first encounter

It's year 2004 when I first heard the term "SharePoint" during a proof-of-concept for a big potential client. It's a competition among us with another solution vendor to bid for the project. I was told, we were losing the deal as "SharePoint" was just too difficult to be beaten in that particular tender.

We did our best. We setup a production-like environment. 4 big boxes of enourmous servers, days of hardworks and sweat to get the environment up and yet, we lose. I was shocked when I heard the other vendor uses 1 laptop setup the proof-of-concept. Compare to ours, it's like constructing a mammoth tank to compete with an ultimate light saber and our mammoth tank was crushed. It's a difficult battle but it served as a valuable experience for me.

Months later, it was faith that I was assigned to a project: SharePoint implementation for another big, real big customer. That's SharePoint Portal Server 2003 that time and I started my journey to dive into SharePoint.