CollabTalk LLC announces the immediate availability of a SharePoint customer survey to measure the state of the Hybrid SharePoint ecosystem, in partnership with the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University. This independent research effort is being conducted by a graduate team from BYU and CollabTalk, and is sponsored by Microsoft along with leading solution providers PixelMill and B&R Business Solutions, and other partners. The survey will be open to SharePoint customers through March 22nd, with final research data and analysis made available in mid-April 2017.

The survey can be found at http://hybrid-sp.collabtalk.com/

According to Bill Baer, Senior Technical Product Manager at Microsoft and one of the leading experts on the topic of hybrid SharePoint, “Office 365 makes the journey to the cloud easy with all the features and benefits of Office: instant access to SharePoint, Exchange, and Skype for Business on any device, any platform, with endless scale. However, for many organizations the cloud is a destination that requires a vision and strategy to make the most of it. Hybrid allows you to bring the cloud to your business while you bring your business to the cloud. Whether you are already well into your cloud journey or just getting started, this study will help us understand where you’re at and what we can do to help.”

As collaboration moves from on-prem to the cloud, many organizations struggle with moving years of on-prem SharePoint infrastructure, customizations, and data. There is no accurate data as to how many customers are actively pursuing hybrid solutions as a strategy, versus simply displacing their on-prem environments. Additionally, there is no accurate data identifying and quantifying the gaps between existing on-prem deployments and SharePoint Online, and how many companies are impacted. Having clear data on these gaps will help organizations better understand adoption and engagement issues, and plan future SharePoint strategies.

“Many of our existing and potential clients are excited, but skeptical with making a switch from their tired-yet-trusted on-premises infrastructure straight to the cloud,” states Eric Overfield, SharePoint MVP and president of PixelMill, based in Davis, CA. “A hybrid solution sounds promising but the lack of sound data hinders business decisions. This research may help us further understand how organizations are moving to the cloud, which in turn allows us to better collaborate and advise organizations on the best solution for their specific requirements.”

“We expect the survey results will help us to better understand where some organizations are experiencing challenges while others are successfully leveraging hybrid deployments,” says Mike Oryszak, managing director at B&R Business Solutions, located in Durham, NC. “Results will be used to help our team focus on building the right accelerators to make deployments easier. I also expect that survey feedback will generate a healthy discussion within the technical community on overcoming the obstacles to achieve a successful deployment.”

In addition to research sponsors Microsoft, PixelMill, and B&R Business Solutions, other sponsorring organizations include Rencore, Crow Canyon Systems, tyGraph, Focal Point Solutions, and AvePoint, with media partners 1105media, European SharePoint Conference, BZ Media, and fiftyfiveandfive.