Last week, computing.co.uk published an article called SharePoint causing info management problems, says analyst. The analyst wasn’t me (I’ve said it already, it’s in my book), but the article starts:

“Firms are losing business-critical information contained in Microsoft SharePoint sites, according to research firm Ovum’s research director Tim Jennings.

Jennings said two customer surveys of European IT decision-makers showed that firms were deploying SharePoint for business collaboration without any forethought about information governance around the technology.

HP information management expert Erik Moller said: “SharePoint is one of Microsoft’s product successes, with customers implementing the solution because of the collaboration boost it provides to firms.”

“SharePoint sites are easy to set up, but when the project ends, business-critical information is stuck in these sites,” he added.“

My next book, SharePoint Roadmap Governance Themes, greatly expands on the governance chapter in SharePoint Roadmap for Collaboration. Two themes have been explored to date — Site Creation Rights, and User Adoption Strategies — and there are reports available on both of those. The third theme for investigation is Site Closure Policy. In other words, what do you do with SharePoint sites when their useful life is at an end, however you define that?

As with the previous two reports, there’s a survey. If you have involvement in setting governance decisions for SharePoint at your organization, please take the survey now.

Respondents who complete the survey will receive a free copy of the research report, due for publication in July 2010.

The survey closes on Friday July 9 … so please do it now!! Thanks.