AIIM Research indicates SharePoint has a 'cloudy' future

LONDON, UK: The explosive growth of collaborative, mobile, and social technologies has had a tremendous impact on the way companies conduct business. Many companies view SharePoint 2013 as a way to incorporate these new technologies into their businesses, yet new research from AIIM suggests that user adoption and security issues continue to stifle progress.

While SharePoint 2013 is an integral part of Microsoft's cloud strategy via Office 365, 43 percent of the 620 respondents surveyed have no plans for storing SharePoint content in the cloud. The new report, "SharePoint 2013-Clouding the Issues?," goes on to say that, despite these issues, many companies consider SharePoint as the underlying platform for building a comprehensive content management system and records management system.

The report examines multiple issues surrounding the use of SharePoint, both past and present versions, including actual user adoption, customisation and third-party applications, insight into cloud computing strategies, governance, integration and security. On the surface, SharePoint 2013 has many features that help improve worker productivity and increase collaboration.

Yet, 33 percent of respondents said they are struggling with their SharePoint implementation, and 28 percent say that progress has stalled altogether. At the same time, 40 percent are moving forward with implementations but only 6 percent describe their implementation as a great success. In addition, Microsoft's three-year upgrade cycle has caused many companies to have multiple versions of SharePoint which has added IT support issues. In fact, 38 percent of those surveyed say they are supporting two or more live versions, and 21 percent of large organisations are supporting three or more versions.

"There are many benefits to tapping into the power of SharePoint 2013, specifically the mobile and social aspects, yet as our research indicates, many business and IT leaders are wary of security issues around cloud technology," said AIIM president, John Mancini. "While using SharePoint can help companies of any size, as a collaborative platform and even a records management tool, it's clear from our research that, based on a variety of factors, deployments and adoption of the technology has not reached its original goals."

As noted in a recent Trendscape report from AIIM, "Content in the Cloud", business leaders have issues about utilising cloud computing technologies. In fact, 23 percent of responding organisations to the SharePoint 2013 survey said they have big issues with governance and user-security.

However, those business leaders surveyed clearly stated that their organisations see the benefits of this type of collaborative technology and anticipate continued investment in licenses, professional services, and third-party applications. These business leaders indicated that, despite some areas of concern, they see that building a powerful and comprehensive content and records management system with SharePoint as the underlying platform will generate tremendous benefits in the long run.

Other key findings in the AIIM report include:

- 57 percent use SharePoint for Electronic Content Management/Document Management (ECM/DM), and 31 percent consider it to be their main or only (10 percent) ECM/DM system

- 45 percent plan to be on SharePoint 2013 by mid-2014 based partially on improved search features and tighter integration with Outlook

- 9 percent of smaller organisations plan to move all of their SharePoint content to the 365 cloud, compared to 2 percent of mid-sized and 3 percent of largest. Overall 29 percent are looking to a hybrid cloud, but half of these will use a third-party or private cloud, not 365.

- Despite improvements in the standard feature set, 67 percent still see third-party products as important for process and records management activities.