The Server Room

Pros (pro-Sharepoint)

• Improved collaboration
• Content can have metadata attached easily to make it more searchable
• It’s easier to publish content for access outside school if it’s already being served up by an internal webserver.
• It looks prettier. (Not to be underestimated)
• People are (I suspect) more likely to organise files in a systematic way if they belong to an intranet site than if they are only stored in a shared directory.
• It may be possible to generate statistics of which files and document libraries are most used and which are never accessed. This is pretty much a non-starter with file auditing in Windows.

Cons (anti-Sharepoint)

• Administration of permissions is nowhere near as simple/powerful as it is within the native Windows interface
• Backups are carried out at the database level, so it’s an all-or-nothing approach. This means that when you run out of backup room/time, you can’t simply choose not to back less important areas up (no that’s not good practice anyway). It also means that restores are a lot more complex.
• No advanced NTFS features are available (volume shadow copy, encrypted filesystem, compressed files). You only miss them when they’re gone!
• Sharepoint-aware anti-virus products must be used to spot viruses in files stored in the Sharepoint database. That means extra expense and reduced choice of vendors.
• It’s always going to be much slower navigating through a Sharepoint site to get to the files you want than navigating a folder hierarchy in Windows.
• Some old, naff software may not support saving to a URL via WebDAV. Unfortunately old, naff software is the bedrock of UK education.