SharePoint 2010, SharePoint News, Reviews

CMSWire recently wrote about the important community that supports the SharePoint platform. But just how active and popular is it?

Does your organization follow most of the principles that help define “information management”? If not, then how can it expect to make an impact on its business performance by implementing SharePoint 2010 or other suites?

So you may have experienced the good, the bad and the ugly around SharePoint information architecture (IA). In this post, I’ll address common concerns surrounding SharePoint IA and discuss how a better understanding of IA can help you to improve the effectiveness of your SharePoint environment.

The Law of the Instrument states "...if the only tool you have is a hammer, you treat everything as if it were a nail."

When you examine the content management world's zeitgeist, the tool that has all the buzz is the shiny hammer of SharePoint. Yes, SharePoint, a fascinating "free product" that supports an $8 billion a year -- and growing -- ecosystem. By fully embracing Microsoft enterprise site licenses, IT administrators have used SharePoint to justify stable budgets for IT and doubled down their bets on on-premise software. I admit, there is some appeal in having a single vendor to work with, a single price to pay and being able to physically hug your server, should you so choose. But given the benefits of cloud computing like redundancy, cost savings and speed of deployment, is it worth the trade off? Is SharePoint really the only strategy you need?

Are you considering SharePoint for your enterprise? For what purpose? And what's your definition of enterprise anyway?

The release of SharePoint 2010 introduced a new way to develop and deploy SharePoint customizations called "Sandbox Solutions.” Sandbox solutions encompass both a new deployment model for no-code elements like master pages and page layouts, and a new least-privilege code execution environment.

Sandbox solutions have gotten a bad rap in some circles, largely related to the restrictions placed on developers, and the limitations on supported customizations. However, sandbox solutions offer some compelling features for developers and administrators that make them essential knowledge for anyone developing and deploying custom solutions for SharePoint 2010.

Businesses today all want SharePoint from IT departments. Different business units and their many departments and teams all have, at some point, been given the sales pitch on the value of using the technology, and inevitably the IT department is challenged to drive down costs. But just how many implementations does an organization really need? SharePoint was made to be shared. So instead of providing technology to the business, provide them with a service.

Because Ars Logica specializes in helping clients choose or assemble content management products (CMS, DAM, CXM, portals), we often get asked how – and if – SharePoint should be integrated into an overall solution stack. Since no two customer implementations are ever identical, our advice is never exactly the same. But similar themes underpin most of our guidance on SharePoint usage.

With all the problems associated with keeping track of information, particularly now with the multiplication of SharePoint deployments, archiving tools are always welcome -- particularly if they work. Metalogix (news, site) has done a good line on this over the years, and today has announced the release of Archive Manager 5.0 that focuses on Exchange, SharePoint and files.

We are in the final leg of our summer and what better time to tackle a topic like SharePoint in the Enterprise. There are more opinions, both expert and otherwise, on whether SharePoint is an enterprise solution than there are flavors of ice cream. And here's the awful truth...everyone is right.

After ensuring that everyone could get their content in and out of Office 365, MetaVis has turned its attention back to SharePoint with the release of its new File Manager for SharePoint.

Never one to let the grass grow under its feet, AvePoint (news, site) has announced that its DovAve product has been upgraded to v5.7, which supports the recently released SharePoint 2010 Service Pack.

It has also been busy this week in the GRC space. For Lotus Notes, Daegis has announced functionality on its e-Discovery platform that enables enterprises to preserve collaborative application data throughout the e-Discovery process, Iron Mountain and GimmalSoft get together for SharePoint 2010 records management, there’s new archiving abilities for Office 365, OpenPeak secures Android, and BIA offers e-Discovery on iPads and iPhones.

ISO 15489 barely mentions disaster preparation and recovery outright. In fact, the most extensive statement on this topic in ISO 15489 appears in the Technical Report (Part Two): "Risk management also involves development of a disaster recovery plan that defines an organized and prioritized response to the disaster, planning for the continuance of regular business operations during the disaster and making appropriate plans for recovery after the disaster.”

If you blink, you’ll miss it. Perhaps we Records folk aren’t as comfortable with the topic as we should be. So, let’s take a step back to refresh ourselves.

For those who are not happy with the records management functionality of SharePoint 2010, the latest partnership between Iron Mountain (news, site) and GimmalSoft (news, site) will be welcome as the companies are getting together to develop a means of managing both physical documents and electronic files for SP 2010.