Many SharePoint installations at enterprises have been doomed largely due to senior management failing to really get behind the Microsoft collaboration technology, according to a new study by AIIM, which bills itself as "the Global Community of IT Professionals."
The AIIM (Association for Information and Image Management) Web-based survey of 409 member organizations found that nearly two-thirds described their SharePoint projects as either stalled (26%) or not meeting original expectations (37%).
The associated Yammer social business tool has also been slow to catch on, with only about 1 in 5 organizations using it, and only 10% of them using it regularly and on a widespread basis (Disclosure: I use it a bit here and there at IDG Enterprise!). Many organizations aren't specifically biased against Yammer though -- 4 in 10 say they don't use any such tool.
Reasons cited for tepid uptake of SharePoint and Yammer include inadequate user training and investment.
"Enterprises have it, but workers are simply not engaging with SharePoint in a committed way," said Doug Miles, AIIM director of market intelligence, in a statement. "It remains an investment priority however, and the C-suite must get behind it more fully than they are currently if they are to realize a return on that investment."
Miles says it shouldn't be up to IT departments to push SharePoint within organizations, but rather, business lines should take the lead.
The study showed that 75% of respondents still feel strongly about making SharePoint work at their organizations. The cloud-based Office 365 version has shown good signs of life, and 43% of respondents indicated faith in Microsoft's product roadmap for its collaboration tools, according to the AIIM report.
Half of respondents expressed concern about a lack of focus by Microsoft on the on-premise version of SharePoint. That's an issue that market watcher Gartner stressed last year could make SharePoint a lot less useful for organizations counting on it for customer-facing and content marketing applications.
You can get a free full version of the AIIM study, ‘Connecting and Optimizing SharePoint', by filling out a registration form.
The research was underwritten in part by ASG, AvePoint, Colligo, Concept Searching, Collabware, EMC, Gimmal Group, K2 and OpenText. While Microsoft is a member of AIIM's Executive Leadership Council, it is not listed as one of the funders for this study.
A Microsoft representative is looking into our request for comment on the report.
