Joining Interact

I've just started a new role with a company called Interact.  They develop and market intranet software.  They were hiring and I got into discussions with their CEO, Nigel Danson, and things developed from there.  Having been pretty impressed with their competitor Igloo's product, I considered the bar to be high for Interact to impress me, but impress me they did.  I also like the 'roving consultant' nature of the role, and gelled very quickly with Rachel and Steve who also interviewed me. 

Have I gone over to the 'dark side', throwing my independence to the wind and from now on becoming nothing but a walking, talking, tweeting plugger of one firm's products?  I don't believe so.  I'll do my best to 'tell it as I see it'. Interact are clearly strong on running intranet seminars and their annual conference is a major event.  They like to emphasis the benefits of intranets rather than merely pitching their own product.

I'm looking forward to joining them.

No-one ever got fired for....

It used to be 'for choosing IBM'.  Over time, that became 'Microsoft'.  Arguably, now it's 'Sharepoint'.  It certainly seems that way to me.  A huge percentage of large corporations have chosen it for the portals / intranets, yet I don't hear much enthusiasm for the product.  The best that commentators seem to be able to come up with is things like, "It's very flexible - if you've got the development staff to tailor it", or "We know the supplier's going to be there in five years".  In other words, weak praise, mainly driven by safety concerns.  Maybe the recent purchase of Yammer will change things, but it's too early to say.

In the meantime, there are some excellent out-of-the-box and/or SaaS social intranets that are virtually unknown by comparison: Interact, Igloosoftware, Thoughtfarmer, MangoApps, to name but a few that I've looked into or used recently. 

Maybe it's time people did start getting fired for choosing Sharepoint instead of properly investigating alternatives such as these?