Microsoft SharePoint vs. Enterprise 2.0 Start-ups

I read an interesting article by C.G. Lynch, on the CIO.com website, on how Enterprise 2.0 start-ups have had to deal with growing market share of SharePoint. Click link below to read it:

Microsoft Sharepoint vs. Enterprise 2.0 Start-ups: Day of Reckoning Arrives

This week represents an important inflection point for the Enterprise 2.0 market, a set of software vendors that sell social networking technologies to businesses. Analysts say the number of competitors will consolidate in the coming year as Microsoft captures greater market share. The start-ups that will survive must carve out a longterm place for themselves by building applications that are far more innovative and cheaper than those of the incumbent software giant. In addition, they must convince businesses that Microsoft SharePoint's "good enough" strategy is not, in fact, good enough for today's enterprise collaboration needs…

At a personal level, I do agree that start-ups in Enterprise 2.0 arena are more innovative and nimbler than Microsoft. This is mainly because they run a tight ship with faster decision making, have a razor sharp focus on a particular feature area or a new innovation, have a low customer base and in most cases no backward compatibility to plan for. On the other hand, what makes companies go for SharePoint is its breadth of features, Office integration, “Microsoft Platform” story, large customer base, worldwide support and huge developer & partner ecosystem. Then there is also well oiled Sales and Marketing machinery which I am part of :-)

and yes… SharePoint 2010 is definitely cool. Start-ups will have a hard time after it ;-)