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Comment by endtime | Hacker News Reader

>Microsoft in the recent decade, has tried to indulge itself on different domains of IT. Obviously, it has failed on all of them,

I thought Sharepoint and SQL Server were huge hits - no?

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They are. Sharepoint in particular has been a surprise breakout hit. But even SQL Server has done very well and their recent BI push has been a pretty incredible success. Their online services, via BPOS, have also done very well.

The issue is that in more consumer targeted areas MS is in trouble. But in the enterprise they're probably stronger now than in any time in recent memory.

> Sharepoint in particular has been a surprise breakout hit.

Indeed. Tech historians will scratch their heads about that for generations. It's such a horrid product to use that one can only wonder how bad its competition is.

We disagree about a lot, but this is one thing that I do agree with. On both counts... Sharepoint doesn't seem to be very good software. But the competition is even worse. If some bright YC company that gets enterprise could come and do stellar document management, they'd easily have a $100M company. With potential for a $1B+ company.

I think it's only the perceived competition that's worse. I have deployed and helped deploy a great deal of intranets and websites based on Plone (I worked with "bare" Zope before) and it's delightful to use, manage, develop for and operate. True it doesn't have a billion+ dollar company behind it like Sharepoint, Documentum, Oracle's whatever-it's-called, but I think it's a feature rather than a bug.

> If some bright YC company (...)

As soon as this founder visa thing gets sorted out, I'm in.

Plone 3 was horrible, but I've heard better things about Plone 4. Post when you get started on it. I have a list of features that you'll need to get in the door of most enterprises, and a list of new features that will get you $10M in licenses your first year, virtually guaranteed.

While I agree Plone 3 was not as simple and elegant as I would like it to be, it's much better than most "corporate" CMSs. For the developer, the learning curve is steep, specially for those unwilling to unlearn bad habits, but for end users, it's easy to use and fairly complete.

What problems did you experience with it? I may be able to help.

I am sorry if I was not clear enough, but my interpretation of other domains was music players, tablets,etc. I agree Sharepoint and SQL Server are huge hits and they are doing good in corporate applications.

So, what you're saying is that Microsoft has failed in all domains of IT where MS has failed?

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