Archive for December, 2007

This post has been in a “draft” status for too long, I meant to get it out there ages ago!

A few of my colleagues having been commenting on some Sharepoint news thay have noticed lately, which for a number of reasons I found interesting.

Firstly, James over on his ChiefTech blog points out a CMS Watch article claiming that:

“although Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 brings improved collaboration facilities over previous editions, it comes at the cost of a dearth of enterprise management services, leading to rampant, viral proliferation and instances of uncontrolled content, as well as major compliancy risks.

Which seems to be bourne out if we are to believe the numbers Steve uncovered via networkworld.com (but presumeably quoting the same CMS Watch article):

CMS Watch says its clients include a North American bank that found “more than 5,000 uncontrolled and unaudited instances of SharePoint,” and a major energy company that “reported finding more than 15,000 previously undetected instances of SharePoint.”

But lets not worry too much, Stu has learnt that Microsoft is here to save the day with their new “SharePoint Capacity Planning Tool”!

The SharePoint Capacity Planning Tool is a set of free models of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) which allow you to explore the necessary infrastructure based on usage requirements. This tool uses the System Center Capacity Planner 2007 (SCCP) as an engine to provide for data collection, visualization, simulation and report writing. The tool can be used in pre-sales and feasibility study of a deployment project to give you a rough estimate of hardware requirements.

Isn’t that good of them!

Hang on a sec, let me read that again….

“The tool can be used in pre-sales and feasibility study of a deployment project to give you a rough estimate of hardware requirements.”

Ah! So that would be before the viral proliferation then, it just ensures we splash out on a big enough box to make sure this virus can spread!

But in all seriousness, this does remind me of the early days with Lotus Notes, when databases were created by users, before the IT department came in and put controls in place. Controls which I assume will be coming soon, to a Sharepoint installation near you.

I wonder whether these controls and things like departmental charge-back will have the same effect at stifling this virus, as it did on the adoption of Lotus Notes applications?

Tags: Lotus+Notes, Sharepoint