SHAREPOINT: PROVISIONING - AGAIN?!
- Sep 29, 2025
- 6 min read
Updated: Sep 30, 2025
Author: Jonathan Stuckey
Audience: SharePoint solution designer, Project managers
Provisioning – again! Again? Really!?
Here we go again! It seems like every 12 months there’s a push to “get a new provisioning tool for SharePoint” from customers (often driven by the local developer or poorly informed business sme), either way provisioning and managing SharePoint and Microsoft Teams sites is a perennial organisational quest.
Why? Why does this issue not go away? Despite years of investment and evolving tools, many businesses remain caught in a cycle of frustration, complexity, and compromise with SharePoint - struggling to unlock the value without inheriting the mess.
Again?
You could ask why it feels like Microsoft doesn’t want to solve this problem. They could. They control all the points of contact from: UI, platform services, identity, and access ...everything. But they don’t; it's just easier to push users to always "create" new from blank than offer scalable workflow or map these to a full business process or common activity. So customers end-up blowing 10x $000s every year trying to fix this problem.
And before you start in about "Microsoft Teams" templates for users with self-service, or SharePoint site application templates - I've been there, done that, and in the last 13 years since I left Microsoft, they have not changed their approach with SharePoint and Microsoft Teams.
It's built-for-demo, not built to operate.
The perennial quest
In short: the tools feel fragmented, and the out-of-box experience falls massively short, so the market fills with wave after wave of third-party solutions as well as professional services orgs offering consulting engagements for ‘bespoke solutions’ that never satisfy. The common pain point is the persistent disconnect in the offerings between provisioning, governance, security, and lifecycle management.
Opportunistic consulting
Organisations often find themselves chasing bespoke approaches, bolstered by a parade of “opportunistic” professional services providers ready to sell expensive, complex customisations under the guise of productivity improvements. I get frustrated because I feel like it’s turned into a recurring soapbox whinge... (going back even further than my article: “Provisioning – Codenamed Steph”). Efforts to solve this problem often lead to ongoing maintenance headaches and a poor user experience, rather than the promised digital workplace nirvana
Why the 'Old Dog' has a new lease on life
Provisioning is no longer just about spinning up sites and basic templates. The next-wave of tools focus on lifecycle management: managing not only site creation but also ongoing compliance, ownership transitions, and crucially, end-of-life decommissioning. This shift comes with a growing array of provisioning and lifecycle management products increasingly common across the industry. Options range from straightforward, cost-effective tools that “just work,” to feature-bloated, premium-priced platforms that don’t always deliver proportional value.
Faced with the ongoing complexity in selection, many organisations assume their needs are sufficiently unique to justify a custom-built bespoke solution crafted by professional services providers, leading to yet more expense.
Vendor top-picks
As automation in the guise of agentic facilitated design emerges through Microsoft Copilot and AI-driven tooling, paid solutions (currently) remain attractive for many reasons. Paid tools often provide guarantees of support, updates, and integrations that DIY scripts or emerging AI solutions cannot yet reliably match. Vendors ease the governance and compliance requirements for organisations without deep internal expertise.
Using my trusty "back-of-cigarette packet" profiling, here's how the main providers stack up:
Table: high-profile ISVs selling ‘provisioning’ for SharePoint and M365
ShareGate | Orchestry | AvePoint |
Mature vendor: 10+ years, widely trusted; regular updates, but recently retired some legacy features to refocus. | Fast-growing, younger (launched ~2020); strong in APAC, momentum with Copilot integration, regular feature expansion.
| Major global vendor (~20+ years), multi-cloud, deep gov/regulatory and enterprise penetration; highly stable.
|
Migration, governance, reporting. Some lifecycle and template features but limited dynamic provisioning. | Automated governance, self-service provisioning, lifecycle management, Copilot/AI readiness, advanced templates.
| Comprehensive platform: migration, data protection/backup, multi-cloud, advanced lifecycle, regulatory readiness.
|
Moderate–high licensing, SaaS model with annual subscription; less modular / customizable. | Competitive; modular pricing with subscription, targeted at IT teams not enterprise SaaS scale (yet); value in automation and “Copilot readiness.”
| Premium pricing (often bundles), high enterprise cost, tiered: suite, add-ons, services; fits regulated mid-large orgs.
