AvePoint Takes Fire for Unethical Marketing

Having worked in the Microsoft SharePoint space for many years, I know that it's unusual for SharePoint Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) to get much mainstream press coverage, so I was surprised to see a Washington Business article about an AvePoint marketing campaign. The article, All's fair in sales and marketing? Competitor blogs that Metalogix is for sale, tries to poach customers, highlights a shady marketing tactic recently employed by AvePoint against my former employer, Metalogix.

(Update: The Metalogix response, "Metalogix is Forever" has been posted now.)

Others have written about this dishonourable marketing move (for example: An Open Letter to AvePoint | An Unethical Marketing Campaign), and I can understand their frustration. The SharePoint partner community used to be a pretty tight-knit group focused on "coopetition." Sure, we were competing, but we also worked together to raise the profile of SharePoint--which BTW was a great strategy that paid off for everyone. As they say, 'a rising tide raises all boats.'

But that's just not the case anymore, as money poured into the situation, investors took notice and the atmosphere changed. A win at all costs mentality emerged from some companies and the whole situation was a lot less interesting for many of us who started in content management before the SharePoint era. I suspect this marketing ploy will backfire.

SharePoint Saturday Honolulu 2011

This year marked the first SharePoint Saturday Honolulu event. And to distinguish themselves, they held the event on a Friday. I greatly enjoyed this event and it was well organized, so hats off to the organizing committee and the volunteers. It also didn’t hurt that I got to spend the week in Oahu, Hawaii.

- Yes, it was on a Friday

At the event, I presented a session about the SharePoint 2010 SP1 supportability changes and how these changes affect real-world storage considerations. Naturally, since Remote BLOB Storage (BLOB offloading) is the future of SharePoint storage management, I spent a good deal of my time talking about RBS.

I also enjoyed being on the Ask the Experts panel, which featured some prominent SharePoint community characters and some great conversation.

- Yes, that’s a dinosaur foot behind me. Honolulu Community College has dinosaurs

Thank you to the organizers and thanks for the invite to return next year. BTW –the real flower leis upon arrival were a nice touch.

Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2011 Wrap-up

This year’s sold out Microsoft SharePoint Conference (#SPC11) was so busy for me that it caught me a little off guard. You know those blog posts about preparing for conferences that list things such as stocking up on business cards and organizing meetings ahead of time, well I ran out of cards and completely ran out of time to talk to all the people I had meant to chat with. That same craziness explains why this post is just a tad late.

This year’s conference was October 3-6 in Anaheim, CA at the Anaheim Convention Center. Right next to Disneyland, you could argue that this is the happiest convention center on Earth.

The show was a smashing success for Metalogix—one of the reasons it was so busy for me. We had our most popular booth ever, talked our throats dry about SharePoint and Office 365, hosted multiple parties and met with countless partners and customers. We also had a pretty popular Metalogix prize giveaway.

The Anaheim convention center is a great venue

A swarm of people at the Metalogix booth

After the exhibit hall closed, I managed a shot without people blocking the Metalogix booth

Microsoft rented Disneyland for the attendee party. The last time I went to Disneyland was in 2005 for the E3 conference. I was happy to be able to ride Splash Mountain this time around as it went down for maintenance while I was in line last time. And, no, I didn’t get wet; others from Metalogix came out soaked, but I basically got sprayed once.

The @NBSharePoint “I’m just here for SharePint” shirt (I’m holding Minnie Mouse ears for my daughter)

At this year’s show, I presented a session with Steve Marsh about considerations for creating SharePoint farms with terabytes of data. Our session was literally the last one in the guide. It was fun closing the conference, but I have to admit that I prefer to speak early and then have the rest of the event to meet with people; until I actually speak, I can’t help but tweak my presentation, so it’s always on my mind.

The rooms were darkly lit, so not a great speaker photo op

Metalogix also had great representation in other sessions. For example, the session about the Microsoft Search First Initiative, co-presented by our partners Microsoft and Arcovis.

I’ll finish with one more shot of the venue. Doesn’t this image just yell, “SharePoint in the cloud?”

All in all, SPC11 was a great event and I’m really psyched about the Microsoft SharePoint Conference (#SPC12) in Las Vegas in 2012.

I’m speaking at the Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2011

I’ll be presenting a session at the Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2011 (#SPC11) in Anaheim, CA. I’ve had the honour of speaking at this show in the past—going back to the “Portal Airlift” in 2001. Last time, at SPC09, I presented a session on upgrading/migration to SharePoint 2010.

This year’s attendee party is at Disneyland, so I’m sure lots of people are excited about that.

Of course, Metalogix will also have a strong presence at the big event as well. If you’re attending the show, look for the Metalogix booth in the exhibitor’s hall.

