Uitdaging voor de gevestigde (waan)orde.
COMPUTABLE EXPERT Andre Salomons
Directeur/CIO
Expert van Computable voor het topic Cloud Computing
Meer Hoewel hier ook wanorde had kunnen staan, denk ik dat het beter past bij de situatie van vandaag de dag. De gevestigde orde van managers, kenniswerkers en anderen moet vanuit de management directieven natuurlijk gevestigd zijn op een aantal zaken zoals output, sales, productiviteit en efficiency.
Er is dan ook niemand die de huidige, onder hoge druk staande, overgebleven werknemer zal lastig vallen met de vraag of deze vindt dat hij of zij wel efficiënt werkt/kan werken aan de in het intro genoemde doelstellingen. Zelfs mensen , wiens beroep het is om wanorde te voorkomen en risico’s te managen, zoals controllers, risk managers en overige financials zijn niet bezig met het gereedschap waarmee zij orde in de chaos moeten scheppen. Dat terwijl de gehele organisatie vindt dat dit de personen bij uitstek zijn die ervoor moeten zorgen dat ceo en cfo 'in control' kunnen zijn.
Van deze mensen verwacht je, onuitgesproken, dat ze hun boeltje op orde hebben. Dat blijkt in de praktijk een waanidee te zijn, omdat volgens de normen van enkele jaren de boel op orde zou zijn, maar dit met de nieuwe ict-mogelijkheden niet meer aan de orde is. Wanorde zou dan kunnen worden gezegd, maar dat is weer een ander uiterste. De organisatie leeft dan in de waan dat alles op orde is. Er is dan sprake van de zogenaamde waanorde.
Tijd voor tools
Tijd om de echte tools, die orde scheppen in de steeds groter wordende hoeveelheid informatie(infobesitas) eens voor het voetlicht te brengen. Wist u dat iemand die vijf jaar bij dezelfde werkgever werkt gemiddeld zes tot acht muisklikken nodig heeft om een document uit het verleden te zoeken? En dat de kans om het dan te vinden niet eens 100 procent is! Dan hebben we het nog niet eens over het kostenaspect van het niet kunnen vinden van documenten.
Na mijn eerste 365 uren werkzaam te zijn geweest met Office 365 moet ik, van huis uit Financial met ict-kennis, bekennen dat ik ben gaan inzien dat Microsoft hier iets moois heeft neergezet. Sinds april 2011 werken wij met Office 365 en er is nog steeds sprake van Sharendipity, het gevoel dat je ieder dag iets nieuws kunt ontdekken in Office 365. Was het zo dat je met eerdere Sharepoint-versies al de beschikking had over de integratie met office-producten, de online-versie gaat nog een stap verder. Je hebt dan in de enterprise-versie de beschikking over Sharepoint-online, Exchange-online, Lync, Exel , Word, Powerpoint. Je hebt al je bestanden bij de hand en wie zal je missen als je vanuit huis je bestanden bijwerkt en upload?
De eerste maanden van de beta leverde nog al wat performance problemen op, maar gaandeweg richting de officiële launch verbeterde dit door de bijschakeling van resources. We werken nu dagelijks ruim tien uur online en de tijden dat de explorer herstart lijken bijna tot het verleden te horen. Wij merken dat ook de helpdesk van Office 365 op toeren komt en inmiddels veel ervaring heeft opgedaan.
De Sharepoint-online functionaliteit is op grote lijnen dezelfde als in de oude versie, hoewel je van tevoren even moet testen of je Sharepoint-template (wsp) direct op SP 2010 werkt. Niet alle site collection features die in enterprise Sharepoint aanwezig zijn zitten in bijvoorbeeld SharePoint 2010 foundation. Lync is ook prettig om mee te werken, al is het alleen al om de functionaliteit dat je in Outlook een bericht krijgt als je een Lync gesprek hebt gemist.
