We're moving away from SharePoint as a CMS towards Blackboard after
experimenting with SharePoint for a couple of years. We're using both right
now, with Blackboard aimed at class web sites (and class-like organizations)
and SharePoint at instutional departments (e.g. IT, dean's office, etc.).
We're definitely in flux and feeling our way towards the right mix.
The big push towards Blackboard was fueled by the greater ease of use by the
faculty and students, combined with the (relative) ease of bringing
enrollment information into Blackboard from Blackbaud (without losing the
Active Directory authentication). We're also moving towards a more hybrid
environment, and found that SharePoint out-of-the-box really requires IE7,
which was problematic for non-Windows users. Certainly, as a teacher and
working with other teachers, the experience of working with Blackboard has
been much more productive this year than SharePoint was last year. This year
the conversation is about what we want to do, rather than how we're going to
do it.
That said, SharePoint does seem like it has the potential to be
fantastically extensible and flexible... with the right knowhow running it.
Which you need to pay for -- SharePoint is not a "learn as you go" system.
I'm certainly happy to talk more offline about our relative SharePoint and
Blackboard experiences here.
-- S
Seth Battis, St. Mark's School
Academic Computing / Computer Science
25 Marlborough Rd., Southborough, MA 01772
www.stmarksschool.org
SethBattis@stmarksschool.org / (508) 786-6155
On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 2:29 PM, Jason Johnson <jasonpj@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I managed development of 9 different sites using various flavors of
> SharePoint over the past 3 years. It is an extreemly powerful and flexible
> platform with a lot of features and it can be configured so that any level
> of end user will find it easy to use. They have also increased their Mac
> support with MOSS so that it is now tolerable to use with Macs. That
> said, configuring, implimenting and developing for the platform is not
> something you are going to pick up easily.
>
> Any large implimentation (500 or more users or use of extended
> functionality) will require MS SQL Server experience, SharePoint Experience,
> and possibly .Net development experience. The good newes is that these
> skills are fairly common in the market and you will not pay a premium. The
> bad news is that you will likely have to have at least one staff member well
> versed, and they may find commerical oppertunities very attractive.
>
> The pricing is complicated and there are many variations beyond Services
> and Portal with large functional differences (e.g. services have limited
> access for anynomous users making it nearly useless as a public facing web
> site). It is hard to say what you will need but on average I found 3-6
> months to impliment a rational time (2 week to 1 year was the full scope of
> my deployments).
>
> Among all of the CMS systems I have used throught the years, I think
> SharePoint (as of MOSS) is the best, but it is not for the faint of heart.
> Make sure you budget for a month or so of professional services to help
> support you through the process. Gotchas can include: Cost of specialized
> backup software (you have to back up the DB and SP file system). You
> probably want to set up for clustering fromt the start so it is easier to
> add capacity. Search can be a performance killer if not set up properly and
> depending on the size of your site you may want it on a seperate server. It
> does not handle non-MS file types all that well (i.e. they are excluded from
> content searches). That is all I can remember today.
>
> _J
> ____________________________
> Jason at jasonpj@yahoo.com
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Brian Bedrick <bbedrick@yahoo.com>
> To: ISED-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
> Sent: Thursday, December 4, 2008 11:30:21 AM
> Subject: Microsoft Sharepoint
>
> Anybody have any experience with Microsoft Sharepoint? They were just here
> for a meeting and everybody was impressed with the sales pitch. Just
> curious if anybody knows if they can follow through on the promises and how
> sophisticated we as users need to be to take advantage of all the
> functionality. Thanks
>
> Brian Bedrick
> International School of Brussels
>
> [ For info on ISED-L see http://www.gds.org/ISED-L ]
> Submissions to ISED-L are released under a creative commons, attribution,
> non-commercial, share-alike license.
> RSS Feed, http://listserv.syr.edu/scripts/wa.exe?RSS&L=ISED-L
>
>
>
>
>
> [ For info on ISED-L see http://www.gds.org/ISED-L ]
> Submissions to ISED-L are released under a creative commons, attribution,
> non-commercial, share-alike license.
> RSS Feed, http://listserv.syr.edu/scripts/wa.exe?RSS&L=ISED-L
>
[ For info on ISED-L see http://www.gds.org/ISED-L ]
Submissions to ISED-L are released under a creative commons, attribution, non-commercial, share-alike license.
RSS Feed, http://listserv.syr.edu/scripts/wa.exe?RSS&L=ISED-L
