Drupal vs Sharepoint

DRUPAL VS SHAREPOINTThe fight of the modern day swiss army knives

Vesa Palmu Perttu Tolvanen

keskiviikkona 28. syyskuuta 2011

CMS Platform Framework

eZ Publish

Escenic

Joomla

Wordpress

Episerver

Clickability

DotNetNuke

Drupal

Sharepoint

Typo3

Polopoly

Plone

SitecoreHippo

Ruby on RailsDjango

.NETZend


SHAREPOINT INTRODUCTION

• Content management platform with strong document management and team site capabilities.

• Strong background as a document management system and generic portal system (SharePoint 2003, SharePoint 2007).

• Considered as the leading horizontal portal system by Gartner (2010). IBM and Oracle main challengers. Also LifeRay/Drupal.

• Has become the ‘de facto’ intranet platform for larger companies around the world. Hundreds of clients in Finland.


DRUPAL INTRODUCTION

• Social publishing & application platform

• Open Source

• Market share: ~2% global, ~5% Finland

• 8000+ extensions, 600 000 users, 182 languages

• The Economist, The White House, GRAMMY.com, Examiner.com...


Drupal SharePoint

•Large IT - OK:Tieto, Accenture, CapGemini

•Specialized - Very few:Drupro, Mearra

•Generic medium - Excellent:Exove, Futurice, SBA, Reaktor

•Man & Dog - Very few:Freelancers

•Large IT -Basically all:Tieto, Logica, Digia, Accenture, Avanade, CapGemini, Fujitsu...

•Specialized - Very few:Sininen Meteoriitti, Visualweb, Microsoft

•Generic medium - Excellent:AtBusiness, Innofactor, CCC, Systems Garden, Endero

•Man & Dog - Quite a group! eg. Onsight Helsinki, Sulava

• Total: 62 Microsoft partner vendors in Finland that offer SharePoint services.

Summary: Both Drupal and SharePoint have a lot of service providers, but only a few are very specialized and have more than a few experts.

PROFESSIONAL SERVICES


Drupal SharePoint

•Local support providers•International providers•Free and paid

•Local independent support providers (all large integrators, most general IT houses, specialized vendors)

•Local Microsoft consulting unit (few senior experts + network of hired guns)

•Global Microsoft consulting unit

•International players (eg. Accenture, Avanade)

•Man & dog support services• Huge amounts of blog articles and knowledge

bases available in English

Summary: SharePoint has more established support offering. Drupal is catching up with both international and local service providers.

SUPPORT


Drupal SharePoint

•5€ - 15 000€/month•Generic hosting•Specialized hosting•Cloud hosting

•50€ - 20 000€/month•Generic hosting•Specialized hosting•Cloud hosting

•Note: On-premises farms quite typical for large organizations. Minimum set often two servers (SP+SQL), but quite many have five (5).

Summary: Drupal and SharePoint both require specialized knowledge regarding hosting and there are many different options. In general it could be argued that Drupal requires less than SharePoint.

HOSTING


Drupal SharePoint

•200+ in Finland•10K+ global•Global shortage of

experienced developers•Steep learning curve•Too many “PHP hackers”•Huge ecosystem to learn and

keep up to date

•500+ developers in Finland (+ another 500 in other roles)

•50K+ global•Global shortage of

experienced developers•Steep learning curve•Too many “experts” that don’t

know all the out-of-the-box features and capabilities

Summary: Due to steep learning curve in both systems the ecosystems are limited. Also the price of experienced developers rises fast.

DEVELOPER AVAILABILITY


Drupal SharePoint

..

LOCAL SHOPS


Drupal SharePoint

•Building a website: 30 - 200K€•Licenses: 0€•Hosting: 100-1000€ / m•Maintenance: 50-300€ / m

•Building a website: 30-800K€•Licenses: 15k-40k€ (in demanding

websites often over 100k€)

•Hosting: 200-5000€ /m•Maintenance: 200-800€ / m

• Note:• SharePoint for intranets• Building: 10k-200k€• Licenses: Often part of a larger MS deal.

Sometimes almost “free”.

Typical numbers for medium - large web sites. Maintenance includes minor version updates.

COSTS


Drupal SharePoint

•3000+ developers in main conferences

•Multiple events every week•No single company•Association(s)•“Pure” GPL•Professional heart•Development, consulting,

training, hosting, support...

•Strong partner network globally (62 partners in Finland alone)

•Partner network treated fairly•Training and support is

available for partners (especially for specialized partners)

•Professional training also for customers (eg. Sovelto, Tieturi)

•Strong 3rd party products•“Integrates with everything”

Summary: Both have strong ecosystems, but they are very different. Drupal has community power, Microsoft has professional services/products. Key difference is that Microsoft has a price tag - always.

ECOSYSTEM


DRUPAL WEBSITES


SHAREPOINT WEBSITES


SCENARIOS


Drupal SharePoint

Social & group featuresEasy to integrateWealth of existing functionality

Difficult Ms Office integrationRequires Alfresco for efficient file workflows

Document management & team site featuresSearch, MySite, Office integration, Available add-ons/integrations

Demanding theme and template design

Summary: SharePoint has become ‘de facto’ standard for intranets during the recent years. Drupal slowly emerging as a strong competitor with Alfresco integrations.

INTRANET


Drupal SharePoint

Drupal GardensQuick with existing themes

Details often require a lot of attentionCMS distribution or configuration required

Multi-channel publishing and content sharing possibilities when intranet is SharePointEasy basic editing with standard tools

High license costDemanding theme systemStrange content hierarchy system from web publishing point of view

Summary: Neither platform is ideally suitable for brochureware websites, but both work fine when implemented with care. Drupal just costs a lot less and is faster to implement.

