Enterprise Search Meets the Cloud in 2012
February 9, 2012
In “2012 – Ready or Not,” Mike Alsup, Senior Vice President at Gimmal Group, lays out a summary of 2011 and speculates on 2012 in the world of SharePoint and content management. Of course, 2011 was another growth year for the ubiquitous SharePoint platform. One estimate puts SharePoint users at 125,000,000 and counting. Although, Alsup says, many of these SharePoint sites are collaboration sites, intranet, and other lightweight knowledge management, meaning lots of room to grow and innovate among the users.
Otherwise, 2011 is noted for lots of infrastructure consolidation and lots of waiting to see what happens with SharePoint Records Management. And for 2012? Alsup gives somewhat lengthy explanations on Records Management 2.0 and content enabled vertical applications. Of course, 2012 speculations are not complete without mention of the Cloud. Here’s what Alsup says,
In the world of SharePoint, the product is different in the cloud and on premise because of limitations on what can be deployed in the cloud and how it needs to be deployed. There are many SharePoint applications that provide great value that can’t be deployed in the Microsoft Clouds (Microsoft private cloud solutions, Windows Azure, Office 365) because of product limitations. If Microsoft enabled these applications to be more easily deployed in their clouds, and their customers could deploy their SharePoint applications similarly in each of the three environments, then the decisions on how and where to host would be based on economics and deployment strategy instead of the limitations of SharePoint in the clouds.
While SharePoint is a powerful and complex system, we know there are limitations when the Cloud is introduced. For a Cloud solution in your SharePoint environment, check out Fabasoft Mindbreeze. Here you can read about the power of information pairing.
Fabasoft Mindbreeze . . .
smoothly integrates itself into your website so that the user doesn’t even realize that Cloud services are working in the background. Furthermore, InSite always knows what a user is interested in. Navigation behavior on the website serves as the basis for recognizing their interests. If the user finds themselves on one of your sub-pages on the topic mobility, for example, even at this level Fabasoft Mindbreeze InSite still displays further information such as blogs, news, Wikipedia etc. on the relevant topic.
Check out the full suite of solutions at Mindbreeze to see what works for you.
Philip West, February 9, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
A Developer Takes on SharePoint
February 8, 2012
Wendy Neal recently shared some highlights of the SharePoint experience in her piece, “The Top Ten Reasons Why I Love SharePoint.” Neal, a SharePoint 2010 Developer/Architect for GreatAmerica Leasing Corporation, created the list so to articulate exactly why she loves to work with the ubiquitous collaboration software.
Neal cites the time and money saved due to Microsoft handling most development processes as just one of the reasons she found SharePoint to be the right system. Organizations can spend more time on configuring the technology, rather than developing and testing it. The SharePoint community, complex technology potential, and Microsoft Office integration are also discussed.
In terms of the SharePoint potential, Neal also explains the ability to easily build up your system with third party products integration.
One of the really great things about SharePoint is that if something can’t be done out-of-the-box, and if you don’t want to build it yourself, chances are that someone else has. Whether it be vendors who specialize in SharePoint add-ons, or something you find on CodePlex or other code sharing sites, there are a ton of great solutions or tools that can integrate with SharePoint. In addition, many other CMS or storage systems have created web parts that will interface with SharePoint, so that you can keep your content where it is yet still access it through the SharePoint interface.
A quality third party solution, like Fabasoft Mindbreeze, can really get you the most out of your enterprise search investments and extend the capabilities of your SharePoint system. For a deep solution that connects your business information with the Cloud and gives your users the search and navigation experience they need, check out Mindbreeze.
Philip West, February 8, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Getting the Most out of a New SharePoint Deployment
January 31, 2012
Christian Buckely of Axceler provides some insights on deploying a SharePoint system in your organization, namely what to avoid, for overall collaboration software success. In “Where Not to Begin with SharePoint,” Buckely advises to bypass automating Human Resources activities if you’re looking for big innovation. While automating expense reports or vacation requests is a good playground to learn the SharePoint technologies, getting the most out of your enterprise search investments requires expansion into new business information ground.
Your strategy should be to focus on those areas that will drive value to the business first. Quickly routing expense reports, while wonderful to your accounting team, is not adding tremendous value to your business. Email will work fine for a few more weeks while you focus elsewhere. SharePoint deployments should (like everything else) follow the 80/20 rule: focus your efforts and deliver functionality to the 20% of your organization who will be doing 80% of the workload in SharePoint. Find those teams that **need** productivity solutions, and build to their requirements first.
Identifying the areas in your business that will benefit the most from SharePoint features is a sure way to get the bang for your buck right off the bat. After working on organization needs, you can then focus on providing some ‘want’ features, like automated birthday reminders or vacation request forms.
