Events and Happenings - RealSharePoint.com

3/26/2009

Suite 2.0 - Old Thinking vs. New Realities

Storage Decision recently published an article on application-specific backup tools that has caused me to do some thinking. The more I thought about the article and its framing, the more I realized it represents an old, outdated way of thinking. Here’s what I mean…

Let’s face it, SharePoint is a disruptive technology…and it’s not alone. Gazing into the technology horizon, it’s easy to discern that the world is moving ever-onward toward continually disruptive technologies. New terms like “Enterprise 2.0”, “Web 2.0” and “Cloud Computing” seem to enter the community lexicon almost daily. It’s a wonderful thing, and speaks to our continuing innovation. But it also speaks to a fundamental change in the way we must think about our technology solutions.

These emerging technologies have two things in common: First, the technologies themselves are empowering end-users to generate and share original content at an unprecedented scale. This is an unabashedly good thing. The second common feature of these technologies results from the first, but is not so wonderful: Across the board, these technologies require complex backend architectures, server arrays, and systems configurations to operate. This means that – though the end-user is empowered – administrators face a whole new world of complexity with regard to backend management. Consequently, the quaint terms, nice little boxes, and silo-styled thinking that the IT world has used to classify technologies are no longer accurate. A great example of this is common use of the terms “Point Solution” and “Suite”. The way today’s less inspired media uses these terms reveals how little they actually understand the changing reality of technology generally, and the evolution of platform solutions in particular.

In contrast to the Storage Decision article, I would argue that any “backup-only” solution – regardless of the number of disparate platforms it protects - is actually the new “point solution”. A solution that only delivers backup, even if it does so across a handful of platforms, cannot be classified as a suite. Rather, it is a point solution for backup, and that’s all.

This is primarily because the multiple platforms these “backup-only suite solutions” claim to protect have become so unique and complex, the multi-platform solution is incapable of delivering adequate functionality for any particular one of them. The smart “backup-only” vendors have realized this, and have started adding archiving and other functions to their backup-point solutions. But without true expertise in the particular platform and its complexities, it’s rarely – if ever - a best-of-breed solution.

The new “suite” approach is to take a complex platform, truly understand its usage and its infrastructure requirements, and build a product to fully address its needs in all their nuance and complexity. This approach leads to the creation of a full menu of best-of-breed, platform-specific products. This is the “suite” of the 21st century. Suite 2.0.

Marginally addressing a single concern (e.g. backup) across a handful of platforms is the new “point” solution. Point 2.0.

Comprehensively handling the infrastructure management requirements of a platform in all of its complexity – that’s a new suite.

The smart companies have realized this. To see this you only have to look as far as IBM and their very recent restructuring of the Tivoli sales organization. IBM, like most companies stuck in the old way of thinking, used to have storage experts that targeted the storage administrators responsible for doing backup, and tried to sell backup-only solutions to them. But IBM realized that with the dawn of platforms like SharePoint, the decision-making landscape was changing. When IBM’s salespeople talked to prospects about

SharePoint, the storage admin was no longer involved in the backup management decision. It was now the Windows application people and the SharePoint team running the show. And it was these same folks who were also making decisions about platform architecture, archiving, configuration, security management, system look and feel, etc. So IBM restructured their sales team to reflect the new reality. No longer would IBM’s backup experts target storage admins – but rather they would have platform management experts target the application admins. Today, IBM leverages enterprise sales reps that know the platform, and they sell “suites” of solutions that meet multiple needs across a single platform. No longer are they trying to sell a single backup platform for multiple systems, but instead have appreciated the unique, integrated needs of the platform as a whole, and approach the platform admins saying, “Oh, you’re using that system. Well, look at all the things we can do for it.”

