Navigating the World of SharePoint 2010 and All It Encompasses - Part 1 - EPC Group.net

1. Errin OConnor, Founder & CEO at EPC Group.net
Article Link: http://www.aiim.org/community/blogs/expert/Navigating-the-e2809cWorld-of-
SharePoint-2010e2809d-and-All-It-Encompasses-Part-1
Microsoft SharePoint 2010 is one of the most popular software programs platforms in
history and with it has come a community with a near cult following as well as a large
number of extremely powerful products that can integrate with it and continue to allow it to
be tailored to your organization’s specific business needs.
For a CIO or IT Director new to the world of SharePoint I can’t imagine the questions they
must may have as the blogosphere web can provide them with a fantastic amount of free
information (correct and unbelievably incorrect), but it is key to consider the source. Is this
person that authored the article 2 years into SharePoint and on their 1 st or 2nd deployment
or an administrator within their company in a very specific environment meant to meet a
specific need of their organization or a true SharePoint expert or just an SharePoint trainer
speaking in theory.
Playing devil’s advocate, and not to say I am the top expert out there on SharePoint, but I
know of myself and a handful of others in the U.S. who have been working with SharePoint
since its 2001 release (in the Tahoe days).

2. It pains me to read 17 articles on governance that all have a different opinion but what are
their experiences? (Client’s Sources, etc.) What set of external circumstances did this
“governance project” have in terms of political landmines, possibly the business or I.T.
having issues with the development department(s) or even the parent company who “owns”
the top level SharePoint farm but a division or partner firm wanting to stand-up their own
specific SharePoint farm to meet requirements or a timeline that the parent company
cannot meet.
Business does not always play nice with I.T. and vice versa.
System Architecture – Environment
You can absolutely virtualize your entire SharePoint environment, including your SQL
Server(s). My team at EPC Group has done it on 75+ SharePoint 2010 projects with
absolutely no issues. This has been a long standing questions regarding, “Should we keep
the front-end web servers virtual and make the SQL boxes physical?” You can absolutely
virtualize the entire farm with no issues.
Third-Party Tools and SharePoint ISVs
Over the past 8 or 9 years I have had the sincere pleasure of working with some of the top
SharePoint ISVs out there and over the years some of come and gone but they key players
are still there such as:
1. Idera
2. Metalogix
3. AvePoint
4. Axceler
5. Colligo
6. HiSoftware
7. Tzunami
8. WebPartGallery
9. Bamboo Solutions
10. Quest

3. 11. KnowledgeLake
Note: And many others I do not have room to mention but are very reputable
From an I.T. Director or SharePoint decision maker’s standpoint, what product is right for
your firm?
Are you looking for a disaster recovery solution, a Performance Monitoring, Security tools,
Migration solutions, SharePoint Email tools, 508 compliance solutions, Web parts, a tool to
take out the trash and clean the kitchen sink?
In all fairness there are so many ISVs with high integrity that really want to do what is right
for the client and then there are others that are transactional and want to sell you the entire
suite, all the support you can buy, and put fear in you that the sky may be falling unless
you purchase their product.
It is critical that you develop our initial business requirements as well as your SharePoint
roadmap to take into consideration the true needs of your business and then look at the
support staff you have available.
Could one of these powerful third-party tools almost act as another full-time employee
(FTE) and offer substantial ROI? In many cases, I have personally seen this be the case but
do your homework, demo, test, and ask the tough questions.
SharePoint Conferences
Prior to reading this section you may want to have an Advil or Tylenol bottle close at hand. I
have had the pleasure of speaking at most every type of SharePoint conference in the U.S.
and a few in Canada and I can tell you that all of these conference have the very best
intentions in mind; Sharing information to the attendees so they can take it back to their
place of work and perform at a high level or provide this knowledge to co-workers, etc.
Having spoken at over 100 conferences in the past 2 years I see a pattern developing
recently thou that is starting to take the “fire” or interest out of some of the conferences.
That issue is repetitive information and the same topics being shared time and time again.
Titles that start with things like:

4.  Best Practices
 Real-World
 From the Trenches - ok that was mine :)
 Lessons Learned
Note: These are all great but its time someone kick the conferences up a notch and provide
case studies, bring their clients, show massive amounts of screen shots, and talk about the
failures and how they were overcome and how you had to sit down with the client and have
the hard conversation to get through an issue and keep the project going.
Taking the same exact Technology type sessions from one coast to the other will work for a
short time but it will not sustain longevity and attendees will indeed stop attending.
EPC Group is current engaged on several SharePoint projects that are 24+ months long
(80K plus users) and with any project there are going to be small issues (and sometimes
large ones) that must be ironed out and there must be constant, granular communications
and conversations from both the consulting side and the client side (a marriage of sorts or
at least a long term dating relationship) to make a project that is so high profile successful
that everyone in the company has access to it as jobs may be on the line.
SharePoint is unique in that sense; we are not installing some one-off solution that only one
department will use every now and then. This is a platform, an ecosystem for which is core
to the business. There is so much Return on Investment (ROI) in a SharePoint 2010
initiative it is almost comical but sometimes it takes pioneers from within and a power user
super user concept to get people to realize it or take a chance on innovation with this
supercharged platform.
Errin O’Connor – EPC Group