Speaking at SharePoint Saturday The Conference 2011

I had a great time this weekend presenting at SharePoint Saturday The Conference. It was the largest SharePoint Saturday event ever and it’s a great credit to the teams of organizers, volunteers, vendors and speakers that it went so well.

It is truly remarkable how the SharePoint community continues to produce these sorts of quality events. With 280 sessions, you can imagine how much effort went into the three days.

Where else can you see a talent show where a Metalogix employee (Corey) sings Mack the Knife while migrating a SharePoint 2007 site to SharePoint 2010?

At this year’s show, I co-presented two sessions about SharePoint migration and BLOB offloading with fellow Metalogix employee Corey Milliman and I also did two book signings for How to Do Everything: SharePoint 2010.

So now that #SPSTCDC is over, what will I do? I’m goin’ to Disneyland!

(For those who haven't heard, the attendee party is at Disneyland)

Metalogix Loves SharePoint Saturday

This weekend I was in New York for SharePoint Saturday. I presented a session on migrating to Microsoft Office 365 (Metalogix was a Microsoft Office 365 sponsor). This was the third time I’ve attended the SharePoint Saturday New York event and I always enjoy going. This year was no exception, there were some great speakers and things ran smoothly.

In addition to sponsoring the event, we wanted to do something different. What we came up with was to post “Metalogix loves SharePoint” sign in Times Square. It was great to walk around Times Square and see the Metalogix logo between an infinite number of ads for the Smurfs. Metalogix is also giving away Flip cameras to people who tweeted photos of the billboard.

You can read all about it on the Metalogix blog: Metalogix Loves SharePoint Saturday, NY

Metalogix was a proud Microsoft Office 365 sponsor at SharePoint Saturday New York this weekend. To show our pride, we arranged to have "Metalogix loves SharePoint" shown on one of the big billboards in Times Square.

We also held a contest to win Flip cameras. People who took a photo of the Metalogix billboard in Times Square tweeted their photos to the @metalogix Twitter account and are now entered to win a camera. We will be notifying the winners of the Flip cameras this week.

Metalogix Times Square Contest for SharePoint Saturday NY

If you’re going to SharePoint Saturday New York this weekend, you’re probably planning to go to Times Square anyway, so why not take a picture that could win you a Flip video camera?

All you have to do is take a picture of yourself in front of the Metalogix loves Microsoft SharePoint billboard, follow the @metalogix account and then tweet the photo with @metalogix and #SPSNY in the message and you’re entered to win a Flip video camera. (Winners will be notified by Twitter DM, so don’t forget to follow @metalogix.) The Metalogix banner will appear every hour 7am to 1am on Friday and 7am to 3pm on Saturday—the exact time is random. To get an idea of what it will look like, see the image below.

You can read about the contest on the Metalogix blog.

Metalogix is the official Office 365 sponsor for the event. I’ll be there to present a session about migrating file shares, ECM systems, Exchange public folders and other SharePoint systems to Office 365.

Microsoft.com Case Study with Metalogix

This week, Microsoft published a four-page case study about Metalogix Software. I’m the Director of Product Marketing (and Chief SharePoint Evangelist) for Metalogix, so I’m really happy to see this pat on the back from our most important partner. There are some quotes in there from me as well, so that’s another good reason for me to like it.

Metalogix helps organizations benefit from the collaboration and content management features of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. The company developed a portfolio of tools that customers use to manage and migrate from previous versions of SharePoint Server and third-party systems to SharePoint Server 2010. Metalogix also supports cloud migrations, helping customers flexibly adopt fully hosted and hybrid scenarios. Metalogix customers experience fast, easy, and cost-efficient migrations and on average, they report a lower total cost of ownership with SharePoint Server 2010 than competing solutions, experience cost savings from SharePoint Online, and achieve these gains faster by using Metalogix.

Since 2001, Metalogix has helped companies plan for and complete their transitions to Microsoft content management systems as quickly and cost-efficiently as possible. After acquiring two leading solution providers, Metalogix has expanded its product line to include binary large object (BLOB) storage/externalization, management, and archiving and technologies, and it has served more than 5,000 customers across the United States, Canada, Europe, and the Middle East. Metalogix is a member of the Microsoft Partner Network with a Gold Independent Software Vendor/Software competency.
 
