With the announcement from Microsoft about public websites built on SharePoint would no longer be supported in office 365, there are many business wondering what would happen to their SharePoint websites. However, on-premises SharePoint platforms are still available to build your website. Now you must be having a question why would you build your site on SharePoint.
We see a great surge in the market for CMSs (Content Management Systems) in the recent years. It brings a wide range of choices to the companies while selecting the platform for their website. Most of these platforms are created to target some specific features, but overall these CMSs provides a gamut of features and functions, plus lots of features can be developed additionally using the base programming language. Whenever an organization selects any of these platforms, they consider various factors like Nature of License fee structure, readily available resources to extend them, ease of use etc. to mention a few.
Apart from achieving one or two important tasks at a lower cost or more easily, one of the major reasons for selecting the platform are external to the CMS itself. Two of the major criteria are: user familiarity and easy integration with existing systems and applications.
If we consider SharePoint in particular some of the needs of large organizations can easily be taken care of. Some of the flexible features necessary for websites with lots of information and data within them can easily be enabled. The site features like advanced search, extensive document library, easy integration with other MSFT products such as MS Office, Outlook and Dynamics CRM or ERP and readily available developers in the internal team, makes it the best choice.
Let us discuss some appealing features within SharePoint:
Licensing and its Integration with MSFT environment
Many organizations create websites in SharePoint as they have agreements with MSFT that covers almost all the licensing fees which makes SharePoint a free tool for them to use, apart from costs associated with development, hosting etc.
SharePoint is also suggested in situations, when it’s easier to incorporate in an environment composed mainly of other Microsoft tools. E.g. for instance, if you are already be using a MS SQL Server database, which can be used for development of workflows that rely on information flow from sources like MS CRM to the website. SharePoint also seamlessly integrates into your existing security models.
Easy Integration of Document Libraries and Staging Environments
Using SharePoint for the websites, not only offers powerful document-sharing tools, but more importantly, it allows seamless workflow creations, so that all the documents uploaded or downloaded from within the website can go through the proper approval processes anytime they are revised.
After all, SharePoint is one of the most popular collaboration platforms. Hence it works well for websites that require a lot of developers and content creators to work together at the back end. It also works very well, in conditions where a lot of approvals are needed, as out of the box it provides a staging environment which can be used for development, before going live on the Internet.
It’s Familiarity due to existing Implementations
As SharePoint has Microsoft written all over it, it’s obvious the UI is similar to all other Microsoft products.
As its obvious most of the corporate relay heavily on MSFT products, hence a company may simply be familiar with SharePoint’s tools and interfaces. Most of them are already using it as an internal collaboration platform.
Using your corporate portal’s existing internal implementation and building a website on it may be the simplest way to set up a CMS. The IT staffs are already acquainted while the non-IT personnel will have an easier time understanding the platform and managing/using the features.
There is one more factor, i.e. SharePoint’s customizability. It may not be the best tool for managing web contents, but Sharepoint Web development services can be configured to address complex challenges. So these are a few reasons for an organization to build their corporate site on SharePoint.
