One of the most talked about topics in the SharePoint community is adoption. It’s pretty safe to say that SharePoint owners strive for a high level of adoption but few have the luxury of experiencing it. I use the term luxury here because in many causes it takes effort, buy-in, and resources that some companies or groups simply do not have at their disposal. At least not in the SharePoint group. It usually takes a combination of both upper management, administrators, a subset of the user base to work together. Additional success factors include the proper 3rd party tools to fill gaps that SharePoint may have that contribute to the lack of adoption. The reality is that SharePoint does a lot, but it doesn’t to absolutely everything, hence why the SharePoint app store should change adoption forever.

When it comes to adoption each company does it differently. This is why success stories and use cases play such an important role in the SharePoint ecosystem because they showcase how companies have succeeded in driving adoption. This is why Yammer is such an important element to the ongoing success of the SharePoint platform. People need to communicate regardless of the business or vertical they are in. Communication happens every day and making business communication and collaboration productive and easier always makes sense. Nationwide, one of the largest insurance and financial services companies in the world, provides a great success story on this very topic. If you haven’t had a chance to hear about the “SPOT” project it’s definitely worth watching. Here is a link to the Video Case Study: Nationwide Enhances Enterprise wide Culture of Collaboration with Social Computing.

Providing easy to use collaboration capabilities on top of SharePoint will drastically improve a core necessity of everyday business life and that’s communication. But it’s not just about collaboration, it’s about making collaboration productive. In the Nationwide example it’s really about using collaboration to solve critical business problems. The same could be said for making it easier to answer important critical business questions or making process facilitation faster and easier. As we know, SharePoint provides a platform to do all of these things and much more but there are roadblocks. Yammer is starting to help companies collaborate and communicate more effectively but there are many other functional roadblocks that can put a damper on SharePoint adoption levels just the same. We can begin learning a valuable lesson from the Yammer playbook when looking to resolving other adoption roadblocks. Some of the keys to adoption success are mass accessibility, ease of use, and frequent ongoing innovation. This is why the App Store could completely change the game of enterprise software forever because it set up to deliver on all of those fronts.

There is no debating that the App Store is in its infancy but it will eventually become the storefront of tools that people in the enterprise can download, install, and purchase (lower price points). This will all be possible with little to no “platform” risk due to client side technologies used (like JavaScript, HTML5 and CSS) and the cloud. IT is slowly losing its stronghold on what tools people both have access to or use. For the people who don’t have access to tools like SharePoint Designer, InfoPath, or Excel Services the App Store serves as a powerful new enablement mechanism to get solutions or tools they desperately need. Here are a few roadblocks to adoption today and how the app store changed the game.

5 Adoption Roadblocks Today

1. Device Compatibility
The SharePoint mobile experience has gotten better with SharePoint 2013 but the BYOD market is changing so rapidly, it’s been difficult for the Microsoft on-premise platform to keep up. A driving force in SharePoint platform adoption will be the tablet and mobile experience. Delivering a delightful mobile experience is not easy to do when you are sitting on top of a complex legacy code that barely runs in a modern browser, let alone on a new device. As the SharePoint platform reach (internally and externally) grows so will its dependency on solutions to run seamlessly on mobile and tablet devices.

2. Farm Solutions are Risky
Any type of managed/customized code that runs in a farm solution introduces platform risk to the entire environment because it runs inside the main SharePoint worker process. This also becomes an issue when an upgrade is needed. Solutions that use full trust are tightly bound to the underlining feature sets which means they may not move gracefully to the next version of SharePoint. This results in hesitancy putting tools or built solutions on the SharePoint server.

3. Tool Availability is Exclusive
Microsoft provides a variety of great tools that help extend SharePoint solutions like SharePoint Designer, Excel Services, and Visual Studio to name a few. Unfortunately not everyone has the ability to use these tools. Even if a 3rd party tool is found, most users don’t have the ability to install or use it due to restricted access. This creates a certain level of tool exclusivity that prohibits most users from getting tools they need much less building the solution.

4. Enterprise Software is Expensive
Most enterprise applications on the market today can only be acquired by IT or procurement groups with enough organizational authority, budget or expense authority to purchase them. Beyond the lack of access to the server to install such solutions, the price alone puts most of these options off the table for most users to consider.

5. Tools are Decentralized
Prior to SharePoint (and Office) 2013, there was no unified place to find tools or solutions built on a standard platform. Users have historically been forced to “shop around” for tools and solutions they may need. Most users wouldn’t go through the hassle of doing this and even if they found something that would help, they may not be able to use them due to the many reasons stated above.

2. Client Side Solutions are Safe
When client side technologies are used to deliver a product, it separates the solution from the server. Issues like server performance, stability, and upgradability are completely avoided. When major platform risks are avoided, the proliferation of apps and solutions can be used on a mass scale and even become viral in adoption. Yes I said viral adoption in a SharePoint based blog post!

3. Mass Tool/App Availability
First and foremost the SharePoint App store provides a storefront of apps that is easily accessible from SharePoint 2013 and Office 365. Additionally ratings and recommendations can be easily made for everyone using the tools. The centralization, information, and ease of access provides a fantastic self-service opportunity for people regardless of business unit to look for solutions they need. There is no dependency on IT, procurement, or committee to choose software for the masses. The apps are available for everyone equally.

4. Lower Price Points
The App Store provides solutions at a fraction of the cost of a traditional enterprise software sale along with budget friendly license models to choose from. When price points go from CapEx to OpEx, more people and groups can afford to take advantage of tools they want and need.

5. Centralization
Having a centralized storefront allows for “one-stop shopping” to occur. There is no exclusivity to the public App Store. All apps are available for evaluation and purchase in one place for everyone. This was simply not possible with previous versions of SharePoint (or Office for that matter). The easier it is to access and evaluate available tools, the more likely people are to not only look for them but use them as well.

As you can see there is a lot of change happening in the App Space. One final thing to keep in mind is that in many aspects, this movement is in its infancy. It will grow and evolve over time. We are already seeing the model work in various verticals through the growth of SalesForce, LinkedIn, and Netsuite to name a few. I am excited about what the future holds as companies begin to deliver next generation products and the SharePoint app store is at the forefront of this movement within the enterprise and Microsoft ecosystem. The big question will be, what will the next generation killer apps be? I am excited to see this unfold as the best is yet to come!

If you have a comment or questions in relation to Dan’s blog please leave a comment below.

This article was was wrote by Dan Barker, Global Product Manager – Dell Software. Dell Software are signed up as platinum sponsors for ESPC14.

For more expert advice on Apps, why not download Paolo Pialorsi’s ESPC13 conference presentation on ‘Consuming SharePoint 2013 from Windows 8 Apps‘. Download Now>>