Read more: http://www.computable.nl/artikel/ict_topics/cloud_computing/4181318/2333364/uitdaging-voor-de-gevestigde-waanorde.html#ixzz1YlA5EUf5
Showing posts with label SharePoint. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SharePoint. Show all posts
Friday, September 23, 2011
Thursday, February 24, 2011
5 Tips voor beleid in SharePoint
SharePoint en vooral de hoeveelheid content op het platform neemt de laatste jaren een enorme vlucht. IT moet zowel het delen van content als collaboration faciliteren als strikte policies handhaven om te voorkomen dat documenten in verkeerde handen vallen. Deze vijf vuistregels helpen je bij het afschermen van SharePoint.
Het begon ooit als een intranetbak voor Office-documenten, maar het is inmiddels het belangrijkste enterprise informatieportal geworden. Hoe je het wendt of keert, SharePoint heeft altijd al om de content gedraaid.
SharePoint’s functionaliteit bevat tegenwoordig enterprise content management, search, social networking, blogs en wiki’s, collaboration en business process management (BPM). Maar al deze onderdelen van de machine leunen op content, of het nu gaat om trainingvideo’s, financiële rapportages of vertrouwelijke beleidsdocumenten. De machine kan vastlopen als SharePoint niet goed door IT wordt beheerd.
Het opslaan van content in SharePoint is onderdeel van de uitdaging; bij het beveiligen ervan lopen organisaties tegen problemen aan wanneer er geen heldere policies bestaan en er niet nagedacht is over het toegangsbeheer.
De risico’s van onveilige SharePoint content beperken zich niet tot aanvallen van hackers of ontevreden medewerkers die vertrouwelijke informatie lekken, zegt Larry Concannon, VP product marketing bij compliance software leverancier HiSoftware.
“De meest voorkomende inbreuken op privacy zijn onbedoeld”, legt hij uit. “Vaak gaat het om slordigheid of onachtzaamheid van werknemers.”
De beste content security strategie voor SharePoint laat werknemers vrijelijk content toevoegen en delen, maar past policies toe zodra vertrouwelijke documenten naar andere afdelingen verdwijnen of zelfs buiten het bedrijf dreigen te belanden.
HiSoftware definieert vijf vuistregels voor het beschermen van content in SharePoint.
1. Maak duidelijk welke content is toegestaan
Organisaties moeten heldere, gedocumenteerde beleidsregels opstellen als onderdeel van hun SharePoint implementatie, zegt Concannon. Dat betekent ook dat je duidelijk maakt welk type content toegestaan is.
Iedere organisatie zal zijn eigen definitie hebben van welke content toegestaan is. Veilige SharePoint implementaties houden er rekening mee wie content mag bekijken en publiceren en welke content opgeslagen mag worden binnen de omgeving.
2. Leid je medewerkers op
Een ander belangrijk punt van een veilige SharePoint implementatie is dat je gebruikers op de hoogte brengt van de privacy- en vertrouwelijkheidsregels die IT heeft opgezet om zowel werknemers als de organisatie te beschermen.
“Op een bepaald niveau betekent dit simpele gebruikerstraining”, zegt Concannon. “Maar het kan ook inhouden dat je een scherm met gebruiksvoorwaarden maakt wanneer mensen bijvoorbeeld hun eigen Mijn Site toevoegen.”
3. Gebruik classificatie om gedrag in goede banen te leiden
Je kunt in SharePoint content beveiligen door bij elke keer dat een document wordt toegevoegd om een classificatie te vragen. Deze optie kan IT voor verschillende categorieën content opstellen om duidelijker te maken wat wel en niet binnen het systeem thuishoort. “Classificatieschermen laten je weten of een document wel of niet binnen een van de beschikbare categorieën past”, zegt Concannon. “Als dit niet zo is, hoeft het niet op SharePoint gepubliceerd te worden.”
4. Vergeet je beleid niet te handhaven
Zodra de regels gemaakt zijn, moet IT ze strikt handhaven en gebruikers laten weten wanneer er overtreding plaatsvindt. Een manier is om gebruikers de mogelijkheid te geven content te taggen waarvan ze denken dat deze ongepast is.
Complianceleveranciers bieden geautomatiseerde software die content vooraf checkt op policies voordat deze op SharePoint gepubliceerd kan worden. Functionaliteit als content scanning kan gebruikt worden om bepaalde regels te valideren en kan voorkomen dat vertrouwelijke content uitlekt.
