SharePoint vs WebSphere: The Final Nail : Mad Props!

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SharePoint vs WebSphere: The Final Nail

So I went to Melbourne today with my boss, against all better judgement, to see a two-hour presentation and demo from the IBM guys of their WebSphere Workplace Services Express (WSE) product.

Basically WSE is an "intranet in a box" solution that provides document-management (including workflow, versioning etc), discussion forums, instant-messaging (including presence-awareness), contact lists via your LDAP server, you name it. It's a mature product with a large install-base, and it looks pretty slick. In fact, it does everything that we want in an intranet product.

The reasons I was (am) pro-SharePoint and anti-WSE are twofold:

It's based on J2EE. This might not be a huge problem, since it's in essence a self-contained application ... but I dunno. What if we want to write our own 'portlets' for it? We'd basically be screwed. I suppose we could write an ASP.NET app to publish an RSS feed for the data we want and use a WSE portlet that can subscribe to that feed. That'd be a read-only solution, depending on the problem it's trying to solve. Anything would be a cludge - we have no skills in Java.
It costs money. Windows SharePoint Services is free. Granted there are other facets to the SharePoint solution that cost money (SharePoint Portal Server, Live Communication Server etc), but the base-model is a free download and also happens to do everything we need.

So ... those reasons are still sound, but that's not why I'm posting this blog entry. This particular entry is all about the last slide that the guys posted up on the projector in their presentation. Let me describe it.

The slide was about WSE's "position in the market". It basically outlined that WSE's major competitor is SharePoint (no surprise) and had each product stacked up against each other.

On the left side of the slide were a series of boxes that made up a SharePoint installation - Windows Server 2003, SQL Server 2000, Windows SharePoint Services, Live Communication Server and SharePoint Portal Server. The slide also included costings for each product, and although I didn't do the actual calculation, it came in at somewhere around AU$10,000 per processor (ie, in our case, per site).

On the right side of the slide was a single box outlining WSE's feature set. Confusingly it didn't mention the operating system it runs on (I'm pretty sure it needs one! heh heh), so comparing costs might not be quite fair ... but as you'll soon see that's kind of academic. You see, this box also had a price next to it. A per-processor price.

AU$61,000.

Let me break it down for you. IBM and one of their partners, in their own promotional slide, just told us that their major competitor with all the same features is one sixth the price.

Gee ... this is such a hard decision!!!

ps. The most mind-boggling thing about the whole thing is that nobody, not even my boss, seemed to mind! They acted as if there was nothing out of the ordinary with that slide. I was too busy picking my jaw up off the floor to say something like, "Are you TOTALLY INSANE????"

