A recent discussion question from Stig Ulfsby on the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC) LinkedIn Group asked the question: Which alternatives are there to Sharepoint for an intranet platform?
This article provides a summary of the 60+ replies.
List of suggested alternative intranet platforms
Comments provided below are from the people who participated in the discussion.
| Adobe Day CQ5 | |
| Alfresco | Alfresco is an application ported from linux. It uses a tomcat server (even on windows). It looks a good solution in the linux world but interfacing it to the windows will take a lot of time.... and is really painful. |
| Quite suitable if you also use JIRA for tracking. The advantage is both products can be linked easily and the wiki based interface means searching and linking are very easy. Making use of templates also standardize the look and feel of the contents. | |
| DotNetNuke | It runs on MS SQL, .NET and has over 8000 modules built by the community. Atlantic Webfitters offers DotNetNuke hosting and support plans; there is also a Professional Edition which gives you 2nd tier support with DNN Corp. |
| Drupal | |
| Ektron | We implemented it about a year ago and have been pleased with it's out-of-the-box features and ability to customize as needed. |
| IGLOO Software | Were positioned in Gartner's MQ for Social Software in the Workplace, can replace or work in conjunction with SharePoint. |
| Idealink Open | The software is flexible enough that it can integrate with other tools, like any CRM, ERP software you might be currently using. Idealink Open also has all of the features you mention like collaboration, document sharing, etc... |
| Interact | UK's leading Intranet vendor. We often come up against Sharepoint when companies are tendering and we find our software is feature rich in comparison and far easy to implement. Not to mention the cost savings with an out the box solution. Interact can also be bespoked to fit your business requirements. We work with major companies of 20,000 + users such as ADT, DHL and G4S. - Nicholas Lethbridge |
| Intranet Connections | Easy to use and out of the box. You can improve company communications & productivity, streamline tasks and encourage collaboration, gain ROI with ready-to-go tools along with many other advanced intranet capabilities. |
| Intranet Dashboard | A Software on Premises (SOP) solution, that you install either on your own server, safely within your own network, or your own external cloud host. |
| JIVE Software (Clearspace) | They are highly rated in the quadrant charts and have a SharePoint connector allowing you to expose the data from SharePoint within your collaborative environment where you can create working groups, threaded discussions, blogs and so on and create a knowledge repository for your organization. |
| Joomla! | My organisation has run a Joomla! based intranet for three years now, and found it so effective we even adopted it for our product websites. Fully customiseable, open source CMS goodness. |
| KARL | |
| Liferay | Liferay delivers open source enterprise solutions for portals, publishing, content, and collaboration. Take a look at Gartner Group last survey on Portals - they have some very good points on Liferay vs. Sharepoint and Websphere Portal |
| LotusLive Engage | Especially regarding the social media part, Connections and/or LotusLive are yet unbeatable. |
| Lotus Notes | |
| Mambo | |
| OpenText Web Site Management | Provides a solution which combines legendary ease-of-use with seamless application integration to support your intranet initiative. Have a proven track record and 1000s of clients world-wide (including many government organizations). |
| Oracle Content Management | It really does have some nice features. |
| Rainbow | |
| Sitecore | A intranet that combines the abilities of an CMS tool with an intranet and has a framework to work with SharePoint. It is an open source program that can be integated with the systems - CRM, ERP or others systems that you use in your day to day work. |
| Small Worlders Sandbox | |
| Telligent | |
| ThoughtFarmer | .net / MS SQL Server based "social intranet" platform. |
| Weblogics | |
| Websphere Portal (IBM) | For Intranet you can use WebSphere Portal, and for collaboration you can integrate it with Lotus Connection....it more complex by sharepoint but more robust |
Other useful resources
- Small Business Intranets, There's More Than SharePoint
- List of Wiki tools
- Short list of good intranet platforms
- Choosing an intranet platform (Whitepaper)
- Choosing an intranet platform (Webinar video)
- Functional analysis of 8 Enterprise 2.0 platforms
- The rise of the networked enterprise: Web 2.0 finds its payday/a>
- JJive software customer survey reveals state of market
Suggestions and comments
"Make sure you have a strategy in place that aligns to your organisation's and follow on from there."
- Mark Morrell
"For a best choice and cost saving, it's important to understand:
- which type of customizations the project requires
- how many changes the system needs during the time
- which type of system integrations the project requires"
- Stelvio Sanfilippo
"I would recommend you set aside the tendency to focus on what the technology features are and establish the strategy first. If done correctly, your strategy will allow you to actually map the technology feature sets to the behaviors you want to drive. Bringing you closer to that elusive adoption rate we all strive for. If you are striving to help your users forge meaningful business relationships, find information and expertise and share ideas, rigid document & process heavy intranets & portals will not do the trick. I believe there is a study just released showing how social business software reduces time needed to find answers by 32%, 27% reduction in duplicated tasks & 25% reduction in new hire ramp time among others."
- Omar Barbosa
"Requirements, requirements, requirements...then go shopping! A detailed list of needs, wants, budget, local expertise, etc. would narrow down your options and ensure your implemented solution meets the original needs. Preferences and opinions are like...noses - everyone has one."
- Rob Valerio
"It is important to have the plan in place for the intranet, you need to take care of the following points: Budget, Strategy, Content management plan, Training
&"Once you have this plan in place you can then think of a technology which will fit in your budget, i would suggest to go with Microsoft DotNet technology, complete share point would not fullfill your requirements, you also need to have the developers in DotNet to have the content management plan in place. "
- Giridhar Sharma
"I don't advocate an unplanned development, but I do suggest that a) users need to be closely involved with the choice of platform and development of the implementation; and b) that whatever service is eventually launched has a substantial fall-back capability to allow for significant changes in light of real-world operational experience. Small and flexible is better than having all the eggs in one corporate basket.
Best strategy would be to pilot some options within teams or departments to see what requirements then appear.
-From my real-world experience, it is strangely difficult to persuade professionals that they can create or alter something which appears online. One wiki took more than a year to generate active inputs, despite much advocacy from many levels within the organisation."
- Stuart Cliffe
"Putting my own opinions about the most important aspects:
* content management / collaboration / knowledge management
* workflow / forms / process management
* reporting / BI / metrics - if you come to use workflow extensively then you need reporting"
- Simon Rawson
Other alternatives?
Are there any other SharePoint intranet alternatives that should be included? Read the complete discussion on the WIC LinkedIn Group.
