SharePoint London Domination

Thanks to John Terry’s stumble London still waits to win football’s top European Club competition. The great British cities of Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow and even Nottingham have won that huge European Cup, but alas London still waits. However, when it comes to SharePoint Projects then London appears to be the dominate force. A recent report released by officetalk showed that over 70% of their new SharePoint customers so far in 2008 have been based within a ten mile radius of the Queen’s house Buckingham Palace. Why is this?

Birmingham and Manchester continue their battle for the title of England’s Second City with Birmingham trying to make up for giving us Ozzy Osbourne and Jasper Carrot while Manchester now gives us five episodes of Coronation Street every week. But when it comes to new SharePoint Projects both cities are lagging behind the Capital.

Based in the beautiful, if slightly prone to flooding, Vale of Evesham, Officetalk are ideally placed to reach customers all over Great Britain (sounds so much better than UK). Officetalk’s large base of UK SharePoint customers stretches from as far as the Orkney Isles right across the country to Guernsey, but still they're continually called to follow the steps of Dick Whittington to London, usually without the cat. Their SharePoint Specialists (of which I am one) take the train to London with the ticket prices varying depending on what day it is, what time it is and whether Pluto is in line with Mars. These Microsoft Certified Sharepoint Consultants can now recite the order of tube stops on the entire Central Line and hear the call of, ‘Please Mind the Gap’ in their sleep.

So come on Midlands, Lancashire, Yorkshire and co. let’s get SharePointing. Bill Gates claims 60% of UK companies will be using SharePoint 2007 by the end of 2009. But how many of those will have a Greater London postcode? Now isn’t it about time we had a Birmingham team lifting that European Cup again? Up the Villa !