SharePoint is a powerful platform that continues to grow, but we also know some out-of-the-box features can be lacking. To add rich value to your system while also providing an easier experience for your users, consider an intuitive solution like Fabasoft Mindbreeze. Their out-of-the-box solution gives you information pairing, mobility, and a more powerful search in a user-centered environment:
Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise understands you, or more precisely understands exactly what the most important information is for you at any given moment. It’s a center of excellence and simultaneously your personal assistant for all questions. The information pairing technology brings enterprise and Cloud together.
Consider their full suite of products and solutions at Fabasoft Mindbreeze.
Philip West, January 31, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Building a SharePoint Web Site: Three Important Planning Points to Remember
January 30, 2012
In “3 Things to Know Before Using SharePoint to Build Your Website,” Will Saville of BrightStarr makes a few key points to consider before diving in head first. With a SharePoint deployment, planning is imperative.
What does Saville suggest for success? For starters, talk about business requirements and value 80 percent of the time and SharePoint technology capabilities 20 percent of the time. This helps you keep on track with your business goals. Second, know that out-of-the-box SharePoint capabilities may not meet all your needs, so plan to customize with Web parts. And last but certainly not least, consider your content:
If content is king, then Content Managers must be pretty important. But, it’s incredible how easily they can be side-lined. A poor editing and content management experience will lead to low user adoption, which will ultimately result in content not being published as quickly (if at all). Because SharePoint isn’t a point WCM solution, it’s really important to consider their needs and make sure it works from a content management perspective as early on as possible.
Getting your content managers on-board early will keep them engaged and encouraging of user adoption. The project success comes down to the people you have working on the project and their drive for innovation.
To customize your SharePoint site with Web parts and to make a user-friendly site that makes for easy adoption, look to a comprehensive solution like Fabasoft Mindbreeze. Having Fabasoft Mindbreeze in your SharePoint system combines on-premise information with Cloud information, connecting your users to what they need. For an enriched user experience, the Mindbreeze InSite capability. . .
recognizes correlations and links through semantic and dynamic search processes. This delivers pinpoint accurate and precise ‘finding experiences.’ And this with no installation, configuration or maintenance required. Fabasoft Mindbreeze InSite is the website search that your company needs.
Check out Fabasoft Mindbreeze’s full suite of solutions.
Philip West, January 30, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
SharePoint 2010, Windows Azure, and the Issue of Scalability
January 27, 2012
SharePoint has not seen the same explosive growth in small or medium sized business as it has in larger organizations. One reason is simply the time and monetary investment that is required in running such an overwhelming infrastructure. Andrew Connell addresses this issue and its possible remedy with Windows Azure in his piece, “SharePoint 2010 + Windows Azure – Why You Should Care & the Development Story.”
Connell states:
Historically SharePoint has been very popular with large organizations because they can shoulder the financial and resource requirements required to deploy SharePoint. However one place where SharePoint hasn’t grown as fast is in the small and medium side business (SMB) area. The reason for this is most likely the cost and resource requirements (not just hardware, but people as well) necessary to deploy and maintain it. With Office 365, many of these barriers have been removed and therefore it represents a new era and opportunity to grow the SharePoint customer base. Therefore this is an area you should be very aware of and should learn how you can best leverage and exploit this new and untapped market of possible SharePoint customers!
Connell goes on to give specifics regarding the solutions in Office 365, and the ways that small or medium sized business might find SharePoint more amenable to their size and financial viability. Even as SharePoint becomes more accessible to smaller organizations, some third-party solutions are already customizing options to fit a variety of business needs.
Fabasoft Mindbreeze is one excellent third-party option for an organization of any size looking for an enterprise solution. Their scalable offerings are customized based on the needs of the customer, and expansion is an easy option whenever needed. Read more about “Three Configurations for Dynamic Scalability and Deployment.”
The blog entry begins,
In enterprise search, quality, usability and style are as important as relevancy of results and performance to engage your users right from the start. Let’s take a look at typical scale-out scenarios that become relevant when implementing enterprise environments with Fabasoft Mindbreeze.
The article then goes on to describe the different levels of deployment and how an organization might choose where to begin their installation. Keep in mind that moving from one level up to the next is effortless. Additionally, Fabasoft Mindbreeze is currently expanding onto the Cloud, where an organization’s storage needs are never limited.
So for SharePoint devotees looking for a way to make SharePoint more viable for smaller organizations, consult Connell’s findings above, but also explore the solutions presented by Fabasoft Mindbreeze and find a scalable solution that works for your organization.
Emily Rae Aldridge, January 27, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
More Efficiency for SharePoint with Fabasoft Mindbreeze InSite
January 24, 2012
The Fabasoft Mindbreeze Winter 2012 Release gives lots of good reasons to consider their third-party solution for any organization’s enterprise needs. Founder and managing director, Daniel Fallmann, highlights some of the most innovative features of the newest release in, “Our 2012 Winter Release – More Efficiency for SharePoint.”