5. Vind de balans in sociale tools
Iets waar je binnen SharePoint goed op dient te letten is social networking, zegt Concannon. Sociale features zoals blogs, wiki’s, communities en Mijn Site profielpagina’s en forums hebben in SharePoint 2010 een veel prominentere plek gekregen. Hoewel deze tools communicatie en productiviteit bevorderen, kunnen ze je compliant omgeving ten gronde richten.
Om een balans te zoeken tussen Web 2.0 content en ‘ouderwetse’ documenten, raadt HiSoftware een aanpak aan waarin het delen van informatie wordt aangemoedigd, maar waar elke afdeling bepaalde beleidsregels kent waardoor een bijvoorbeeld een juridische tekst over een fusie niet door verkeerde personen kan worden ingelezen.
Het begon ooit als een intranetbak voor Office-documenten, maar het is inmiddels het belangrijkste enterprise informatieportal geworden. Hoe je het wendt of keert, SharePoint heeft altijd al om de content gedraaid.
SharePoint’s functionaliteit bevat tegenwoordig enterprise content management, search, social networking, blogs en wiki’s, collaboration en business process management (BPM). Maar al deze onderdelen van de machine leunen op content, of het nu gaat om trainingvideo’s, financiële rapportages of vertrouwelijke beleidsdocumenten. De machine kan vastlopen als SharePoint niet goed door IT wordt beheerd.
Het opslaan van content in SharePoint is onderdeel van de uitdaging; bij het beveiligen ervan lopen organisaties tegen problemen aan wanneer er geen heldere policies bestaan en er niet nagedacht is over het toegangsbeheer.
De risico’s van onveilige SharePoint content beperken zich niet tot aanvallen van hackers of ontevreden medewerkers die vertrouwelijke informatie lekken, zegt Larry Concannon, VP product marketing bij compliance software leverancier HiSoftware.
“De meest voorkomende inbreuken op privacy zijn onbedoeld”, legt hij uit. “Vaak gaat het om slordigheid of onachtzaamheid van werknemers.”
De beste content security strategie voor SharePoint laat werknemers vrijelijk content toevoegen en delen, maar past policies toe zodra vertrouwelijke documenten naar andere afdelingen verdwijnen of zelfs buiten het bedrijf dreigen te belanden.
HiSoftware definieert vijf vuistregels voor het beschermen van content in SharePoint.
1. Maak duidelijk welke content is toegestaan
Organisaties moeten heldere, gedocumenteerde beleidsregels opstellen als onderdeel van hun SharePoint implementatie, zegt Concannon. Dat betekent ook dat je duidelijk maakt welk type content toegestaan is.
Iedere organisatie zal zijn eigen definitie hebben van welke content toegestaan is. Veilige SharePoint implementaties houden er rekening mee wie content mag bekijken en publiceren en welke content opgeslagen mag worden binnen de omgeving.
2. Leid je medewerkers op
Een ander belangrijk punt van een veilige SharePoint implementatie is dat je gebruikers op de hoogte brengt van de privacy- en vertrouwelijkheidsregels die IT heeft opgezet om zowel werknemers als de organisatie te beschermen.
“Op een bepaald niveau betekent dit simpele gebruikerstraining”, zegt Concannon. “Maar het kan ook inhouden dat je een scherm met gebruiksvoorwaarden maakt wanneer mensen bijvoorbeeld hun eigen Mijn Site toevoegen.”
3. Gebruik classificatie om gedrag in goede banen te leiden
Je kunt in SharePoint content beveiligen door bij elke keer dat een document wordt toegevoegd om een classificatie te vragen. Deze optie kan IT voor verschillende categorieën content opstellen om duidelijker te maken wat wel en niet binnen het systeem thuishoort. “Classificatieschermen laten je weten of een document wel of niet binnen een van de beschikbare categorieën past”, zegt Concannon. “Als dit niet zo is, hoeft het niet op SharePoint gepubliceerd te worden.”
4. Vergeet je beleid niet te handhaven
Zodra de regels gemaakt zijn, moet IT ze strikt handhaven en gebruikers laten weten wanneer er overtreding plaatsvindt. Een manier is om gebruikers de mogelijkheid te geven content te taggen waarvan ze denken dat deze ongepast is.
