The End of Sharepoint: Where to Migrate from Here?

After reading the CMSWire article Coping with the Demise of SharePoint 2007, I realized there are lots of companies out there that are still on SharePoint. Given the way Microsoft was giving away licenses of the collaboration portal in the early 2000s, there ended up being a significant number of companies that used SharePoint for Employee Intranets initially, and then, because the product was already in-house and supported by IT, decided to use it to build their public-facing internet sites on.  A quick Google search finds millions of pages that are still likely on SharePoint.  Microsoft has discontinued support for public websites in new versions of SharePoint, and industry analysts have noted that "Microsoft just doesn't seem interested in digital marketing."

This all should make companies using SharePoint to host their website understandably anxious.

The Good and the Bad of SharePoint

Let’s look at some good and bad things about SharePoint that are likely familiar to you.

Things you probably like about SharePoint:

• More than a CMS: SharePoint is more than a CMS. It’s an enterprise collaboration platform that integrates well with the Microsoft Office suite of desktop applications. SharePoint has many more features than just those of a standard CMS.
• Friendly UI: SharePoint’s UI is very friendly. In many cases, there is more than one way to do the same thing. Creating pages, links, and images is not difficult in SharePoint, and it looks very similar to the MS Office ribbon interface you are used to.
• High-security level: SharePoint’s security levels reach a granularity where you can even add restrictions to a single template field according to the policy you want to apply. You don’t need to worry about your site’s security when using SharePoint.
• Easy way to export your library content: SharePoint allows users to export their assets in a friendly way. You can access your site’s library directly from SharePoint via Windows Explorer to create new folders and move files around easily.
• You can easily recover accidentally deleted content by accessing SharePoint’s recycle bin. Accidents happen. Luckily this feature has saved me a lot of time.
• Suitable for simple content editing: SharePoint includes several pre-made templates for article creation.
• Editing in Office apps and saving directly to SharePoint
• Taxonomy and managed metadata: this can be helpful for searching purposes.
• Table creation in the WYSIWYG editor is decent.
• Reusable web parts.
• Inherited content types.

Things you probably don’t like about SharePoint:

• Using SharePoint properly as a CMS requires customizations and workarounds that take extra time. You probably noticed this when you first implemented your website or requested a new feature.
• Even though SharePoint’s UI is friendly, the fact that SharePoint is more than a CMS means that the user takes a considerable time to get used to it. The knowledge curve for new users or users coming from classic CMSs can be vast.
• As SharePoint’s security reaches a granular level, user permissions can be difficult and confusing to manage.
• Customizing SharePoint is not easy. If you want customization for your sites, you will need SharePoint-experienced developers. These developers are becoming fewer and more expensive.
• SharePoint doesn’t organize the site content as a typical CMS. A classic CMS organizes the site in a tree structure, but SharePoint’s site hierarchy uses a more complex structure (this can be confusing for new users).
• You cannot add “child” articles to the site pages. For some reason, this common practice for most CMSs is impossible in SharePoint.
• SharePoint’s complex method for organizing pages ensures that your page name will always appear in each article’s URL. So forget about having friendly URLs for your pages without applying workarounds; they always get the .aspx extension at the end.
• Creating a SharePoint website requires extensive planning and proper implementation. Other CMSs can reduce the work needed in SharePoint.
• The time it takes to build and release anything is long due to the overly complex architecture of highly available SharePoint sites.

Of course, there are more SharePoint pros and cons than I’ve described above, but we are guessing these and some of your own are enough to make you look for a new CMS.

So, which CMSs can I recommend? Sitecore and Optimizely (formerly Episerver).

Why do I recommend them?

Both products are based on the .NET platform, so your IT team doesn’t need to support new hardware and operating systems. Both systems are pretty easy to learn and use for editors and developers. They are also very flexible and scalable (unlike SharePoint) and integrate easily with external tools. They are enterprise-class digital marketing platforms that will empower your digital marketers and content managers to create robust, personalized, consistent experiences throughout your digital properties.

Sitecore

Sitecore is a powerhouse in the Digital Marketing space.  Industry analysts place it in the top tier of digital marketing platforms:

• "WCM offering is best-of-breed, while adjacent functionality such as email campaign management, personalization, testing/optimization, and social capabilities is midlevel." – Forrester Research Inc., 2015
• “Sitecore excels at Advanced Personalization – both in breadth and depth of advanced personalization capabilities” – Real Story Group, 2016
• "Consider Sitecore for advanced digital marketing, highly interactive sites, with fast-changing content and layouts." - Real Story Group, 2016
• "Few WCM vendors match Sitecore's understanding of the latest digital marketing priorities, practices, and technologies. Sitecore continually incorporates into its offering support for leading practices, such as customer journeys, cross-channel marketing, multivariate testing, and continuous experiences." - Gartner, 2016

You've heard the old saying, "Nobody gets fired for buying IBM." Sitecore is the 2017 version of that for Digital Marketing Web Content Management Systems. It's a great platform based on .NET standards that your IT team will love supporting, and it will support your needs now and far into the future.

Sitecore’s UI is not only better looking than SharePoint’s, but it’s also even friendlier. In SharePoint, you can’t use the mouse’s right button directly on any item, or you’ll end up opening the browser’s options menu. Sitecore, however, enables right-clicking functionality on its UI.

Creating content and editing pages in Sitecore is easy. The rich text editor allows users to edit content very simply. You can easily edit text and add images and hyperlinks.

Additionally, Sitecore makes life easier for developers. It easily integrates with Microsoft technology and many third-party tools. Sitecore is very widely used and has a lot of developer/community support, which makes it a really flexible CMS for implementing custom solutions.