This is a telling story when considering SharePoint backups. To simply say that SharePoint data protection involves only database backups fundamentally misunderstands the concerns of today’s SharePoint administrator. Saying database backups are sufficient to adequately protect the platform shows a clear lack of understanding of SharePoint, how it is used, and how it is deployed. A single SharePoint content database can have hundreds of sites, each with very different use and very different requirements and service level agreements. Some can be highly business-critical and some less so. If the business-criticality of Site A demands hourly backups, and Site B demands weekly backups, is it realistically adequate to leverage a solution that can’t discern between sites? No one is going to backup the entire database every hour! Several of the so-called “suite” solutions referenced in the Storage Decision article advertise that they can do item-level restores from a database backup, but how many of them can do item-level backup? The answer is they can’t, so how protected is the platform?

And what about all the customizations, webparts, and features that are integral components of those sites, but that aren’t part of the database and sit on the web or app servers? It only takes one disaster for companies to realize how critical these componansts are. How many of these so-called “suite Solutions” can backup anything outside the content database? The answer? None.

"Suite" isn’t exactly the right term for these solutions, is it?

And that’s just the backup side. Today’s "Suite 2.0" delivers all of the infrastructure management solutions an SP admin needs to protect, optimize, and manage his or her deployment. That’s a Suite 2.0 solution, not a point solution.

AvePoint’s DocAve is comprised of 20 different modules, each independently deployable yet fully integrated into a unified platform. Together, they handle everything from backup and restore, high availability, centralized configuration and security management, content management and restructuring, data synchronization and replication, archiving, auditing, eDiscovery, monitoring, reporting and analytics, and migration from legacy data sources. This is no point solution. I’d argue that DocAve is the true suite here, and that people who are used to the old terminologies—where one specific function (like backup), marginally performed across multiple platforms was considered a suite—are going to have to comprehend the type of suites today's administrators demand. Suite 2.0. It’s a new world, with a new perspective. The old ways of thinking and discussing platform solutions no longer hold. It’s about time the media started realizing it.

Posted at 6:20 PM by Tony Lanni | Category: Events and Happenings; SharePoint News; Backup and Recovery; Administration; DocAve Tips and Tricks; SharePoint Tips and Tricks | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

3/18/2009

Managing User Permissions in SharePoint

A few days ago I attended a talk on SharePoint best practices, given by Joel Oleson at the Chicago MTC. Joel definitely knows his SharePoint! (He was the first SharePoint admin when Microsoft first released the product internally for development & testing.)

One of the topics of the discussion was "best practices for SharePoint scalability", an important concept considering the adoption rate of a new SharePoint deployment at most companies. Joel mentioned that the most scalable objects in SharePoint are site collections. You can have in excess of 150,000 site collections, while the recommended limit for top-level sites is only 125! The downside to having hundreds of thousands of site collections is that users are managed at a site collection level. So what happens when you need to add a user to a bunch of your site collections at once? Without a third-party management tool for SharePoint, you'd have to log-in to each site collection and add the user manually. Joel recommended the use of third party tools (such as DocAve) to overcome the limitations of the native SharePoint administrative interface. Using DocAve's central admin interface, you can add or remove a user or group of users from multiple site collections at the same time, saving lots of time! Check out this TechNet article to learn more about planning for SharePoint scalability. And be sure to keep tabs on Joel's blog, where insights and info can always be found.

Posted at 6:29 PM by AVEPOINT\Michael.Shine | Category: Administration; Deployment Architecture; SharePoint Tips and Tricks; Events and Happenings | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (1)

3/13/2009

Microsoft's Michael Gannotti Podcasts About DocAve

If you're a fan of SharePoint you've probably heard of Michael Gannotti, one of the most highly regarded experts in the SharePoint community. As a Senior Technology Specialist at Microsoft, he keeps a pretty close eye on trends in the SharePoint multi-verse. Michael's blog is one of the most popular on the web, and his podcast, Mikey's Tech Talk is a great weekly resource for the latest in SharePoint tips and trends.

