English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

My initial research has been in regards to the technological aspects of Sharepoint and what a company would require to utilize it. I think followed that research with research on some of the possible alternatives and what they might require to utilize.

In my research I learned that a SharePoint server would be required for any company who wanted to utilize the full feature set of SharePoint. The obvious downside to this is that the company may have to purchase a new computer system and operating system (Server 2003 or Server 2008) and Microsoft Office SharePoint itself is another add-on that would need to be purchased. These facts that SharePoint could cost a significant amount to implement, may make our alternatives a better option.

There are many different versions of SharePoint, depending on the features needed. It is possible that a table or chart could be included on to identify the different features, similar to the one here: http://www.microsoft.com/sharepoint/prodinfo/what.mspx.

GoogleDocs is one of the alternatives that we may cover in our white paper. GoogleApps is a completely Internet based office and collaboration suite (as we know from this class). It does allow for collaboration similar to SharePoint, but in my research it hasn't been adopted by many companies as of yet. The main advantage of GoogleApps also seems to be its downfall. Many companies aren't ready to trust all of the documents to an online management system and they don't trust Internet connectivity enough to rely on it at all times.

EMC Documentum and other technologies will be discussed in my next research blogs.

Thanks

Jason Flittner