HN user
more specifically: clinical trials. This is where most money spent on drug development goes. The sooner big pharma figures out if a drug works or not the better. Its still a very paper based industry, which I think is an FDA requirement. So I believe lots can be innovated here
I've been an SP user and was also involved in a few projects.
From a users perspective I see SP as no more than the "My Documents" folder moved to a browser. Sure, documents are now accessible to others, but SP does not solve the problem of explaining what the status of the document is. So you find someone else's doc, but you still may have to call or email to figure out if the doc was sent to customers, accepted, etc. As a document management platform, SP brings nothing new to the table.
Company functions like internal IT support, HR, etc. can easily setup simple workflows, and ticketing systems. In my opinion, this is the single best thing of SP and super valuable.
As a tech guy, I would never choose SP. First of all I find it too expensive, and second, the lock-in pitfalls of expensive upgrades and hours and hours of consulting to develop simple changes are just too risky (if it was my money).
So I agree with others in these comments, SP tries to do too much (and even more in the 2010 version), and the IE only thing just pisses me off. (you can actually use other browsers, but I found that some of the config stuff can only be done in IE)
Yes you're crazy :-) I love it!
If you find entrepreneurs who'll be willing to share details like these: http://particletree.com/features/web-app-autopsy/
...then you hit a goldmine.
So my suggestion is to go and find start-ups that are not yet well known and get no attention from the bloggers, but are willing to share their numbers.
Publish your case stories as freemium PDF's with kickback to the entrepreneurs.
Best of luck!
I think Taleb makes an excellent point with his Black Swan theory. The point is, that we don't know what will happen. We don't know and governments don't know. Problem is, governments spend like they know :-)