With the release of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, Metalogix sees a significant number of organizations that want to take advantage of a unified environment for collaboration and content management. Metalogix customers are eager to embrace advancements to workflow, business intelligence, and content editing with the familiar Ribbon feature, part of the Microsoft Office Fluent user interface. “Customers are also attracted to the capabilities in SharePoint Server 2010 for connecting to external data,” says Stephen Cawood, Director of Product Marketing at Metalogix. Microsoft Business Connectivity Services in SharePoint Server 2010 enables organizations to easily connect their SharePoint Server 2010 intranets, extranets, and websites to line-of-business systems, databases, and other external systems. “The overarching theme of SharePoint Server 2010 for all customers is flexibility,” says Cawood.

Read the full Microsoft.com Metalogix Case Study and download the Microsoft Word version.

Happy Birthday Office 365

Today, Microsoft is launching Office 365, which includes SharePoint 2010 online.

I wrote a SharePoint 2010 birthday post when SharePoint 2010 launched that included the image below of the Metalogix office cake.

Metalogix has announced Office 365 support in Migration Manager for SharePoint.

From the Metalogix website:

“Whether you are using SharePoint on-premises, or SharePoint online in the cloud, Migration Manager for SharePoint (formerly SharePoint Site Migration Manager) is the best-of-breed solution for your needs. You might be moving to Office 365, or upgrading from SharePoint 2003 or 2007 to SharePoint 2010, moving between SharePoint servers, managing a hybrid cloud environment, or re-organizing your SharePoint content--regardless of your use case, Migration Manager for SharePoint is an easy-to-use and convenient way of moving, synchronizing or managing your SharePoint data. With its familiar copy-and-paste-style user interface, you can quickly migrate and manage all SharePoint sites, libraries, lists, web parts and permissions between servers.”

Moving to Marketing

I’m changing job titles at Metalogix and that change was made official today. My new position is Director of Product Marketing and Chief SharePoint Evangelist.

The best message I’ve received so far in response to the news, “Welcome to the dark side.. ;).”

WPC 2010 Wrap-Up

Another Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) has come and gone. As usual, Metalogix had a great show. We were fortunate to see a number of our international partners and maybe start some new relationships as well.

- The WPC 2010 Metalogix booth

At this year’s show, the emphasis was clearly on the cloud and Metalogix was thrilled to be there to talk about our migration to BPOS and from BPOS to SharePoint 2010.

- Freeman crates behind the curtain at #WPC10

SharePoint Saturday in DC

Thank you to the organizers of SPS DC for an impressive SharePoint Saturday gathering this weekend. I hear the final count was 929 people—including 90 speakers who presented over 100 sessions. I co-presented a session on SharePoint 2010 migration and storage optimization.

Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to get a video of @meetdux rapping during the keynote—hopefully, someone will post it to YouTube. It was along the same lines as the SharePoint is Nice Nice Baby BPC09 Remix, except this one was to the tune of Empire State of Mind.

Metalogix was a platinum sponsor at the event, so obviously we had a booth and were talking to lots of people about how they can use Metalogix software to upgrade to SharePoint 2010, migrate content from other systems to SharePoint 2010, improve SharePoint performance with StoragePoint, archive SharePoint and many other topics.

Happy Birthday Microsoft SharePoint 2010!

For those of us who work in the content management space, today was a very important day. Microsoft has officially launched Microsoft SharePoint 2010. SharePoint 2010 is clearly going to be the largest release of SharePoint ever—the largest release of ANY information management platform ever.

                                          - The Metalogix Halifax SharePoint 2010 birthday cake

At Metalogix, we were also thrilled to be included in Microsoft’s keynote presentation as one of the key SharePoint Gold Certified Partners. Here is the slide that Stephen Elop, President, Microsoft Business Division used in his presentation.

SharePoint 2010 Taxonomy Web Part Development Screencast

I have posted another video demo on the Metalogix blog. The SharePoint 2010 Taxonomy Web Part Development Screencast demonstrates how to create a Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Visual Web Part that uses the new Taxonomy API. The Taxonomy API is one of the Enterprise Metadata Management features provided in SharePoint 2010.

You can get the code used in this example in my blog series on SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Metadata Management (a.k.a. Taxonomy).

Metalogix is a Platinum Sponsor of Microsoft’s Official SharePoint 2010 Launch Tour. Come see Metalogix product in action and speak with a Metalogix representative at one of these SharePoint 2010 Launch Tour Events.

SharePoint Site Migration Manager 2010 PowerShell Screencast

This screencast shows a quick demo of how anyone can easily use Metalogix SharePoint Site Migration Manager (SSMM) 2010 to generate PowerShell scripts for upgrading, migrating or managing Microsoft SharePoint.

See the screencast video here: http://www.metalogix.net/SharePoint-Site-Migration-Manager-2010-PowerShell-Screencast/

- The log view now contains the “Generate PowerShell Script” button

SharePoint Site Migration Manager UI Upgrade

My latest Metalogix blog post, SharePoint Site Migration Manager 2010 UI, is live on the Metalogix blog.

