Half of companies that use SharePoint say the effort that goes into it and the budget is more than expected and cite integration issues as its the biggest challenge.

That”s according to a new study conducted by Information Architected on behalf of AIIM and Oracle.

Carl Frappaolo, co-founder of Information Architected and author of the study, said there is still a need for other solutions to complement SharePoint

"SharePoint still has a way to go to product maturity," he said. "While SharePoint has come a long way and now represents a valid choice as a component of ECM applications, the market is still ripe with opportunity for complementary solution providers and system integrators."

The study found that none of the components of SharePoint are used as an industry standard, with its file-sharing functionality being the only portion to be used by a significant amount of companies.

It also showed that none of the functions of SharePoint received a strong favorable ranking. File sharing, search and collaboration received the highest rankings of "very good." Nothing ranked as high as "excellent."