Fallmann provides some highlights:
The Microsoft SharePoint search is replaced by Fabasoft Mindbreeze, with the added value of information pairing, which extends the search to the entire connected company knowledge – all on one page. So-called search-driven dashboards can also be created. What does this mean? All information of a page is displayed by Web Parts made available by Mindbreeze. A simple configuration is all that’s needed. The displayed content is always up-to-date and to the point. And after the initial configuration, this takes place automatically and maintenance-free. Furthermore, our 2012 Winter Release is the link between the Cloud and Microsoft SharePoint. Data from the Cloud can thereby be integrated just as easily into Micrososft SharePoint.
The Mindbreeze functionality as an add-on, connecting an existing SharePoint infrastructure to the cloud, is a good solution for companies currently struggling with the decision of moving to the cloud. Another major feature worth highlighting is Fabasoft Mindbreeze Insite.
Fallmann continues his discussion:
A further example . . . is Fabasoft Mindbreeze InSite. The software achieves what would normally only be possible with intensive maintenance – to keep internet sites constantly up-to-date. Imagine you want to post a current blog article on your internet site. This is normally only possible via the use of personnel resources . . . What if search results could appear without anyone realizing that a search engine is working in the background. In other words: Always up-to-date, without anyone needing to take care of or dedicate working time for it. For example the updating of blogs, news or whatever else you want to post on your site.
The InSite feature seems to be an effective way to maintain a current web presence without devoting extensive work time to the project. So whether your organization is searching for an enterprise solution for the first time or is simply looking for a way to improve a current SharePoint installation, Fabasoft Mindbreeze has many features that definitely warrant a second look.
Emily Rae Aldridge, January 24, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Looking Toward SharePoint 2013
January 23, 2012
In the constant conversation surrounding SharePoint, the next SharePoint release seems to always be on the horizon, ever present in the blogosphere. SharePoint 2010 is still relatively new, and yet some experts have already moved on to the yet unknown SharePoint 2013. Mike Walsh discusses this and more in his piece, “End of year look at SharePoint.”
Walsh offers:
SharePoint 2010 came out in May 2010 so we are now just over halfway through the usual three year cycle before the next version of the product . . . Also while clearly most of the developer team have been working on the new version since they virtually left the SP 2010 forums in summer 2010, people from the team such as Bill Baer seemed to have stopped writing anything on SP 2010 and there was even a Microsoft SP 2010 blogger who recently announced the end of his SP 2010 blog articles because he had moved to working with the next version of the product. Whether this means that they are already informing people . . . about what the next version will include is something that I don’t know . . . I do however suspect that if that stage hasn’t been reached yet it will be by maybe May 2012. That would be followed by the first private betas (end summer 2012?) and in time by the first public beta . . .My own guess is that we’ll be back to the October (2013) release date we had for the 2007 products.
It seems to me that Microsoft is stuck in an old-fashioned update routine. Instead of making updates, improvements, and patches a constant fluid process, SharePoint is confined to a rigid three-year release cycle. We wonder if users might be getting a bit tired of the three-year redesign schedule. It is a bit like a lame duck presidency – if something is on the way out then it gets no further attention. Everyone is looking forward to the next thing.
For this and other reasons, we like the flexibility and agility of third-party enterprise solutions. Fabasoft Mindbreeze, for example, releases updates quarterly for on-site installations and monthly for the cloud.
From their web site:
Continuous quality assurance and performance optimization ensure extremely short release cycles. We release a new Mindbreeze Cloud update every month.
If you are looking forward to a day when SharePoint is no longer hindered by the three-year cycle, consider a third-party solution like Fabasoft Mindbreeze, and enjoy the added agility that it brings to your organization’s enterprise needs.
Emily Rae Aldridge, January 23, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Considerations in SharePoint Hosting
January 20, 2012
Finding an enterprise search solution that works for your organization is no longer just about securing the best solution, it now extends to securing the best hosting option as well. SharePoint is obviously the most widely implemented enterprise solution, but even after choosing a SharePoint installation, a decision must be made whether to host on-site or in the cloud. More and more customers are moving toward cloud hosting for reasons including security and access.
A blog entry, “SharePoint Cloud Hosting Explained,” emphasizes the need to secure an appropriate and smart cloud hosting solution:
When searching for Sharepoint Cloud hosting, companies should be sure that whatever hosting company they choose to work with, is willing to create a system that is tailored-made to their particular needs, if necessary. Some hosting companies will allow businesses to pay as they go or give them the option of purchasing a license. It will also be extremely important that all of a business’ data is stored on servers that are secure.
