WPC 2007 Expo Notes

This article was originally posted on July 19, 2007.

At WPC 2007 in Denver, I spent time meeting with and learning about several ISVs, and I’m still digesting all of the marketing literature, not to mention the assiduous follow-up messages (and, of course, the rest of my job). So, herewith please find a brief summary of some of the more interesting and relevant ISVs in my eyes. Your mileage, of course, may vary. J

SharePoint Utilities:

• Syntergy’s Replicator product is taking shape as a good tool for SharePoint replication across locations, allowing granular, bi-directional replication. The replication question is one of the most frequent questions that I get when discussing SharePoint implementation, especially among larger, distributed organizations. I will be working with my more technical colleagues to ensure that we understand this solution more deeply. Also, for companies using both OpenText’s LiveLink and SharePoint, Syntergy has expertise in both and has developed some utilities for integration and migration between the two collaboration platforms.
• AvePoint’s DocAve 4.1 Backup product is a good addition to SQL backups, stsadm utilities, and system-wide backups via tools like BackupExec, providing fast, full-fidelity, granular backup and restore options for SharePoint with an easy-to-use graphical interface (Backup Builder). Although most known for backup/restore solutions, AvePoint also sells migration and data management utilities for SharePoint.
• Colligo’s Colligo Contributor product provides a rich client application designed to provide SharePoint capabilities both on-line and off-line via a desktop client or an Outlook add-in. Off-line capability is another frequent request by new SharePoint users, especially those coming from a Lotus Notes environment and used to rich off-line functionality.
• BusinessWeb Software’s AchieveForms product looks interesting, and worthy of some research to see the degree it allows for authoring of rich SharePoint forms without the perceived complexity and cost of InfoPath clients or Forms Server. I’ll be reviewing this in more depth to see if it can be part of a solution to some of our clients’ forms development needs.

Workflow:

Search:

There are others, and I will be digging my way through these for many weeks, but one final thing: Best of Show. For sheer coolness and crowds (consistently 3–5 deep around the kiosk every time I walked by), nothing on the Expo floor compared to the Microsoft Surface booth. Change the world, indeed…here’s the teaser: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cog8b8ojji0

Originally published at https://mikegil.typepad.com.