BROCHUREWARE


Drupal SharePoint

Cost efficient compared to enterprise CMSCustom workflowsCustom multilingual sitesEasy integrations

Multilingual sites complexContent stagingConfiguration managementFile management often requires Alfresco

Multi-channel publishing possibilities when intranet/extranet is also SharePointComplex extranets with integrations and DM needs

Complex multilingual websitesFeature-rich websites (eg. media sites)Granular control needs Content staging

Summary: Large enterprise websites often require “heavy CMS” features and neither Drupal or SharePoint offers those. Drupal can be somewhat extended, but SharePoint not so much.

LARGE ENTERPRISE WEBSITE


Drupal SharePoint

Extensive group functionalitiesCustom access levelsCustom file accessMultisite, domains, features...

External SSO often required

Team site and document management features.Strong permission control and access rights system.MS security/access products

Application development can be sometimes quite cumbersome and costly.Using “full Microsoft stack” is often the easiest way.

Summary: SharePoint has been designed for B2B extranets quite strongly and Microsoft has a full suite of products for different scenarios. Drupal offers more flexible custom implementation.

B2B EXTRANET (GROUPS)


Drupal SharePoint

Very efficient to buildLeverage 8000+ modulesEasy to integrate

Extensive integration required

MS security/access productsIntegration capabilities

Out of the box features and 3rd party products don’t offer much... Total cost can be a surprise

Summary: Customer self service channels are often very tailored. This somewhat benefits Drupal since fast prototyping is required. SharePoint’s main strengths come from integration capabilities.

CUSTOMER SELF SERVICE


Drupal SharePoint

Fully custom large scale e-commerceOut of the box profilesReal CMS & e-com in one package

Testing requirements with custom solutionsMore work required than with e-com platforms (for now)

Very large e-commerce projects: Commerce Server product that integrates with SharePoint.

Not really competitive even for medium level e-commerce projects.

Summary: SharePoint + Commerce Server only competes in larger projects (200K+). Drupal will become an option for all sizes, currently strong especially in very large (500K+) projects.

E-COMMERCE


Drupal SharePoint

Document mgmt meets socialCustom workflowsStrong with Alfresco

Browser based OR:Requires Alfresco

Web Apps, Office integ., Outlook sync, Full offline access, Multi-user-editingWorkflows, document sets, document IDs, Records Man.,

Records management still has some limitations compared to heavy-weight solutions from Documentum / Oracle

Summary: Drupal needs Alfresco to compete in document management. SharePoint offers easier interfaces and wider selection of features. Drupal products don’t exist (yet), only custom.

DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT


Drupal SharePoint

Ideal for DrupalRich functionalityFully custom

More difficult to scaleUser interface requires often a lot of attention

Team sitesDocument managementMySites

Not designed for open community content production. Requires tailoring or 3rd party extensions.Poor moderation functions.

Summary: SharePoint is suitable for “serious work communities”, but not really for “open exchange of ideas and comments”. Drupal excels in all social publishing and communities.

COMMUNITIES


Drupal SharePoint

Architecture built for easy mash-up implementationMany existing integrations

Can be complex to implement

Architecture built for demanding mash-up implementationLot of components to build mash-ups

Sometimes seemingly simple mash-ups can become complicated and costly3rd party components often poor quality

Summary: Both platforms have a lot of strong points for doing demanding mash-ups. However Drupal has been developed from web point of view and SharePoint from intranet point of view.

MASH-UPS


Drupal SharePoint

Existing integrationsEfficientLeverage “mash-up architecture”

Custom integrations still require a lot of work

Huge amounts of available web parts done by 3rd party companiesExamples and best practicesMS integration products

Custom integrations still require a lot of work

Summary: Both platforms have strong integration capabilities. SharePoint has the upper hand when operating in MS environment, Drupal when in open source environment.

ENTERPRISE INTEGRATION


Drupal SharePoint

Out of the box Drupal searchApache Solr integrationSearch-based UIsEasy to customize

Limited without Apache Solr

SharePoint’s own search server is a strong productFAST makes it heavy-weightSupport for Office documents (previews, etc.)

Search-based UIs require a lot of work

Summary: SharePoint’s FAST is an enterprise heavy-weight, but Apache Solr is a strong challenger. Drupal+Solr offers a lot of benefits especially when building demanding search-based UIs.

SEARCH


Drupal SharePoint

Faster implementationLeverage existing functionalityLess code, fewer bugs

Some simple issues can be complex to solve

Strong development tools and supporting systemsMS ecosystem for support and maintenance

You don’t really do “fast implementations” if you are truly doing custom applications with SharePointRequired skilled experts

Summary: From a traditional enterprise point of view it could be claimed that Drupal is just a “rapid prototyping tool” compared to SharePoint. But is it a prototype if it works?

CUSTOM APPLICATIONS


Drupal SharePoint

BrochurewareLarge enterprise websiteCommunitiesE-Commerce

IntranetDocument managementB2B extranets (groups)

Summary has been done to highlight the main differences in platforms. When doing several scenarios for the list it is highly recommended to compare platforms and ecosystems in more detail.

SUMMARY OF STRENGTHS

Enterprise integrationsCustomer self serviceCustom applicationsMash-upsSearch


DRUPAL VS SHAREPOINTThe fight of the modern day swiss army knives


Drupal vs Sharepoint

Technology

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