I registered a company today (18th March 2008); this is both daunting (scary) and exciting. Here’s a bit of why and what.

I am now officially working as an independent SharePoint consultant under my own company brand called Knowledge Cue. Let me tell you a bit about why and how I came to this decision. I have been working in the Microsoft solutions space and was fortunate enough to get involved in SharePoint projects back in 2001 and 2002 when the product was at its infancy and anyone hardly took any notice of it. This was usually a combination of MCMS 2001, 2002 (Microsoft Content Management Server) and then SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and WSS V2. With the early pre-beta launch of Office SharePoint Server 2007 or “MOSS” as many refer to it these days, in 2006 I had the opportunity to be part of one of the very first teams to deploy the new technology. If you are new to SharePoint you should definitely read the following article titled “7 years of SharePoint – a History Lesson” by Joel Oleson. Now as we all know SharePoint is fast becoming anybody and everybody’s preferred option.

I’ve heard people say such things as “SharePoint is not a mature product“, “It’s a complicated product” and “It’s not x or y capable” etc. With the rapid adoption rate of SharePoint and in some cases failed attempts at using SharePoint, some try to blame the technology and Microsoft by saying such things. Having planned and successfully completed projects that deliver tangible business value to organisations, I believe you need the right mixture of people with the skills and knowledge who have used SharePoint in a business context. Fortunately for those organisations and people who have taken the time and effort to learn and adopt SharePoint the results have been very beneficial. For those in the wider community who may need help to overcome the first hurdles of adopting SharePoint, you now have the option of engaging with me directly. My main goal of being vendor neutral is that I will be able to provide you with impartial advice on what you as a customer, who is adopting SharePoint, should look for when embarking on a SharePoint project.

You can engage me for the following services

• Assess your need for SharePoint and give you consulting advice on when to, and when not to, use SharePoint
• Determine if your expectations of SharePoint as a platform/solution/tool-box are realistic and achievable (For those who think SharePoint is a ‘tool’ please think again, it’s a tool-box full of many tools)
• Assist you with decisions you make when choosing third party add-ons for SharePoint – which third party add-on will actually add value
• Help you ask the right questions from vendors in your RFP’s and ROI’s regarding SharePoint deployments
• Advanced Administrator, Developer and Power User training with partnership with industry leading SharePoint training providers such as Combined Knowledge and MindSharp
• Customised in house training for organisations who are deploying SharePoint
• Training for Microsoft Partners who want to attain the recently announced SDPS (SharePoint Deployment Planning Service) for Partners. To learn more about SDPS go to the SDPS partner site at https://www.partnersdps.com/
• Disaster recovery operations when things have really gone bad
• Architecture reviews of your proposed deployment and guidance
• Testing strategies for applications being built for the SharePoint platform
• Speaking at events and writing technical articles about key information on SharePoint

SharePoint means many things to many people, and depending on your business and requirements my role can be of facilitator or mentor. If you are planning an Intranet or a Web Site or a ECM/Documents Records management project, Collaboration sites, Social networking or a Search deployment project, SharePoint has it’s strengths and weaknesses. If your project has strategic implications it may need to meet all of the above.

I may at times work with locally recognised Microsoft Partners who have a track record of delivering SharePoint projects. This means that your project will have an added assurance of success.

Being able to successfully guide a team to deliver a project on SharePoint is my ultimate goal regardless of what vendor or organisation, so if you are thinking of SharePoint, you now have the option of engaging my services.

CK Note:
My original post of Knowledge Cue via the way back machine: Note I edited above to reflect what I felt back then.