Harmon.ie Unveils Top 25 Online SharePoint Influencers for 2012

Today, Harmon.ie announced its list of the Top 25 online SharePoint Influencers. This second annual list brings together bloggers, writers and other industry professionals who have made a substantial impact on the SharePoint industry.

Harmon.ie, a company that creates software solutions to improve the social experience for users, commissioned to see who within the SharePoint community was not only the most innovative, but who also were the most informed and influential in terms of building a strong collaborative and social enterprise. They looked at over 700 potential candidates and eventually whittled the list down to 25 people.

The Top 10 SharePoint Influencers, according to the list from Harmon.ie
 

How Does the List Work?

When Harmon.ie was trying to determine who would make their list, there were certain factors that played a key role in who was chosen. These factors which were weighed and then determined the rank of the candidate include:

• How frequently their tweets were re-tweeted
• How much visitors they had to their their blog and how far it reached within the SharePoint Industry.
• How many citations they were given by other bloggers and colleagues.

Two things are coming into play here — SharePoint has become a more strategic platform for businesses, while users are looking for better social solutions, adoption strategies and innovative approaches to business problems,” said Mark Fidelman, CEO of Evolve!, a social business consultancy, and leading social strategist of the Top 25 Influencer Award. “These 25 individuals are passionate advocates, who are re-defining the value of social community and collaboration.”

Who Topped the List?

The individual scores of the top 25 range from 5455 to 3025. While the list is available on the Harmon.ie website, the following are those who ranked in the top five.

• Joel Oleson: Joel, who has 5455 points in the ranking system, is a SharePoint content and collaboration solutions manger for LDS Church, a former Microsoft senior technical product manager and was part of a team who designed Microsoft’s global search, intranet and teams sites. In 2011, he was in second place on Top 25 SharePoint Influencers List.
• Mark Miller: Mark, with a score of 5450, is the founder and editor of EndUserSharePoint.com. He also helps organizations with their social media development and building their online community.
• Andrew Connell: With a score of 4975, Andrew is ranked third. He is a SharePoint developer and instructor who has a also co-founded Critical Path Training, which educates and trains individuals in SharePoint. He is also a Microsoft MVP for Office SharePoint Server.
• Laura Rogers: Laura has a score of 4520. With eight years experience in the industry, she is now a senior SharePoint specialist at Rackspace Hosting and is a Microsoft MVP. She’s also written a variety of books in the subject including: Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Step by Step and Beginning SharePoint 2010: Building Business Solutions with SharePoint.
• John Mancini: With a score of 4490, John is ranked in fifth place. He is the president of the Association for Information and Image management (AIIM), which is a document and content management non-profit association.

A Big Year for SharePoint

With its 2013 version scheduled to be released this month and a conference next week, the list comes at an important time for those in the SharePoint industry. More and more products are being announced for the platform or are being updated so they are compatible with this new release. 

Recently, BA Insight announced use its Longitude Connectors to connect the newest version of SharePoint to about 30 different business related enterprise systems. And when Metalogix renamed its Migration Manager tool to Content Matrix they also announced that it could be used to move content from an older version of SharePoint to the 2013 version. But that's only a taste of what's to come.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Harmon.ie Connect for SharePoint Aims to Cross Platforms, Devices

Enterprise workflow integration specialist harmon.ie is releasing Connect for SharePoint, a collaboration tool designed to create a single, unified user experience that crosses not only multiple devices but also the Microsoft and Apple platforms.

A Window on the Virtual and Mobile World

Connect for SharePoint allows document and social information from disparate sources and operating systems to appear in one window with a consistent user experience on both mobile and fixed devices. Changes immediately become visible across all connected platforms and devices, without any special setup or configuration.

For mobile users, harmon.ie says Connect for SharePoint makes the iPad “enterprise ready” to enable secure document creation and sharing directly from the iPad platform. The solution also supports mobile device management (MDM) for mobile distribution and provisioning. 

Harmon.ie Follows Gartner’s Advice, Targets BYOD Users

In May 2012, harmon.ie made the list of “Cool Vendors in Social Software and Collaboration” compiled by Gartner. Harmon.ie received kudos for addressing the "hurdle" of collaborating without having to leave email, but Gartner warned that the company must expand beyond the narrow range of email and document collaboration tools it currently integrates.

Right around the time that report was released, harmon.ie was already starting to heed Gartner’s recommendation by debuting a new mobile SharePoint iPad app which provides iPad users with the social interaction and document collaboration power of SharePoint, but also adds the ability to share items via links instead of email attachments.

Harmon.ie is continuing to follow Gartner’s advice with Connect for SharePoint, which greatly increases the ability for employees to collaborate without worrying about device or OS specifications. The solution seems especially aimed at the constantly growing number of BYOD users who leverage an array of disparate personal devices from numerous vendors — running on both Microsoft and Apple operating systems — in their jobs. Allowing BYOD users to easily collaborate and share documents and information solves one key problem of BYOD, though others — such as security — remain. 

‘SharePointWendy’ Gives Thumbs Up

SharePoint blogger Wendy Neal (“SharePointWendy”) gives Connect for SharePoint a positive review. “(W)hen users are out of the office or away from their desks, they can still enjoy the same consistent user experience, and any changes they make to documents or interactions with colleagues are automatically synchronized across all devices and platforms,” states Neal. She also verifies that changes made on one platform or device will immediately be visible on the others and says the “iPad and iPhone versions look very similar to, and provide the same functionality, as the harmon.ie sidebar in Outlook, thus promoting consistency and familiarity across platforms and devices.”

Neal does mention one downside. Users of iOS devices “need to have some kind of app installed that allows you to modify Office documents.” She says harmon.ie expects to natively support Windows and Android platforms in 2013.

Harmon.ie Connect is available from the App Store or as an MDM package download. Stand-alone versions of harmon.ie are available for free via a mobile app available on iTunes and a desktop app from harmon.ie. 

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com