Sharepoint vs. Sitecore

This should really be: “When not to use a portal-centric solution.”  I’ve been asked before by a client/prospect why not use their internal Sharepoint implementation for their corporate site.  The simple answer is because it’s not meant to be.
I think that Sharepoint is a great product.  We even use it internally and it makes our internal processes go a lot smoother.  It helps us manage our documents.  It makes collaboration in our projects possible.  We are able to connect various business models into one system.  And, we can integrate it with other nifty Microsoft products we have access to as a Gold Certified Partner.  In brief, we love Sharepoint and I don’t know how we can manage our information without it.
With that said, it’s not always the best solution.  It can, however, be retrofitted to be a solution but that’s when more work is involved and thus not leveraging features that the product has.  When it comes to Sharepoint vs. Sitecore debate for external sites, there’s no sure winner…except when you know what the site is for. 
To me, Sharepoint is great for portal-based sites especially those that requires audience profiling and targeting, personalization, document management, and workflow.  But most sites don’t need this especially corporate sites.  So, why pay the licenses and the services to get it done?
On the other hand, Sitecore is great for content-based (instead of data) sites where the presentation is also a big deal.  Because of its “true” separation of content from presentation (where Sharepoint can’t really attest to), it allows for more control on the presentation.  Although Sharepoint can certainly be skinned, it’s not that straight-forward…remember using FrontPage at one point…and now Sharepoint Designer.
Here are my top reasons why Sharepoint is not the best solution for most external-facing Web sites:

• Licensing
  Sharepoint costs about $50k minimum to be used for external facing sites and that’s not including the Enterprise Search Server.  Compared to Sitecore’s entry point of $15k, Sharepoint is way too expensive. The main reason is because of MOSS for Internet Server (MOSSFIS) license which allows external anonymous users to access the site.  Hmmm…what if you want an extranet?  What would the licensing look like?  It’s just too complicated for this scenario.  Here’s a Sharepoint calculator if you’d like to see: http://community.bamboosolutions.com/blogs/sharepoint-price-calculator/default.aspx. UPDATE: See comments below for some discussion on this criteria.
  
• Developer vs. IT
  I think we can say that Sharepoint is enterprise-ready, but that' doesn’t mean Sitecore isn’t.  It’s just that the tools and how it’s deployed differs.  A lot of IT shops like Sharepoint because they can easily install it and maintain it.  Essentially, they have more “control”.  Sometimes, it’s a matter of politics.  But with politics aside, Sitecore CMS is geared more towards developers.  Sitecore really focused on making the software easy to customize and more open for complex functionalities…thus, more developer-friendly. I’m not sure what’s in store for Twin Peaks release, but I hope corporate can market it being more “IT-friendly”.  I think IT would like to to have inherent monitoring capabilities, backup tools, automatic updates, etc. 
  
• Development Environment
  We have several experience on developing on both platforms. As I said earlier, Sitecore is more developer-friendly and it starts with the development environment.  Essentially, Sitecore is just an ASP.NET application.  So if you know ASP.NET, you can develop using Sitecore.  I can’t easily say that for Sharepoint.  It’ll require more work.  Here’s a great blog on how to setup a Sharepoint environment (http://weblogs.asp.net/erobillard/archive/2007/02/23/build-a-sharepoint-development-machine.aspx).  Of course, this is just one of them but it should give you an idea.
  
• Deployment
  I guess this depends on perspective.  IT may say Sharepoint is easier to deploy than Sitecore because it has a set of instructions it needs to follow.  Remember, IT folks are not necessarily programmers, so they don’t like “exploratory” trial-and-error types of deployment.  To me, having deployed both, I say Sitecore is much easier to deploy the first time and follow-up updates to the production server(s).  The main thing is that you just need to have a very specific deployment process.  The only difference between Sitecore and Sharepoint is that Sharepoint created tools and written instructions, while Sitecore needs to have their partners define what’s appropriate for the client.  I think that you’ll agree that not every client has the same infrastructure, so allowing Sitecore partners to define it is a big plus.
  
• Content Separation
  Sharepoint markets itself having Content Management.  I can’t say that they are lying.  But, the only thing I can say is that they have a level of content management that can’t match up with Sitecore.  Sitecore has a true separation of content from presentation allowing for better content sharing and re-usability.  You can do that with Sharepoint but you actually have to really plan for it and if you don’t, you’re screwed.  Sharepoint’s CMS basically has the same concept as it did with MS CMS 2002…and where is that now?  Try creating a mobile or print-version of you Sharepoint-based pages…and let me know how easy that is…I can do that quickly in Sitecore.

What’s your take on Sharepoint compared to Sitecore?  Let us know.