Is the SharePoint Bubble Going to Burst?

My colleagues Tony Byrne and Shawn Shell (the lead analysts for CMS Watch SharePoint Research) recently reported on the hysteria generated around product announcements for SharePoint 2010 earlier this month in Las Vegas. There is plenty to be excited about in SP2010, especially if you belong to the SharePoint channel of resellers, consultants, developers, and system integrators. But over the past few weeks I have been noticing something of a shadow side to this excitement.

I may well be wrong, but I am starting to get the distinct impression that the SharePoint bubble is about to burst. Or at the very least, that enthusiasm for SharePoint is waning and demand for the platform set will begin to plateau.Discussions with a number of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) practice leads at major SIs (System Integrators) have told me that SharePoint is no longer perceived as a silver bullet by larger enterprise customers. SIs report that many purchased licenses have not gotten deployed, and that some hard lessons were learned when SharePoint was allowed to grow at viral rates. Once bitten twice shy.

Without doubt SharePoint still has its fans within large organizations, but there is enough real world experience floating around now to recognize both SharePoint's strengths and its limitations. Many large deals that would have simply defaulted to Microsoft and SharePoint a year or two ago, instead go out to competitive tender. These are not my only data points, but they start to paint a picture.

SharePoint has been with us in one form or another for nearly 10 years now, longer if you consider SiteServer as its foundation point. It has been a huge success for Microsoft, and has without doubt transformed and invigorated not just the document management space, but at various times the portal, search, and collaboration sectors too. In terms of desktop integration and meeting the needs of end-users SharePoint has raised the bar.

But time moves on, and SharePoint is not the only horse in the race (to mix a metaphor). SharePoint's various features have never has been best-of-breed, and still aren't today. For the SMB market SharePoint will remain a leader for a long time to come, and it will continue to play a key role in larger organizations. But SharePoint is a product just like any other, and subject to the same laws of fashion that all IT products endure, and I am getting the distinct impression that rather than trailblazing in 2010, SharePoint will subsist among the ranks of many other worthy ECM competitors.There is plenty to be excited about in SP2010, especially if you belong to the SharePoint channel of resellers, consultants, developers, and system integrators... but I am starting to get the distinct impression that the SharePoint bubble is about to burst.