Sitecore’s benefits:

• Flexibility, scalability, and security.
• Less effort to learn and understand the product (compared to SharePoint).
• It is continually evolving. Nowadays, it supports ASP.Net web forms and MVC.
• Since version 6.5, Sitecore has introduced the Digital Marketing System (DMS), which offers user personalization based on user behaviors, personas, A/B testing, and advanced analytics.
• Integrates easily with third-party tools.
• Improved search engine optimization.
• Integration with Microsoft technology.
• Customization is easier in Sitecore than in SharePoint (less effort).
• User-friendly design (more intuitive than SharePoint).
• Logical hierarchical structure and flexibility for content editors.
• Less customized work for front-end development (front-end in SharePoint requires much-customized work and is restricted).

In addition to the list of things above that you loved about SharePoint, Sitecore does those well, too:

• Sitecore also provides a ‘ribbon’ interface for management. Although not as many options are provided as in SharePoint, the options for most content editing are readily available and easy to identify (edit, preview, attach, insert, version control, publishing, etc.).
• Security is granular down to the content field
• You can access your media library using WebDAV, so it appears like a folder on your desktop
• Although there is no recycle bin, version control lets you always find older content
• WYSIWYG editor and inline editing with the page (called Experience Editor) make editing content in the CMS extremely user-friendly
• Suitable for simple content editing; Sitecore includes several pre-made templates ready for article creation.
• Alas, there is no way to save Word documents directly into Sitecore. However, given how poorly formatted Word’s HTML is, this is something you shouldn't do for websites anyway.
• Unlimited ability to add unique content fields for meta-data tagging and organization, which assists in SEO friendliness
• Table editing is available in the WYSIWYG editor, but most implementations will turn them off due to the issues they create with responsive websites
• Content and functional sub-layouts can easily be reused across multiple pages
• Data templates can be inherited easily, which makes the maintenance of data types easier

Optimizely CMS (fka Episerver)

Optimizely CMS is a slightly smaller-scale digital marketing web content management system making meaningful strides in keeping up with market leaders.  It has been surging in analysts research reports:

• “Has comparatively advanced digital marketing tools, includes rules-based personalization, marketing dashboards, and ecommerce.” - Real Story Group, 2016
• “Customers regard [optimizely] highly as a product designed for the future of WCM in an age of digital business.” – Gartner, 2015
• “Its granular “atomized” content and high interoperability make it suitable for context-aware computing and multichannel digital experiences” – Gartner, 2015
• Optimizely has something that not many other web CMSs have in a true cloud offering, with a monthly software and service fee significantly reducing the cost barrier to entry into this enterprise-class digital marketing platform.

Optimizely is a feature-rich and user-friendly CMS that simplifies content editing. I’ve been working with version 9.8, and it was easy to learn and understand from an editor's perspective. It’s really intuitive and easy to use. Optimizely is also friendly for developers; this CMS shines compared to other products due to its ease of customization.

Flexibility is a key benefit of this CMS. Almost every aspect of Optimizely is fully extendable and customizable to individual business needs. Also, this CMS has a great support community for developers, content editors, and marketers. Much valuable information can be found in blogs or forums to help you get productive quickly with this CMS.

Optimizely’s simple API makes developers' work easier. It can also easily integrate with many third-party systems.

Optimizely’s benefits:

• Notably simple and easy to use.
• User-friendly UI.
• Ease of customization (much less effort than SharePoint web parts)
• It is much more extensible and flexible than SharePoint
• Comes with great support, and developers can begin to be productive quickly
• Site speed performance
• Editing content is straightforward.
• All in one solution: digital marketing, content management, and digital commerce
• Content can be searched quickly and added to projects by simply dragging and dropping it.
• Can integrate with other systems and third-party tools

In addition to the above, items that you love about SharePoint are still available:

• Flexible security system: you can secure pages to different groups anywhere in the tree hierarchy
• Easily export your Assets Library to the file system for portability
• There is a recycling bin, so if you accidentally delete a piece of content in SharePoint, it can be recovered
• Content editing is excellent and very intuitive. No work is needed to make inline editing easy.
• Again, there is no way to save directly from Word documents into Optimizely. However, given how poorly formatted Word's HTML is, this is something you really shouldn’t be doing anyway for websites.
• Categories allow you to organize your content and make SEO a breeze
• Table editing is available in the WYSIWYG editor, but most implementations will turn them off due to the issues they create with responsive websites
• Content can be re-used in Blocks across many pages on the site
• Content Types can be inherited using basic .NET class inheritance. This lets you easily add new properties across all child content types with a single modification.

Wrapping Up

Sitecore and Optimizely are excellent content management systems built with .NET that should be considered if you’re considering moving off SharePoint. The immediate benefits you’ll see as a SharePoint user are ease of use in content editing and day-to-day content management. However, the biggest advantage of moving to Sitecore or Optimizely is the potential to expand your business with more robust digital marketing technologies. Their ecommerce, digital marketing, and analytics features make them two great options for implementing future-proof enterprise sites where you can personalize, optimize, and track users’ behavior improving your marketing effectiveness dramatically.

So now that you've chosen one of these excellent digital marketing platforms to replace the SharePoint platform holding your marketing back, the next question is 'How do I get there?"  How can you get onto that new platform as quickly as possible?

Siteport™

Ohsyn’s patented Siteport offers automated migration of Sharepoint sites to Sitecore or Optimizely. It can migrate all your content and content types, including the content embedded in web parts. It can migrate content in multiple languages while retaining the relationships between your pages and media assets. When the Siteport migration is completed, there is no need to touch every single piece of content, re-create the new links between pages, or fix broken images.