Document Management with SharePoint Server 2007

Prebuilt workflows and improvements in underlying technologies make SharePoint Server 2007, the latest version of Microsoft’s Web portal and collaboration platform, more suitable for corporate document management than previous versions. The product’s low initial costs and Office integration could give it an edge over other document management products, such as EMC’s Documentum and IBM’s Filenet. However, organizations deploying SharePoint Server 2007 face a challenge familiar to customers of other vendors’ platforms—although document management solutions can improve efficiency for organizations, their success depends on user acceptance and discipline, and they will be prone to failure if considered burdensome by users.

Platform for Document Management

Document management solutions are intended to help organize, categorize, and store important documents, and to make those documents easier for users to work with and find. Microsoft promotes SharePoint Server 2007 as, among other things, a document management platform, one leg of the product’s Enterprise Content Management (ECM) strategy, which also comprises tools and services for the following: