read his article and then my comments below. (The numbered items apply to the five things in Mr. Drips' article.) Feedback is encouraged!

Things Wrong in "Five Things Wrong With SharePoint"

#1. It's a crappy mish-mash of multiple technologies

"...you find a great many of the core files are written in JavaScript."

My definition of "a great many" would be somewhere between one-third and one-half. I looked in the "60" directory on my server. It contains 408 folders and 6,324 files. The number of JavaScript (.js) files: 39!! That is .6%.

While Microsoft training does not offer a class on JavaScript, there is no lack of training providers.

Mr. Drips complains that professional programming SharePoint requires knowledge of many technologies. Let's look at this list:

By the way, the same list of technologies applies to the blogging tool used for to write this post: dasBlog.

#2. The development team is playing the Longhorn card

While "four years of no product improvement" is likely, how many enterprise-wide applications are upgraded by customers every year? The required investment in migrating and testing makes it hard to justify repeated upgrades. (I have seen many organizations with Windows 2000 servers still running because the applications they support are working fine.)

#3.  There are two SharePoint products, which is confusing

• How many Office products are there? (http://www.microsoft.com/office/editions/howtobuy/compare.mspx)
  
• How many Visual Studio products are there? (http://msdn.microsoft.com/howtobuy/vs2005/)
  
• How many Windows XP products are there? (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/default.mspx)

I don't think this should be "tagged" on SharePoint when it applies to a lot of the Microsoft product line.

#4. Support for SharePoint is lacking.

In my experience, blogs that are written about a product are usually focused on solving problems, not being critical. Maybe it is just the echo chamber effect...

I think it is wrong to categorize "nearly all" the bloggers as apologists for Microsoft. I don't apologize for Microsoft. I am trying to help others.

Things Right in "Five Things Wrong With SharePoint"

#3. There are two SharePoint products, which is confusing

As I mentioned before, this applies to a lot of the Microsoft product line.

#4. Support for SharePoint is lacking.

Is it time for Microsoft to close down the microsoft.public.sharepoint.teamservices newsgroup?

In my biased opinion, there are other good community resources not mentioned: SharePoint Blogs and SharePoint University forums.

5. Microsoft has not stated a strategic direction for SharePoint

Sad, but true. There is a lot of "customer evidence," but I can't find a roadmap.

Mr. Drips' conclusion, however, is somewhat positive:

Despite its lack of support and direction from Microsoft, SharePoint Portal Server still remains a viable product for an Intranet portal, document library, and company forum. To make all of those pieces work takes a tremendous amount of effort and education that — unfortunately — is not readily available to the end user community.

I am doing my best!! The Intranet Portal aspect is covered on IntranetJournal.com.