Brief: SharePoint Innovations Aimed At Employees, Not Customers

In March 2014, Microsoft announced new innovations for SharePoint 2013; this brief analyzes the good and bad news. The many customers who use SharePoint for employee collaboration will find much to like — collaboration within Office documents is far easier, and integration across Office products is deeper and better. Further, Microsoft committed to a device-agnostic mobile strategy that promises payoffs to all Office customers, SharePoint included. Unfortunately, SharePoint users hoping for improvements to it as a platform for customer engagement will be disappointed, as Microsoft made their lives more complex.