"Not if you compare it, say, to IBM systems; where when you buy the product you have to buy services," he suggests; "it is not that extreme.

"With SharePoint it is more that you have to [exercise] caution -- you need to have a vision for what you are trying to accomplish. Customers trying to run everything though a wizard are going to have problems.

"The way Quest approaches this is with a set of management tools to ease the job; firstly in security; that's one of the first things that can get out of control," he says.

This demonstrates the gap in Microsoft's handling of the product, he suggests. While SharePoint is very capable, in many areas "Microsoft has failed to complete the last mile" and has grown to rely on an "ecosystem" of companies like Quest to fill that deficiency he claims.

When he was with Microsoft, the emphasis was on selling SharePoint into "top-tier markets," Oleson claims.