This document discusses challenges with Microsoft SharePoint as a collaboration platform and introduces Huddle as an alternative. It notes that while SharePoint is widely used, it has issues with low adoption rates, lengthy deployments requiring customization, and high costs. In contrast, Huddle offers much higher adoption rates, faster deployment times with no customization needed, and lower total costs of ownership. It also provides strong security for storing sensitive business data in the cloud. The document cites examples of large organizations successfully using Huddle for complex international collaboration projects.

1. True collaboration, or: Why
SharePoint is no friend to
the CIO

2. True collaboration, or: Why
SharePoint is no friend to the CIO
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1 The age of collaboration
1 The changing role of the CIO
1 The status quo is not an option
2 Collaboration technology that works
3 Huddle in action
4 About Huddle

3. THE AGE OF COLLABORATION
Of all the ways in which technology has transformed our working lives, one of the most
interesting (and challenging) for the CIO has been the rise of collaboration. Even at the
turn of the millennium we were largely restricted to email and telephone, yet we now
live in an era where collaboration in the workplace has become second nature to many
individuals and enterprises. People are able to work as closely with colleagues in another
country or timezone as they can with someone in their immediate team and can do the
same with any supplier, partner, consultant, client or affiliate that their job requires.
Where people would once work in silos, they now collaborate and are actively
encouraged to do so by many businesses that recognize the flexibility and productivity
benefits it brings to a workforce. Naturally this has enabled technology platforms that
support this to flourish, as CEOs demand of their CIOs ‘find a way for us to become a
company that encourages collaboration’.
THE CHANGING ROLE OF THE CIO
Once a CIO’s role was straight forward - oversee a company’s IT department, order
equipment, reset forgotten passwords and manage the helpdesk function / IT support.
Some of this still goes on of course, but as technology has changed, becoming more
central to every department and business unit, CIOs are becoming key participants in
virtually every business decision. They’re also sharing control over technology purchases
with other departments and could be perceived to be losing some responsibility.
In some ways what is being asked of the CIO is no different to what has always been
asked - find and deploy technology that will either streamline processes and efficiencies
or add business value to an organization. With many enterprises (and by default their
CIOs) under pressure to reduce costs, add value and operate more efficiently, a large
number of these new technologies are cloud-based. Cloud services are becoming
increasingly popular as organizations realize the flexibility and cost-savings that come
with software in the cloud.
As part of its 2012 predictions, industry analyst organization Gartner has predicted that
more than 50 percent of Global 1000 companies will have stored customer-sensitive
data in the public cloud by year-end 2016. It also predicted that 35 percent of enterprise
IT expenditures for most organizations will be managed outside the IT department’s
budget by 2015.
So as the cloud becomes more mainstream, in effect CIOs are being asked to implement
products and services that will erode their influence, control and budgets. Yet the move
towards collaboration and the cloud is really an opportunity for the CIO to play a more
central role in shaping a business’s strategic direction.
THE STATUS QUO IS NOT AN OPTION
As CIOs look to implement collaboration software, the default option for many years was
SharePoint. Microsoft has been able to grow SharePoint’s presence in the enterprise
over the past 10 years thanks to a combination of the following:
• SharePoint’s close ties to the rest of the Microsoft Office suite, which is already a
standard in most companies
• Huge numbers of Microsoft Partners and system integrators that sell additional
services and software to SharePoint buyers
• A lack of awareness of the alternatives from the buyers’ side, which is only now
changing
• SharePoint is still the ‘safe’ choice for many buyers, because no one will ever get
blamed for having bought a product from the market leader
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4. But although one might think that SharePoint has all the features needed for
collaboration, that is not the case. It is not a plug and play solution and requires
extensive customization. While it is possible to provide basic collaboration functionality,
any CIO would need to purchase third-party services or customize SharePoint to
have a product that their users will adopt. In most cases, SharePoint is nothing more
than a development platform and there are four main issues for CIOs that attempt to
implement it - adoption, deployment, hidden costs and complexity.
In fact, adoption is one of the key issues many enterprises have with SharePoint - their
employees simply do not use it in sufficient numbers. For a CIO to drive enterprise-wide
IT change, a product must be commercially viable and adoption is a key part of that.
Recent Global360 research revealed that the lack of an easy-to-use interface is one of
the biggest issues when implementing SharePoint. If a workforce does not enjoy using
it, they will continue using other less efficient means of collaboration, such as email.
There are also issues around deployment. SharePoint roll-outs are typically planned for
anything up to a year, due to its heavy dependencies on other Microsoft applications
and services. Microsoft states in its ‘Evaluation Guide to SharePoint’: “Whether on-
premises or hosted, deploying SharePoint Server requires the IT pro to be heavily
involved.” So once the deployment is complete, IT personnel are still needed for
maintenance and upgrades. Additionally, on-going maintenance of a typical SharePoint
environment requires a dedicated IT staff or admin that has been specifically trained in