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Comments

# ew 18/05/2006 8:57 PM	Can you send me the slide ?
# mabster 18/05/2006 9:23 PM	Sorry mate - it wasn't a slide that was given to us. This was a presentation they gave to us at their offices.
# fanfaron 2/06/2006 12:33 PM	Hi pal, I didn't know Ibm's solution is so expensive compared to Microsoft one, thanks for saying it. In the world of J2EE, so much is free, besides expertise, but even that lot's of community are willing to give you a hand. What I'm trying to say is If you freak out about the cost from major vendors, maybe you should embrasse the world of Java, or Php or ruby, anything beside big Vendor. It's maybe really time for you to have a look what's beyond...
# dave.dolan 18/01/2007 4:09 AM	Sharepoint is not easily centrally managed. It can grow out of control quickly. Restoring a sharepoint instance can be a nightmare in a disaster recovery solution, and unless you fork out big bucks for a specialized backup solution, you can forget being able to 'point resotre' something. You MUST have 6 times the used storage space available ... which means if your sharepoint host has 100GB of data in the store, then you have to have at least 600GB of disk space... Version control is awful, you can't keep old versions if you move a document somewhere else... They don't move with it. If someone is designated as an 'owner' of a site collection, and then they get 'demoted' from the role, their rights are stick unless you hack them out or buy a tool to do it. And the list goes on. Share point is GREAT for the users, but it's a nightmare if anything ever goes wrong for the administrators. And don't think that just because they say it does versioning that it really does... I wouldn't call what sharepoint does really 'versioning' at all. So you still need other ($$) software for that. Also, if you do use sharepoint... watch out when it comes time to upgrade... Make sure you handle that config database with kid gloves... etc... Sharepoint 2007 doesn't even have ANY antivirus integration yet... I can't believe that some people are exposing that to the internet. You're crazy.
# dave.dolan 18/01/2007 4:19 AM	Just to be clear, I meant the people who put sharepoint 2007 on the internet are crazy, not you mabster. You seem to be a right knowledgeable chap :)
# mabster 18/01/2007 6:51 AM	Thanks for the comments, Dave. I guess we'll find this out first-hand this year when we roll out SP (although it'll only be to our intranet, not the Internet). Oh, and consider me subscribed to your blog. ;)
# Liz.Sanchez 8/06/2008 10:06 AM	I found this interesting link about Websohere Portal Server against MOSS (Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server): www.greyduck.com/.../WSPortalVsSP$File/WSPortal6.pdf In summary, Websphere PS has compatibility with many platforms, databases and Web servers than the Microsoft Portal Server solution. Additionally, Websphere PS fits better and it is more secure for an extranet/intranet solution than MOSS.
# FG 10/12/2008 11:43 AM	I think you are referring to this slide. Page 18/24 www.slideshare.net/.../lotus-collabora
# mabster 10/12/2008 11:48 AM	Very similar, FG. Keep in mind that the slide you're pointing to is focused on the 2007 line of products which weren't around when I made this post in 2005.
# Alex Williams 18/08/2009 9:25 AM	How does the technology comparison look now in 2009? Would you be interested in writing an update for Tek-Tips, our blog network for IT managers?
# GP 9/10/2009 2:13 AM	Hi friends , could someone suggest me some tutorials for migration from ibm websphere to sharepoint
# Harun 15/04/2010 9:44 PM	Hi Matt, I hope you could have figured out by this time that Sharepoint is not meant for a Major portal implementation. When the portal and implmented service grows it will go out of hand. Anyway I would like to hear about your experience. Thanks
# Matt Hargreaves 27/04/2010 1:40 AM	Not meant for a major portal implementation! What an absolute load of old tosh! Microsoft.com, canon.com, swiss.com, nhs.com, and Equiniti.com sites to name but a few are all SharePoint based websites!
# Marc 3/12/2010 1:58 AM	I would be interested in your experience with SharePoint up to this point. I don't know about you, but SharePoint, to me, is nothing short of utter pain, suffering, and abject misery. I don't know what a good alternative is, I hear Quickr looks promising, but I do know that SharePoint must have been developed by a troop of drunken, disabled chimps. The most basic things make absolutely not sense to the average user. Usability and actual functionality, outside of theroy, is an absolute failure. And it does not look like SharePoint 2010 has fixed even the most basic usability problems. Using SharePoint should not require in depth, thorough, specilized training just to do the most basic things.
# mabster 3/12/2010 7:37 AM	Hi Marc, SharePoint can be a pain if you're trying to do anything more complex than the out-of-the-box stuff. I've found for simple document management and workflows it has been great, but when people say, "it can do X, why can't it do Y?" it can be hard to give them a straight answer. I've recommended Nintex Workflow to lots of people - it's a SharePoint add-in that makes designing workflows a breeze (there's an in-browser visual designer). That takes some of the pain away. Thanks for your comment!
# suresh 14/02/2011 12:33 AM	Please recommend some tools for websphere to SharePoint migration.
# Dave Newman 20/02/2011 8:12 AM	Hi, Interesting comments here on Websphere portal. We are just starting to look at an intranet portal for simple document shareing, common calendar and simple workflow. The shop is totally in love with Lotus Notes but has no developers for it. My background is Sharepoint WSS 3.0 and I finally have convinced I.T. to implement a test copy. I'm wondering if anyone can tell me if there are ANY services (unser level) that the pay for WebSphere portal provides that the FREE Sharepoint does not? (Note - NO PROGRAMMING REQUIRED only) Thanks! Dave
# jeremy 12/05/2011 1:47 PM	We are Sharepoint users, but we need to migrate and are debating websphere and even considering Google Apps. Nintex looks superb, but I am wondering about it compared it to apps in your opinion Mabster.
# mabster 12/05/2011 3:27 PM	I haven't tried Google Apps, jeremy, so I can't make the comparison. Nintex Workflow has definitely "completed" our SharePoint development story - we haven't needed to do any custom coding for our sites.
# Mike Handes 10/08/2011 12:07 PM	Hi Dave, Happy to talk to you about what WebSphere Portal offers OOTB in terms of included services. Mike.
# Jake 22/08/2011 1:21 AM	I am curious to know if you looked at K2 also for workflow? Do you know how it stacks with Nintex? Its encouraging to hear that Nintex has solved your needs.
# mabster 22/08/2011 11:35 AM	Hi Jake, This is all a long time ago now, but no, I don't recall us looking at K2. Nintex Workflow has kicked ass though, so no complaints. :)
# Emilio Rafael 6/02/2013 4:26 PM	If you have windows, you can install Websphere portal on it, if you have gnu/linux, you can do it too. So, the OS is not really the point. Can sharepoint run on linux?
# Sanjay 20/02/2014 8:33 AM	Interesting discussion. I know MOSS 2007 or SP 2010 but coming to 2013 how websphere compete ? how about websphere being on the cloud? SharePoint being pain has also do lot with how you have implemented , and your level of expertise. No technology is piece of cake.
# Peter Morris 24/04/2014 1:25 PM	I have recently signed up for free SharePoint hosting solution with http://www.cloudappsprotal.com and it has been really good improvement over the earlier version. Metro interface, touch enabled, less coding head ache, so on and so forth.
# Shirley Schimdt 6/05/2014 6:02 PM	"I have been using SharePoint for team collaboration and content management for a long time. And it has been very useful for me in streamlining my work. I used to use SharePoint 2007 before but now migrated to SharePoint 2013. This site(http://www.cloudappsportal.com) with its free SharePoint offer helped me decide.

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