- The new Metalogix SharePoint Site Migration Manager 2010 options dialog

- gotta love that ‘Generate PowerShell Script’ button

SharePoint Game of Life

I’m sure some SharePoint community folks will remember John Conway’s Game of Life population simulation (cellular automaton) from comp. sci. For my SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Metadata Management (EMM, or taxonomy) talk at SharePoint Saturday in New York last weekend, I decided to create my own version for testing the performance of the new SharePoint taxonomy API.

Update: I have posted the source code for the SharePoint Game of Life web part on CodePlex. If you’re interested in SharePoint taxonomy, you can also check out my blog series on Enterprise Metadata Management (EMM).

Using the rules of the Game of Life, I created a SharePoint 2010 Visual Web Part that creates a new taxonomy term for each organism spawned during the simulation. When the creature dies, the term is deleted from the term store.

- SharePoint Game of Life running a glider

I actually did this back in 1999 for the NCompass Resolution Publishing API (the software that eventually became Microsoft Content Management Server), so I also had an interesting exercise of porting ASP script to C# code. The SharePoint Game of Life web part tracks the number of terms created and the time it took to run. I’m planning to use this web part as a sample for a SharePoint 2010 book project.

Here are the rules of the game (from Wikipedia):

Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbours dies, as if caused by under population.

Any live cell with more than three live neighbours dies, as if by overcrowding.

Any live cell with two or three live neighbours lives on to the next generation.

Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbours becomes a live cell.

The most famous pattern in the game is called a glider. This pattern is interesting because over iterations, it will simply continue to move across the grid. The glider configuration has been adopted as the hacker emblem.

- the glider starting position

For dramatic effect, I decided to add an image for a dead organism—as you can see in the animation. This isn’t normally done, so for the Game of Life purists, I’ll probably add an option to disable it in the release version of the code.

The code isn’t ready for prime time yet, so I don’t have perf numbers to publish yet. But hopefully, I’ll get a chance to polish it up soon.

BTW – The creature is an homage to Mazogs. A ZX-81 (Timex Sinclair 1000) game I played as a kid.

Michael Gannotti Interview

With over 31,000 followers, SharePoint social media expert Michael Gannotti (the SocialMedia Samurai, @gannotti) is one of the most prolific tweeters/bloggers in the SharePoint community.

During Microsoft SharePoint Conference 2009 (#SPC09), Mike came by and did two interviews with me at the Metalogix booth. The first one has been posted here: http://socialmedia.mikegannotti.com/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=278 (direct link to video: http://www.vimeo.com/7262459).

In this first interview, we talk about Metalogix SharePoint Site Migration Manager and how it makes upgrade to SharePoint 2010 a whole lot easier. Migration and upgrade to SharePoint 2010 was also the topic of my session at SPC09.



- @gannotti and @cawood talk about SharePoint 2010 upgrade and management


Unlike the out of the box options, upgrading to SharePoint 2010 with SharePoint Site Migration Manager does not require the same software, hardware, DB and service pack prerequisites. For example, you can migrate from SPS 2003 on SQL Server Express running on a 32 bit version of Windows in a simple copy and paste interface.

Update: Since I posted about this, the second interview has been posted. In the second video, we talk about Metalogix Website Migration Manager (WMM). Website Migration Manager can migrate any web pages from other web systems to SharePoint. e.g., Interwoven, Oracle Content Server (Stellent), HTML, cold fusion, ASP, ASPX, Vingette, etc.

SharePoint Conference is Sold Out

The Microsoft SharePoint Conference for 2009 is sold out! I'll be presenting a session about SharePoint upgrade and it's good to see that the wave of SharePoint enthusiasm continues.

From the Microsoft SharePoint Team Blog:

"We’re officially SOLD OUT! With 7000+ SharePoint experts, developers, partners, users, MVP’s and enthusiasts this is officially the BIGGEST SHAREPOINT CONFERENCE EVER!!! We’ve had a phenomenal response to the conference this year with a 94% increase in attendance and we can’t wait to see you all in just over 10 days!"

Moving to the Cloud

Tomorrow, I leave for a conference road trip to Tampa and Denver for the Moving to the Cloud Migration Solutions Series for Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS).

I'll be showing Microsoft partners how they can migrate their customers' data to the cloud using Metalogix software. In particular, I'll be demonstrating how to move content from on-premise SharePoint servers to SharePoint Online with Metalogix SharePoint Site Migration Manager, and also how to move files and web content using FileShare Migration Manager and Website Migration Manager.

And who knows, maybe I'll even give a sneak peak of one of our new Microsoft Exchange apps.