Discussion on:

Creating a scalable collaboration solution

Looks more like an Microsoft ad, at least there should be some other alternetives pointed out.

Looks more like an Microsoft ad, at least there should be some other alternatives pointed out.

I, for one, do NOT want users to have the ability to modify a company website.

Or, doesn't anyone care about how company websites are already abused by "evil" employees for the posting of less than desireable content in hidden webpages and documents?

It's the user's (internal & external) who have that piece of information which could be important to someone else.

Yes, the imprudent Web Admin could open the site up for live modifications by the impudent user but a better solution would be to use a modification authorisation method prior to posting ... see WIKI's for example.

In addition, in reply to the message "HMMM", totally agree, it does seem a bit Microsoft biased don't it!!!

Been looking at Groupware myself and although I'm not saying these are good, or not, nor am I advertising ...

Digital Harbour
http://www.dharbor.com/index.html - a commercial solution. Also has an explanation in the guided tour of what a groupware solution can provide.

PHP-NUKE
http://www.spaghettibrain.com/index.php?newlang=english - a $10 solution

XOOPS
http://www.xoops.org/ - a free solution

We are now in late 2005 and our organization has had all this functionality and more since 1996.

MS's SharePoint is to little to late. This isn't MS's first attempt at these functions and it won't necessarily be the best for everyone. Too many servers to make it work not to mention the previous instability of the server O/S. With 2003 server though, they just might have a chance.

Our corporate culture by necessity had to be collaborative requiring technology that had to be easy to use with an initial small learning curve. It also had to be very cost effective in both implementation and short/long term support. This tool had to integrate well with other productivity technology such a MS Office, VB, MS Project MS Access, PBX, etc. It also had to have workflow capability and be able to have web presence very early on. We needed a development tool to create such products as TeamRooms, CRMs, Document / Records Management, etc. within this environment that would be scalable.

Like Viper400 said, this article appears to simply be an "advertisement" for Microsoft and not a true comparison of technologies in this arena. Shame on TechRepublic for not prefacing the "article" with acknowledgement of it being advertising. For a true article of substance and value the costs of carrying the MS technologies for short, medium and long term should have been compared with many of the other collaborative technologies on the market, and Microsoft notwithstanding, there are quite a number of other technologies in this category.

Oh, by the way, we've been using NOTES/Domino and now IBM Workplace for all our needs. We use both Linux, Apache and Window 2003 servers. We currently enjoy the best of all the offerings out there. We're not hampered by single vendor, proprietary nonsense. We are utilizing open source, open standards wherever possible. Until MS separates their products from O/S and becomes more open standard (and as open source as it can), we'll stay with what we have, thank you very much.

We use Wiki for collaaboration, it can do it all