|
Drops legacy management features, enhances reporting and governance; some temporary gaps in policies/archive features. Stable, established; updates may deprecate features but well-communicated. | Regular new release cadence; expanding archiving, AI, compliance, reporting. Added modules for Copilot and reporting. Frequent updates, transparent roadmap; still building market presence.
| Regular major updates; expands automation/data-insight modules, tight integration with Power Platform. Enterprise-focused with long support cycles, major product roadmap.
|
Large international user base, strong support, responsive online community. Best for migration, governance, basic lifecycle (archiving), not deep workflow provisioning. | Highly rated for user-friendliness, pay-as-you-go support, and knowledge resources; smaller but engaged community. Excels in provisioning, lifecycle workflow, advanced archiving; best for modern M365 governance and workspace health.
| Strong support team, global community, professional learning, regional events; “confidence platform” is flagship.
|
Product (core app), some governance modules and reporting add-ons. Simple migrations, good reporting, proven longevity, audit focus. Provisioning and “templates” less dynamic; relatively high cost; periodic feature changes disrupt continuity. | Platform with modular tools (governance, provisioning, reporting, security). Ease of use, one-click lifecycle management, strong Copilot fit, affordable. Newer, not as “battle-tested” for large legacy migrations; ecosystem still developing. | Integrated platform with broad modules, consulting services. All-in-one coverage, controls for complex, regulated, multi-tenant needs. Gold-standard for highly regulated organisations. Costly, complex; requires onboarding and ongoing management, not ideal for SMB/simple use-cases. |
Summary
ShareGate: Focused product. Core migration/governance tool with reporting and template features. No true modular platform; everything in one license. Low-end pricing, with gaps in breadth of scope.
Orchestry: True platform; mix of provisioning, lifecycle, governance, reporting, Copilot readiness. Simple to deploy, modular, tailoring for M365 health. Mid-range pricing, rapidly evolving.
AvePoint: Large platform. Suite of modules across governance, compliance, migration, backup, archive, deeply integrated and global. Expensive setup, expensive to run.
The ‘Grail’ remains elusive …but not for too much longer
Provisioning, and more importantly lifecycle management, will stay at the forefront for organisations looking to improve internal processes. Microsoft’s piecemeal solutions mean the market for third-party tools and consulting will persist unabated for a while yet. Vendors and consultants profit by revisiting familiar territory while businesses chase the “grail” of effective provisioning and lifecycle automation.
While there isn't a good out-of-the-box option, vendors and consultants will keep making money by retreading the same tired output and businesses will be less than satisfied with the outcome. However, professional services organisations should beware because this solution space is a sitter for Agentic development in an organisation!
Copilot and SharePoint Agents are making it much easier for people to manage sites, automate tasks, and handle content in SharePoint without needing a consultant every time. Admins can set up automated workflows or custom content agents, saving a lot of back-and-forth and cost, assuming they actually know what to ask for and how to frame it. The shift means the old consultant-led, custom-build approach will rapidly become less appealing, especially for standard business processes like template creation and site provisioning - where Copilot can do the heavy lifting right out of the box.
Newer providers like Orchestry could use this turning point to offer solutions that blend nicely with Microsoft’s AI push and fill any gaps, delivering clear value without the extra complication or premium charged by traditional services. That ease and quick return are what will differentiate the new players from the crowd.
What next?
Site provisioning and templates are a ridiculously well-known requirement and solution options are finite. Microsoft's continual churn and re-brand of the UI, APIs, and Service interfaces have not done a huge amount to improve the average organisation's lot in life, so a vendor product is preferred in this space for the foreseeable future. However, if it were me investing in people and in-house skills in AI and Agentic development, I would throw this old chestnut into the bucket with a directive to prototype (go hard, fail fast, learn, and deliver).
Provisioning should not be a perennial challenge. This is a solved problem. Stop trying to be different and just buy the tool while we wait for AI and Agents to become useful enough that we can throw this over the fence to them.
Close
If you have questions and want to understand more about how to manage your environment and provisioning experiences well - give us a call: hi@timewespoke.com
About this article: Generative AI was used in the creation of the images in the article and to provide a QA review and feedback. Concept, structure, content and frustrations commented on are purely the authors responsibility.
About the author: Jonathan Stuckey
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