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Social Intranets the Microsoft Way

We interrupt our regularly scheduled series on SharePoint Careers to direct you to a series my colleague, Mark Polly, is writing on Social Intranets.  It’s definitely worth checking out, and a higher-level take on a subject we’ve explored in this space many times over– a good companion piece to everything we’ve published (and will continue to write) on Intranets, SharePoint 2013 and Yammer.
Of course, while Mark is looking at things from a “technology agnostic” perspective, I have no real need or desire to be agnostic.  I’m a homer for Microsoft technologies, so where Mark is listing a few dozen different technologies that make up and enable a portal, I see the three or four tightly-integrated Microsoft products that make up a (ahem) best-in-class social intranet ecosystem.  (And yes, that’s this author’s very personal opinion, but I do think it’s justified!)
So let’s take a quick look at Mark’s posts– where he reviews enabling technologies that integrate with social intranets– and supply the Cliff’s Notes for how the Microsoft product stack provides these functions.

Core Social Intranet Technology
Portal SharePoint 2013
Content Management (Web) SharePoint 2013
Document Management SharePoint 2013
Search SharePoint 2013
App Integration SharePoint 2013
Mobile access SharePoint 2013
User Analytics SharePoint 2013 (basic), Partner Applications (Advanced)
Activity Streams SharePoint 2013 (basic), Yammer (advanced, cloud) or NewsGator (advanced, on-premise)
Microblogging SharePoint 2013
Blogs SharePoint 2013
Wiki SharePoint 2013
Profiles SharePoint 2013, Active Directory, Yammer
Single Sign On (SSO) SharePoint 2013, Active Directory, Yammer
Security SharePoint 2013, Active Directory
Enabling Technologies
Instant messaging Lync Server 2013
Web conferencing Lync Server 2013
Video messaging Lync Server 2013
Unified telephony Lync Server 2013
E-Mail Exchange Server 2013, Outlook 2013

The moral of the story is simple.  Everything Mark’s written is true, and if you want to look at each of those technologies separately, you can– but you’re asking for unnecessary complexity.  Microsoft’s solutions– SharePoint, Lync, Yammer– provide a tightly-woven fabric for a social intranet where interaction and connection between people is easy and seamless.  There’s nothing else like it in the market.
And did we mention they do it all in the cloud, too..?

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Rich Wood

Rich Wood has been planning, designing and building enterprise solutions and internet sites with an emphasis on stellar user and customer experiences since 1997. Rich is a National Director for Content and Commerce Platform work in Perficient Digital. One of the rare breed of strategists to truly understand both the business needs of the customer and the platforms that serve them, he is a keen advocate for and accomplished speaker/writer on issues that surround that inflection point. His work has been published on CMSWire, Sitecore and Microsoft partner blogs, and his own LinkedIn page as well as our various blogs here at Perficient, and he has spoken at multiple major conferences including Microsoft's SharePoint Conference 2014. Married and a father of five, Rich enjoys spending time with his wife and family. He is a native of South Milwaukee, Wisconsin and a graduate of Marquette University.

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