According to the initial results of a Microsoft SharePoint governance survey commissioned by Axceler, more than two-thirds of the respondents consider it to be extremely or very important to their organisations. Yet nearly half of those same respondents confirmed that SharePoint governance policies do not exist or are undefined.

A total of 265 participants, three-fourths of whom are SharePoint administrators or managers, responded to the first part of the survey. They represent 34 diverse industries, and just over 60 percent of the respondents work for organisations with more than one thousand employees.

Nearly 65 percent of the respondents consider SharePoint a “strategic enterprise platform,” while a strong majority said governance is important or extremely important in their 2012 SharePoint planning. Despite those responses, the survey also found that more than half of the organizations have just started their governance planning efforts, or have not begun them at all.

“This SharePoint governance community survey is just one of many aspects of our governance initiative in 2012,” noted Christian Buckley, Director of Product Evangelism at Axceler.

“We also recently sponsored the IDM Governance Survey in Australia, and while in the region to participate in the Australia SharePoint Conference, we were able to facilitate a roundtable event on SharePoint governance at Microsoft’s Perth offices with partners and customers, as well as present to the Perth SharePoint User Group on governance best practices.

“What we heard in Australia is consistent with what we’re hearing globally: the management of SharePoint, particularly governance policies, has become a top priority for organisations now relying on SharePoint to work smarter and gain competitive advantage.

“But we are not surprised that many organisations have yet to set their governance policies, or determine how they will be managed. Planning generally takes a back seat to getting SharePoint deployed and functioning, and governance is too often viewed as a planning luxury. Companies don’t think about it until they experience pain.”

The complete results of the first part of the Axceler survey are available at: http://info.axceler.com/governance-survey-phase-one.

The second part of Axceler’s four-part SharePoint governance survey, seeking to understand how companies define the roles and priorities of those involved in SharePoint governance, is now available at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/govsurvey2