Recently, Michael podcasted about AvePoint and DocAve. He had recently seen a demo of the product, and had some pretty intersting things to say. It's a great episode, so be sure to check it out here.

Posted at 3:29 PM by Tucker Hall | Category: DocAve Tips and Tricks; Migration; SharePoint News; Events and Happenings; SharePoint Tips and Tricks | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

3/10/2009

At CIO Conference in Redmond, Stimulus Is In The Air

It’s not every day the public service employees get to be the coolest kids on the block. Normally it’s the big banks, big oil, or big pharma. Not this week. At the US Public Sector CIO conference, held on Microsoft’s Redmond Campus, all hands were on deck to cater to our Federal, State, and Local Government, and Educational leaders.

Why? You ask.

Two Words: Stimulus Package.

We all know the story about the economy, and the end of 2008 into the beginning of 2009 had a lot of IT departments pulling up on the reins in fear that the next spending proposal they were going to submit might be their last. Well, in some areas of the economy, that might still be the case for a while, but in the Public Sector, everyone is obsessed with the latest economic recovery plan that has passed and are scrambling to find out when and where the money will trickle down.

I have to credit Microsoft, they are not pulling any punches in the preparation. This summit, which AvePoint sponsored and exhibited, was thoroughly stocked with sessions on how run IT in this economy and how to prepare for stimulus money. Also I would say the ratio to MSFT employees to attendees was easily 1:1. There was even a session for partners, hosted by Vince Menzioni USPS General Manager, Partner Strategy that addressed how partners could position their sales and marketing efforts to align with Microsoft’s strategy. This gave a decent over view of the industries that stand to benefit most from the stimulus package at the top of the list was Education, State and Local Gov, then Healthcare, Financial Revitalization, and Energy sector.

What is most compelling to me is the focus on Transparency and Collaboration in government and educational programs. The need for programs to assist with Knowledge Management, Tracking, Reporting. The mantra that is coming out of D.C. and has already trickled down is the openness and fairness that stimulus package recepients will need to abide by. These themes bode very well for Microsoft, and specifically SharePoint.

With the recent inclusion of PerformancePoint in the SharePoint license, not to mention the bulk of partner generated BI and efficiency tools, a large number of organizations are looking to invest in tools to assist with tracking investments and analyzing performance.

If there was one complaint, it would be that CIO’s don’t seem too compelled to speak with SharePoint infrastructure management companies, but hey, we already know it’s the admins that really get the thrill out of using our products, and the CIO’s have those admins and us to thank for keeping their phones from ringing off the hook with unhappy SharePoint users. As long as we know, that’s all that matters.

-Chris Foreman

Posted at 8:57 AM by Tucker Hall | Category: SharePoint News; Events and Happenings | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

2/20/2009

Hey New England! Learn How to Maximize Your SharePoint Investment!

Are you looking to squeeze every penny of value from your SharePoint deployment?

Are you going to be anywhere near Waltham, MA this coming Tuesday, February 24th?

Then we have the event for you...

Vitale Caturano - New England's largest technology consulting firm - is presenting another of its premiere "Focus Series" events. This one-day, info-packed session will review how to maximize your SharePoint investment in today's marketplace, with a keynote delivered by Mauro Cardarelli, author of Essential SharePoint 2007 and Director of Portals & Collaboration at Vitale Caturano.

At this event, you can:

• Learn from industry-leader AvePoint how to maximize your SharePoint ROI

• Validate the health of your SharePoint environment with a "SharePoint health checklist"

• Learn how to leverage Silverlight to take your SharePoint sites to the “next level”

• See how Microsoft Virtual Earth and your SharePoint data can show your corporate data in a whole new way

• Join Hi Software to discuss how to ensure the information you put into your SharePoint environment is secure and compliant

• Join FAST Search to discuss the next generation of enterprise search and how it can help you recover, discover, and uncover corporate assets

• Hear a SharePoint customer tell how her organization has made SharePoint business critical… and how they manage user expectations

• Bring questions to our panel of SharePoint experts and get the answers you need

• Mingle and connect with other local SharePoint users

Here's the day's agenda...