One third-party solution that has received accolades for its work in the cloud is Fabasoft Mindbreeze. While working as an alternative to SharePoint, or as a compliment to an existing SharePoint infrastructure, Mindbreeze is a smart enterprise solution that works seamlessly on the cloud. Read more on their “Search in the Cloud” page.
Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise and the Cloud fit together perfectly. The Cloud makes your business mobile; Mindbreeze finds its way in the Cloud. This intelligent search is available as a Cloud service. This means that, if you so desire, Fabasoft Mindbreeze can run without any installation whatsoever – we operate the search engine for you. All the data that you manage in the Cloud is made searchable by Fabasoft Mindbreeze. This makes Fabasoft Mindbreeze Enterprise the center of excellence for your knowledge in the Cloud too.
If you desire to cut down on installation and maintenance time and cost, hosting your enterprise solution on the cloud is worth looking into. Check out Fabasoft Mindbreeze and see if their solution and cloud hosting opportunities will work for your organization.
Emily Rae Aldridge, January 20, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of SharePoint Hosting Options
January 17, 2012
A SharePoint installation is a grand undertaking, with two basic options: on-site installation or the cloud. Both options have pros and cons, and Gina Montgomery weighs them all in, “SharePoint Decisions: To Host or Not to Host?”
Montgomery sums up the issue:
Have you been scratching your head over the potential infrastructure investment that you’ll incur with your upcoming SharePoint Farm deployment? Are you feeling a sense of bewilderment over how you’ll have full control of your SharePoint environment if it’s not on premise? Or, perhaps you’ve been perplexed with how you’ll manage the around-the-clock IT support and overhead costs that come with the 24/7 monitoring and the recapitulation of OS upgrades and patches in your on premise environment. Well, the good news is that you’re not alone.
Montgomery does a good job of sizing up both options. While an on-site hosting for one organization might be best, another organization might choose to go with the cloud. She urges that each organization’s decision will be unique, based upon what suits their needs most effectively. However, we would like to throw out another option. There are third-party vendors that can meet an organization’s enterprise needs while also simplifying their hosting needs.
Fabasoft Mindbreeze offers different scalable options depending on an organization’s size and needs. Read more in, “Three Configurations for Dynamic Scalability and Deployment.”
In enterprise search, quality, usability and style are as important as relevancy of results and performance to engage your users right from the start. Let’s take a look at typical scale-out scenarios that become relevant when implementing enterprise environments with Fabasoft Mindbreeze.
The entry goes on to describe the customization options available via Fabasoft Mindbreeze depending upon the scale and scope of the client. Ranging from an installation that utilizes one single Fabasoft Mindbreeze Appliance, all the way up to a cloud installation, every organization will be able to have their storage needs met. The most useful part of this type of third-party installation is that Fabasoft will work with you to ensure that your bases are covered, while also planning for the future.
Emily Rae Aldridge, January 17, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
SharePoint Lags in Innovation, Development Cycle
January 13, 2012
In terms of web content management, SharePoint still lags behind despite its 2010 update. While there were notable improvements in many of the large areas of complaint: metadata management, multi-language, taxonomy, and basic web analytics to name a few, many shortcomings are still evident. Darren Guarnaccia tackles the issue for ZDNet in, “SharePoint 2010: a sheep in wolf’s clothing?”
While much of the piece is spent dissecting the major problem areas, here the author gives some grounding or basis for why SharePoint still falls behind:
Microsoft has gained some ground with this release, but it is still some way off the pace being set by the best-of-breed vendors in this market. If you believe the benefit of having a single integrated suite outweighs its various shortcomings, or if your requirements are relatively simple, then SharePoint may be a good fit. Something else to consider is the typical SharePoint development cycle of three years. While three-year product release cycles are normal for large enterprise content management projects, three years is a long time on the web. Entire new markets and trends can arise in the span of six months to a year.
Two concepts in the above statement are worth some attention. First, there is SharePoint’s position as a single integrated solution. It is worth pointing out that there are now outstanding third party solutions that work seamlessly with SharePoint, allowing the user to achieve the feel of a single solution while compensating for all of the shortcomings of SharePoint. We like the Fabasoft Mindbreeze solution and its SharePoint Connector.
Secondly, we agree that SharePoint’s long development cycle is one of its weak points. Again, referring to Fabasoft Mindbreeze, new products releases and updates are made quarterly for on-site installations and monthly for the cloud.
Continuous quality assurance and performance optimization ensure extremely short release cycles. We release a new Mindbreeze Cloud update every month.
Frequent updates (that are easy to install) ensure that usability and functionality remain high for all users. Perhaps SharePoint will start taking queues from some of its successful competitors and shorten its development cycle.
Emily Rae Aldridge, January 13, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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