The State of Intranet-In-A-Box

When Microsoft CVP Jeff Teper (@jeffteper) returned to the SharePoint space, he met with a handful of MVPs and community experts to share his plans for the product and get some feedback, and I was able to connect with him and share some of my thoughts on the space. One topic that we discussed was the burgeoning intranet-in-a-box space. At the time I was consulting with one of the vendors in the space (Beezy) and would soon thereafter become their CMO. His thought at the time was that SharePoint’s focus on design and the user experience (UX) would squeeze out these vendors, and the opportunity would, in effect, “dry up” (my words, not his).

A couple years later, I again interviewed Jeff while we were speaking at SharePoint Saturday Twin Cities, and we once again discussed the intranet-in-a-box space, and he admitted that the growth of the category of partner solutions surprised him — while at the same time recognizing that these vendors were helping to drive renewed interest in the platform. It was during this time that I became familiar with ClearBox Consulting, a UK-based SharePoint, intranet, and collaboration consulting company, and their SharePoint Intranets-In-A-Box Report, now at Version 5.

At the end of last year, I was able to connect with ClearBox owner and lead consultant Sam Marshall (@sammarshall) to discuss the state of the intranet-in-a-box category, and get his impressions on the continued growth of the category (his team is tracking over 80 vendor solutions!), the growth and resiliency of SharePoint, and what he expects to see in the future within this category.

You can watch the full interview below on the CollabTalk YouTube page:

You can also listen to the interview via the CollabTalk Podcast, which you can find on Soundcloud (embedded below), as well as Spotify, Stitcher, iTunes, and GooglePlay.