administering SharePoint - a further drain on the resources of any CIO.
Additional or hidden costs can be a factor too. The most significant are customization,
training and maintenance, which all affect every single version of SharePoint you
could choose. According to Microsoft itself, 80% of SharePoint deployments involve
a Microsoft Partner, due to the expertise and skills required during deployment and
maintenance.
Finally, the complexity of software dependencies, hot fixes, patches, security issues
and knowledge base articles is increasing all the time. Every time Microsoft has a
problem with one of its components, it is down to a company’s own IT department to fix
it. These constant reboots cause massive amounts of downtime, which in turn decrease
user adoption and limit the CIO’s ability to create a business advantage.
COLLABORATION TECHNOLOGY THAT WORKS
But there are other options for CIO’s that want their business to have the tools to work
collaboratively but don’t come with the issues associated with SharePoint. Huddle, the
leader in cloud content collaboration and a viable alternative to SharePoint offers a 90
per cent adoption rate, which is around three times that of SharePoint. The company is
so confident that people will use Huddle that it offers a guarantee that within 90 days
every single individual of the initial user group will be trained and actively using it. This
immediately makes implementing Huddle a much more commercially viable option for
the CIO.
The fact that Huddle is so intuitive and straight forward to use, also makes the CIO’s
job much simpler when driving user adoption. The idea of a dedicated internal admin
support for collaboration software is a waste of a CIO’s resource and Huddle is a
technology that most people are able to use almost immediately. When designing the
Huddle user-interface, attention was paid to the on-going consumerization of IT so
anyone familiar with social networking will find Huddle as easy to use as Facebook.
Should anyone still feel that they need support and guidance in using Huddle, it
supplies in-person training, interactive demonstrations, educational videos and
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5. webinars as well as access to its knowledgebase and support portal as a part of every
new enterprise account. These support tools are easy to use, understand and access,
helping any users that might be having difficulties to be up and running within a few
minutes.
As budget is such an on-going concern for many CIOs, Huddle, with its multi-tenant
cloud architecture, can significantly reduce the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of
collaboration software in the enterprise. Using Huddle there are no initial costs for
servers, customization and additional licenses and Huddle can be deployed in a matter
of days. Transparency is important when costing software and we are keen to avoid the
hidden costs associated with SharePoint. Transparent and all-inclusive pricing allows
CIOs to correctly estimate the total cost of ownership, the time and budget needed for
the deployment and the expected ROI.
Huddle also comes with enterprise-class layers of security, particularly important given
initial industry concerns about the privacy and security of storing business critical and
confidential data in the cloud. It provides its customers - which includes 70 percent of
UK Central Government departments - with a multi-layered, secure online environment
where files can be stored and accessed by anyone working on the project, both inside
and outside of an organization. The security measures put in place are equivalent to
those used in banking so any CIO can have absolute trust that their company data will
be kept private and secure.
HUDDLE IN ACTION
Huddle currently works with 75 percent of Fortune 500 companies and a wide range of
government organizations across the world. To have such a pedigree with both private
enterprise and the public sector it is vital for customers to have complete trust in the
value Huddle provides and the security it offers.
“Thanks to Huddle, our shared network drive for the presidency
project is obsolete and, for some projects, Huddle has replaced
email completely.”
- Max Raets, Policy Officer, Belgian FPS Social Security
One of the most high profile Huddle deployments was a multi-country deal that involved
Spain, Belgium and Hungary. When in 2009 the Treaty of Lisbon came into force,
for the first time in European Union (EU) history, three countries had to collaborate
on preparation for the Presidency of the Council of the EU. The Belgian FPS Social
Security worked with teams across Europe, from a variety of administrations and
organizations, developing social policy and co-ordinating activity. Their internal
networks, shared drives and email systems fell someway short of what was needed but
the replacement service - Huddle - not only had to have the functionality required by
modern government, but be completely secure too.
The way people work has changed forever and collaboration tools have under-pinned
that change. But a CIO needs to have confidence that their users will adopt the
technology and that it will add value to the business. Just as the Belgian FPS Social
Security had that confidence to work with Huddle, so are CIOs in other organizations in
a variety of industries all across the globe.
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6. ABOUT HUDDLE
Established in 2006, with offices in London and San Francisco, Huddle is the leader in
cloud content collaboration and management for the enterprise.
Huddle is used by more than 100,000 organizations worldwide, including Disney, AKQA,
HTC and Kia Motors, to securely store, share and collaborate on content with people
inside and outside of their business.
Huddle can be accessed online, on desktops via Microsoft Office applications, on the
move with BlackBerry, iPhone and iPad apps. It is currently available in 12 languages
including English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian and Japanese.
Simply: if SharePoint was built today, they would’ve built Huddle.
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