Wednesday - January 28th, 2009

8:30am Registration

9:00am Keynote

10:00am Break Out sessions

11:00am Break Out sessions

12:00pm - 1:00pm Lunch& Networking

1:00 - 2:00pm Customer Success Story

2:00 - 3:00pm Break Out sessions

3:00 - 4:00pm Panel Discussion with SharePoint experts

So if you're plannig on being in the area, be sure to join us for this dynamic event. For more info and to sign up, visit www.vitale.com/sharepoint.

Posted at 1:35 PM by Tucker Hall | Category: Events and Happenings; SharePoint News; SharePoint Tips and Tricks | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

2/17/2009

Upcoming TechNet Webinar on Best Practices in SharePoint Administration

Ever wondered how much is it costing your organization in supporting your SharePoint environment? Or perhaps you are looking for ways to simplifying your deployment, to be able to achieve success with the constraints you are bound by. Check out this upcoming webinar on TechNet on “Best Practices in SharePoint Administration – Lower Admin Costs by Doing More with Less”. The key is really about doing more with less. In today’s economy, we all need to be wary of how we control, deploy, and protect our investments, so that we can realize the return that we are expecting. The same applies to SharePoint – successful implementation requires proper design, effective governance, continuous availability, and vigorous protection.

There are various cost drivers when deploying or management SharePoint. These could be IT productivity costs, infrastructure costs, or costs for safeguarding your environment. Without the appropriate support, your organization runs the risk of treating SharePoint just like another document repository, and that’s really not doing it justice. The last thing you want on SharePoint is an unmanaged environment with stale content, and unsatisfied users.

So, check it out. The webinar will be held live on Wednesday, February 25, 2009, at 10am PT. To register, simply click on this registration link.

Posted at 3:46 PM by Andrew Yeung | Category: Administration; Archiving; Backup and Recovery; Compliance; Events and Happenings | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (1)

2/13/2009

Takeaways for SharePoint Migration – From the San Francisco SharePoint User Group

Bud Porter-Roth and I tag-teamed at the SharePoint User Group in San Francisco yesterday evening. The topic of the evening was centered around migrating content on SharePoint 2007. Bud provided a high level overview of the strategy and process of migrating various types of file-based content onto SharePoint, while I, or the propeller-head, as Bud called me, showcased an automated approach using the DocAve File System Migrator. It was definitely one of the larger groups to participate at this SPUG event last night, even with a storm heading towards the city. The crowd consisted of a mixture of SharePoint newbies, some developers, some administrators, and even some business analysts. With such a diverse audience, I think our content was spot on. Bud probably wanted me to get into some additional technical detail, but I think I left my propeller at home. Plus, I was distracted with my poor network connectivity that drastically affected the effectiveness of my animated presentation. (I might add that part of me couldn’t wait to get to Beard Papa’s for those tasty cream puffs at the Westfield).

The overall strategy that we covered was relatively simple:

Identify business and IT stakeholders
Identify content, whether it’s files, discussion threads, or other collaborative type data
Cleanup unnecessary or stale content
Map users, groups, ACL’s, metadata
Be wary of restrictions (i.e. blocked file types, unsupported characters)
Determine migration strategy - migrate everything, or use a phased approach
Model and test for validation
Execute migration

I think most in the audience agreed that this is easier said than done. Yes, there are strategies out there, and yes, there are tools out there that can help. But the real takeaway is that migration is complex, and it must be treated as a real IT project. As Bud put it so eloquently, “People get cranky when they can’t do their work!”.

