Why is SharePoint valuable?

Being one of the few people flying around like a maniac teaching SharePoint classes on a Mac, I'm obviously not a Windows fanboy or Microsoft shill. If you ask them, SharePoint is the best of everything and can do anything.

While that may be true to a certain extent (anything that is as openly customizable as it is can be configured and added on to to do most everything that a computer can), there is a point where you may as well have written your entire solution from scratch.

And well, the things that it offers are not best of breed. I can't name a single feature of SharePoint that is not better had somewhere else. Why would I suggest that anyone use the product, ever?

Note that I said "single feature." SharePoint is much more than a single feature. There might be a better document management system, but not one that also gives you a portal, collaboration on random things, and a central place to base a company intranet from.

With SharePoint, you can build something pretty close to MySpace in a couple days. Its not identical, and some stuff is definitely missing, but you can get really close. That is precisely where SharePoint offers value.

For the majority of things in business, 90% of the way there is more than good enough. Sure, you can spend another 6 months customizing everything to make it perfect, but living with a few idiosyncrasies or a nav element in its default position instead of precisely where they designers wanted it gets you being productive immediately.

So, what am I trying to say? SharePoint has value if you're willing to work with its design and modify your ideas to fit in with it - so work on understanding the product. It's a waste if you're going to spend 6 or 7 figures trying to make it work like it should - you'd be better served writing your own solution from scratch.