Due to different reasons, many organisations look for alternatives to SharePoint as intranet platform. This presentation will cover the most typical intranet scenarios and most typical competing systems for them. The presentation will analyze the market from the perspective of Scandinavia and will cover systems like Liferay, Confluence, EPiServer, Alfresco, etc. Key questions: What are the most common WCMS and portal systems that are challenging SharePoint in the areas where SharePoint is weak? In what kind of situations you should question SharePoint as being the default choice for intranet? How to make that argument and also offer strong alternatives? What are the key differentiators between systems? Eg. language management, document management, search capabilities. Where is the WCMS market going? Can we expect more competitors to SharePoint in the future?

1. Intranet systems
beyond
SharePoint
– overview of the best alternatives
2014-05-21 / intranätverk 2014 / Gothenburg, Sweden
Perttu Tolvanen, Web & CMS Expert, @perttutolvanen
…in Scandinavia

2. © 2014 North Patrol Oy2
Advisor for web & intranet renewals
- Vendor-neutral CMS consultants
- Helsinki-based, but most clients
operate in Northern Europe /
Scandinavia / Russia
- CMS selections and partner
selections for large projects
- Founded 2012, growing

3. Agenda
North Patrol Oy 20143
Overview of the
most typical
intranet
concepts
Differences that
have an effect
on system
selection
Main
challengers for
SharePoint in
each scenario

4. “The big picture”
North Patrol Oy 2014
HR systems
(Oracle, SAP, etc)
Intranet
News, guidelines,
phonebook, important
documents, search
Phonebook
/ people
profiles
ERP (SAP & others)
(+ other line of
business systems)
CRM
Partner
extranets
WebsitesCustomer
extranets
eCommerce
Custom
apps
Document
management
& project sites

5. Most typical concepts and systems
1) Social
publishing
- Traditional intranets (1.0) with social features
- Document management and teamwork is
mostly done using other tools and intranet is
mainly seen as a communication tool
- Added complexity from multilanguage
management or having complex organizational
structure and/or shared operations in different
countries
2) Complex
social
publishing
3)
Management
portal
concept
- Intranet is also a place to view business reports
collected from different systems
- Employees can have limited access to different
3rd party systems through intranet
4) Social
publishing &
teamwork
5) Social
publishing &
teamwork &
document
management
- Intranet is also the place for teams to discuss
projects and share information.
- Profile pages are seen as ”employee’s
dashboard” and a place to start their work
- Document management is seen as key feature.
- Besides managing important documents the
intranet should be the main place for reviewing,
editing and sharing project documents.

6. Summary
© 2014 North Patrol Oy6
1. If your intranet is fairly traditional you have a lot of good options. Most web content
management tools can work very well. If you want a more specialized tool, then systems like
Atlassian Confluence or dedicated intranet products (like Interact or Igloo or local ones) should
be evaluated. Many dedicated products are not very cheap though, but many of them do offer
great collaboration environments (unfortunately just without proper document management).
2. If you need good multilanguage management you should probably choose a tool like EPiServer
since SharePoint doesn’t work very well for complex multilanguage/region scenarios.
3. The more complex your organization is, and the more targeted/profiled/personalized features
you want, the less you probably benefit from SharePoint. EPiServer and many portal tools are
often better for truly complex scenarios.
4. For example, if you absolutely need to have an intranet front page that every user can
personalize you should look into portals like Liferay and forget other choices.
5. If you absolutely need document management and team sites inside the intranet you don’t have
many alternatives for SharePoint. Alfresco is often chosen (great Office integration), but it isn’t
that great in publishing features (it is often combined with Liferay for this reason).
Currently, Office integration is the main problem for most alternatives (eg. for Huddle, IBM).

7. North Patrol Oy 20147
Thank you.
- Slides will be available on SlideShare
http://www.slideshare.net/perttutolvanen
- Twitter: @perttutolvanen and @NorthPatrol
- perttu.tolvanen@northpatrol.com
- http://www.northpatrol.com