SharePoint causing info management problems, says analyst

Information caught in dead SharePoint project sites being lost by firms

SharePoint and legacy applications create hard-to-reach siloed business-critical information

Firms are losing business-critical information contained in Microsoft SharePoint sites, according to research firm Ovum's research director Tim Jennings.

Jennings said two customer surveys of European IT decision-makers showed that firms were deploying SharePoint for business collaboration without any forethought about information governance around the technology.

HP information management expert Erik Moller said: "SharePoint is one of Microsoft's product successes, with customers implementing the solution because of the collaboration boost it provides to firms."

"SharePoint sites are easy to set up, but when the project ends, business-critical information is stuck in these sites," he added.

Getting IT to dig out that information will not be high on their list of priorities, because staff will be working on other projects by then."

Jennings also indicated similar problems with consolidating legacy applications.

"When legacy applications are retired, or consolidated [by rolling out applications which combine functions of legacy applications], firms still need access to the business-critical information that was in the original legacy software," he said.