Posted at 9:24 PM by Andrew Yeung | Category: Events and Happenings; Migration | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

2/5/2009

SharePoint in the Snow

The more I travel for SharePoint events these days, the more amazed I am at the size of the crowds and the ethusiasm. The Rochester SharePoint Symposium was a perfect example. My flight was delayed several hours flying in due to bad weather, and it only got worse the morning of the event. But despite this, around 150 people attended, almost everyone who registered.

Joel Oleson did an amazing job opening with the keynote and setting the stage for the day. I had the honor of following him and expanding on his points. We were both very much on the same page in talking about the criticality of proper SharePoint governance. I can't say the same for the 3rd speaker, who had several debates with Joel on proper administrator accounts and securities settings. But from all the speakers, and the lively expert panel discussion we had at the end of the day, the message was clear-- don't ignore governance! It's much easier to think about it and set up the right policies early on then to fix a run-away SharePoint farm.

There were also some fun festivities after the event. Here are some Karaoke PICS!!! of Joel Oleson and I doing a duet of "You've Lost That Loving Feeling" and Joel Oleson, Rick Black, and Amy and Mark from Entre Computer Services singing "Piano Man". Sorry, no audio. ;)

A very special thanks to all the folks at Entre Computer Services for putting on a great event. I can't wait until next year!

Posted at 4:46 PM by Tony Lanni | Category: Administration; Events and Happenings | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

Beaches, Casinos, and the 2009 SharePoint Conference

Details for the SharePoint Conference 2009 have been announced! Following last year's sold-out event in Seattle, the conference will now be held at the lush Mandalay Bay resort in Las Vegas, October 19-22, 2009. This spacious venue will definitely be able to accommodate the expected sellout crowd.

In the midst of the aquatic experience and the casinos, there's lots of content to be covered in the conference. Whether you're an IT admin, a developer, an architect, or even an IT manager, there's bound to be tons of technical sessions that will help all of us explore and learn how to maximize our current deployments. In addition, what makes this event superexciting, especially for me, is that this is everyone's opportunity to get the "lowdown" on SharePoint "14".

Registration has just opened earlier this week. You definitely won't want to miss out!.

Posted at 2:59 PM by Andrew Yeung | Category: SharePoint News; Events and Happenings | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

1/26/2009

This Week's SharePoint-related Events

Never before has a week in the midst of the January winter been so jampacked with SharePoint-related activities. This week is special because there are so many events scheduled across so many regions.

Here are a few to take note of:

SPTechCon - SharePoint Technology Conference 2009 - January 27-29, 2009, Burlingame, CA

SPTechCon in Burlingame, CA promises to be an intensive technical conference full of workshops and classes to help administrators and analysts build up their SharePoint skillset. Check out the SPTechCon website for "Eight Great Reasons to Attend SPTechCon".

Focus On Series - Optimize Your SharePoint Investment - January 28, 2009, Waltham, MA

This is a full day event that will help you understand how to maximize your SharePoint investment in today's marketplace. Headlining the event is a keynot delivered by Mauro Cardarelli, author of Essential SharePoint 2007 and Director of Portals and Collaboration at Vitale Caturano.

Rochester SharePoint Symposium - January 29, 2009, Rochester, NY

Another full day event with three tracks geared towards SharePoint administrators, developers, and information workers. All sessions designed to help you learn and stay on top of the latest in SharePoint technology.

Show Me the Money - Cut Costs and Drive ROI with Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007 - January 30, 2009 - Chicago, IL

Well, the subject says it all. You'll learn about all the financial considerations around SharePoint and the proven strategies and real-world examples for how to cut costs and realize that return on investment in SharePoint.

So, definitely a full week. There are countless online activities going on as well. But wait, there's more! Don't forget about the Best Practices SharePoint Conference that will be held in beautiful La Jolla, California next week, February 2-4, 2009. This one you definitely won't want to miss, as the keynote speaker is none other than the man himself - Joel Oleson.

Posted at 1:06 PM by Andrew Yeung | Category: Events and Happenings; SharePoint News | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (1)

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