The economy is definitely on the mind of people in the U.S.  Maybe yours too?  I've spent time abroad lately and around the world gas prices and currency is a common topic.  What about SharePoint?  How does it relate to economics...

In a recession SharePoint will continue to do well.  Why?  SharePoint principals are:

1. Consolidation of Legacy applications - so many custom .NET and Java apps could be quicker and more simply deployed on out of the box SharePoint Apps 
2. Consolidation of local and distributed collaborative shares - When every team has their own shares and/or servers there is a lot of unnecessary redundancy, power consumption, rack space, etc...
3. Economies of scale with Operations Teams - consolidate division or departmental solutions
4. Access to Line of Business Data - licenses to those expensive LOB apps are pricey, so why not expose the data in SharePoint search with custom actions?
5. What doesn't SharePoint do - You can do so many things with SharePoint I call it plastic.  Obviously having it all in one platform you get more out of it, especially when you have it deployed as a service.

You won't save money by moving file for file to SharePoint from file shares.  I'll save you that math.  It is more than 2-3X the cost just for storage.  You could see another 2X or more with ops.

Career/Job Growth Continues

While the U.S. economy goes down and pressure on IT increases, more and more SharePoint deployments are happening and are not slowing.  The demand for SharePoint expertise both in the corporate and consulting world and top dollar/Yen/Euro is required. 

I got a message from my bank saying they were "safe and sound."  Well, rest assured "SharePoint is safe and sound."  You don't have to take my word for it.  A recent CMS Wire article talks about the "One Collaboration Platform to Rule Them All."  In this dark article which talks about SharePoint as a virus and puts a negative spin to the wave of deployments pushes governance (something I push as well) it explains quadrupling of SharePoint applications.  It talks about poorly planned and poorly executed deployments, which unfortunately will likely get worse before it gets better.  SharePoint deployments are not a commodity that you can get turn key from SharePoint consulting shops... unfortunately.  MCS would like to make you think so with SDPS (SharePoint Deployment Planning Services).  Heard about it?  Partners get certified where you can use your EA bucks for free SharePoint deployments.  Be cautious.

FYI: There's a SharePoint Skills shortage!  Redmond Developer magazine agrees in their SharePoint Dev skills Shortage article.  SharePoint Dev skills... not a commodity.  A big complaint of companies is what they'll pay for SharePoint dev skills.  Guess what?  You pay for the experienced guy and get it done faster and done well, or you pay the cheap guy to do it wrong until you learn it takes experienced and today unfortunately or fortunately (for the dev) high pay.

Alert there is not enough SharePoint skills on both Dev and IT sides.  (Hush - Don't tell anyone. :)  Even consultants who have been doing just SharePoint for a year are still struggling to understand the "best practices" and plan for scalability.

While SharePoint deployments have exponential growth, most IT departments will attempt to roll over existing resources and with economic challenges they are going to try to do it without training.  That part definitely concerns me.  People (Devs and IT and Business Analysts/PMs) need training to ramp up.

Announcing the SharePoint Planning and Governance 3 day course for Project Managers and Business level Implementation teams.  I will be co-teaching this with Nicola Young and John Ross on 9/23 in Cincinnati, OH for a steal.  That's our first class.  So go ahead and sign up now.  Note this is not a techncal class, it's about governance and planning and successful deployments.  You'll leave the class with a project plan, a governance plan.