BELL CONSULTING GROUP INC.

Sharepoint_on_my_iPhone_WOW

If you haven't tried SharePoint, and you work in a corporation, then you probably will soon - it is reportedly around 15% of Microsoft's server software revenue stream now, and is getting better with each release.  Steve Ballmer has referred to it as the lynch-pin of Microsoft's strategy for enterprise software.  I became very fond of it while working with r2 in 2005; and it has improved a lot since then. 

The Wi-Fi system on the Microsoft campus where the conference i was attending was held, was experiencing some up-time problems, also giving the start-up company presenters some unexpected dropouts.  From deep within the steel structure of the Microsoft conference center auditorium I could not get a reliable 2.5G high speed data connection from my usually trustworthy Sprint EvDo modem either.  Eventually, i thought hey what about hitting this with my iPhone?  See attached - wow!  Microsoft takeeth away Wi-Fi; but Microsoft also GIVE-UTH Sharepoint!! with some help from Apples' amazing 'Safari mobile' browser.

attempting login to SharePoint with Windows Mobile 6.1 running Opera

On the iPhone?  dead easy!

There are, of course, scores of iPhone-resident business productivity applications about to burst onto the scene for the iPhone, based upon AAPL's SDK.  Looking for what I expect to be one of the best, I attended a user group session hosted by the Omni Group Tuesday evening in San Francisco, related to Apple's World Wide Developer conference .  My hope was that Omni would be discussing their iPhone SDK-based "OmniFocus iPhone" application which is widely known to be near release; but they are not able to talk about it yet, due to SDK developer agreement restrictions. 

However, Microsoft's Office SharePoint Server platform is a much bigger animal than any iPhone-resident application; it is a server resident Microsoft CMS ecosystem complete with an application development universe, app extensions, API, and add-ons, etc.  There is no comparison to a stand-alone app in terms of power, extensibility, and potential for scalability and robustness in many business enterprise applications.  SharePoint is more than an application; it is a hosted, secure, well tested user-facing IIS/.net based CMS environment which could open up a whole new universe for the iPhone: the Microsoft universe, which is a very large one.

I am a longtime user of mobile business productivity applications and a GTD fan; this may simply be the best, most promising and robust combo of mobility and a powerful server-based application yet. With SharePoint, corporate team members can collaborate in a secure, private environment - reviewing and updating centrally-hosted documents, spreadsheets, and presentations; schedule group meetings and events efficiently; share photos/graphics and create albums; create internal/private social networks for discussions; create and share various types of internal web content/media privately; track issues, milestones, and Gantt charts for projects; conduct internal opinion polls; create and post internal announcements... and that's just the START of it. So the combination of SharePoint running on an ultra-mobile device, can potentially really change a lot of corporate lifestyles, and make a major impact on team productivity!

How widely used is SharePoint with Corporate users?  VERY widely, and growing like a wildfire:

 “Today at the Microsoft Office SharePoint Conference 2008, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates noted that SharePoint is one of the fastest growing products in the company’s history, having reached the milestone of a US$1billion-dollar business with 100 million licenses sold, and growth of more than 50 percent in the second quarter of the current fiscal year”.  Even more telling. “A recent report by IDC found that 61 percent of users surveyed said they were deploying SharePoint enterprise-wide. Another 28 percent of those using SharePoint in departments today are expected to expand usage to the enterprise within the next 12 months”. [source: Microsoft; IDC]

“Bill showed in terms of growth in revenue, growth in adoption -- 100 million users, that's a phenomenal number. Another number is three-quarters of the Fortune 100 now have SharePoint. That's just a very impressive number, people seeing the impact that it can have in their businesses, how they do business; just very, very gratifying for us” [source: Kurt DelBene, Sr Vice President, Microsoft Office Business Platform Group]

I am configuring our SharePoint server to test and use this iPhone SharePoint setup running with 128-bit encryption on the server, with secure SSL connectivity from the browser to our Sharepoint server.  All i can say, given all that Sharepoint can do, regarding being able to do real work on it from the iPhone, is -- WOW!  I wonder if Apple and Microsoft know this can be done? 

I'd also like to thank my silicon valley friend Scott Futryk, Jedi-master of all things Microsoft SharePoint and Virtual Meetings, for recently getting me interested in taking another look at SharePoint, which has come a long ways since I last utilized it in version 2 (2005). 

I will, over the next month, add some posts to follow up this post - with some more images and examples of what you can do with this; as I'll b using it heavily in my own SharePoint client sites.  What can you do? In short, A LOT of real work -- more than email -- real work.  Run projects.  Create and update project documents of all types; distribute calendars and events, including Gantt charts; edit documents collaboratively during (or not during) online meetings; and on and on.  It's a very robust private project portal for teams, that Bell Consulting is just starting to offer to all of our clients as a way to enhance team visibility and communications regarding our work with them. 

I see four big classes of mobile computing applications driving iPhone, Android, Research in Motion (etc) usage going forward.  But the real "killer application" is simply the mobile web.  That is, bringing all the things we are now doing on the desktop and laptop computer, onto the truly mobile computing device.  Running Sharepoint, an extremely powerful server-based web application, from a device as small as the iPhone stopped me in my tracks and made me thing about what's coming in the future.  It's going to be pretty amazing. 

Our consulting project clients are likely become fond of this iPhone capability; more details, real world stories, and related details pending via blog post as we play this mobile computing "discovery" out.