SharePoint is on the wrong way

SharePoint 2016 is coming. Tons of new features.

But none of them really make business users excited.

Actually, in my opinion, even the cloud version "SharePoint Online" is not so attractive.

Let me share my thoughts a bit here.

SharePoint is designed for enterprise collaboration. It helps users to organize information. It's so flexible and UI friendly, SharePoint 2007 was really impressive.

A big bonus is the integration with MS Office suite. We can contribute and manage information at the same platform.

But that's it. After that, I don't see any GREAT feature.

"Wait!", you might ask, "What about the new features of SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2013?"

Yes, there are a lot of new features, but none of them are GREAT.

Here is an analogy. Upgrading file system from FAT32 to NTFS, we can get enormous advantages, but that doesn't mean much to business users.

Same to "cloud computing". If it works fine, do users really care whether the system is based on cloud or on-premise? They don't.

I agree that Windows 8 is much better than Windows XP, But, let's face it. If Windows XP still had main stream support, then millions of companies would stick to it. Why? Because there is no GREAT new feature in Windows 8!

What features that SharePoint really needs? The first three features appeared in my mind are: Calendar. Trello. Slack.

There is calendar list in SharePoint, but, it's too hard to combine it with "information management".

Same with Trello and Slack. SharePoint has similar basic elements, but it's too hard to use the OOTB functionality to replace Trello or Slack.

In one word: Microsoft need to focus on "business feature" instead of "technical feature".

I wish SharePoint 2016 can give the world more surprise!


(Any comments are welcome.)