Complianceleveranciers bieden geautomatiseerde software die content vooraf checkt op policies voordat deze op SharePoint gepubliceerd kan worden. Functionaliteit als content scanning kan gebruikt worden om bepaalde regels te valideren en kan voorkomen dat vertrouwelijke content uitlekt.
5. Vind de balans in sociale tools
Iets waar je binnen SharePoint goed op dient te letten is social networking, zegt Concannon. Sociale features zoals blogs, wiki’s, communities en Mijn Site profielpagina’s en forums hebben in SharePoint 2010 een veel prominentere plek gekregen. Hoewel deze tools communicatie en productiviteit bevorderen, kunnen ze je compliant omgeving ten gronde richten.
Om een balans te zoeken tussen Web 2.0 content en ‘ouderwetse’ documenten, raadt HiSoftware een aanpak aan waarin het delen van informatie wordt aangemoedigd, maar waar elke afdeling bepaalde beleidsregels kent waardoor een bijvoorbeeld een juridische tekst over een fusie niet door verkeerde personen kan worden ingelezen.
Vereniging Eigen Huis integreert contract in Sharepoint
Vereniging Eigen Huis heeft inzicht gekregen in meer dan vijftien verschillende soorten contracten. Zij hebben een intranetsite op basis van Sharepoint 2007 en beschikken ook over kennis van Sharepoint zodat zij zelf onderdelen kunnen ontwikkelen en beheren in het programma. Voor contractbeheer heeft Vereniging Eigen Huis aanvullende software ingezet, die 100 procent is geïntegreerd met de bestaande Sharepoint-omgeving.
De hoogste prioriteit kreeg de oplossing voor contractmanagement. Het project bestond uit het inrichten van vijftien contractsoorten met behulp van ecspand. Het doel is om meer inzicht te krijgen in de lopende contracten, de looptijden bij te houden en de betrokken personen te informeren over de status wanneer bijvoorbeeld een opzegtermijn nadert. Vereniging Eigen Huis wenste contracten snel en makkelijk terug te vinden en wilde geen lades meer doorzoeken.
Door consultants van Docdynamic zijn vijftien verschillende contractsoorten ingericht, elk met eigen specifieke kenmerken. Tot op heden werd van elk contract een papieren versie bewaard en gearchiveerd in ladekasten. Een aantal afdelingen hield een Excel-sheet bij. Het was lastig om de looptijden bij te houden en de betrokken personen op tijd te informeren over opzegtermijnen, omdat deze alleen op de papieren versie stond vermeld. Een consultant van Docdynamic regelde uiteindelijk alles en implementeerde ecspand bij Vereniging Eigen Huis.
Fase 2: Inkoopfacturen digitaal archiveren
Nadat het contractmanagement was geïmplementeerd bij Vereniging Eigen Huis is het vervolg ingezet met de implementatie van inkoopfactuurverwerking met ecspand. De software is ingericht om facturen te scannen en te koppelen aan leveranciersnummer en deze zo op te zoeken in het contractbeheersysteem. De toegevoegde waarde hiervan werd onvoldoende prioriteit toegekend door de afdeling inkoop en F&C, waardoor is besloten hier nog niet mee te gaan werken.
De inkoopfacturen scannen met ecspand, al dan niet voorzien van een barcode en vervolgens digitaal archiveren. De barcode bevat het boekstuknummer uit Navision. Hiermee worden alle kopgegevens van de inkoopfactuur uit Navision opgehaald.
Toekomstplannen
Het proces van beoordelen en goedkeuren van facturen kan in veel organisaties versneld en verbeterd worden. Door de workflow van ecspand in te zetten voor het digitaal beoordelen en het versnellen van het goedkeuringsproces van inkoopfacturen wordt een enorme efficiencyslag gemaakt. Hiervan wordt de toegevoegde waarde wel erkend door de afdeling inkoop en F&C. Deze afdelingen zullen samen alle mogelijkheden inventariseren en de uitbreidingen van ecspand in de toekomst invullen.
OPDRACHTGEVER: VERENIGING EIGEN HUIS
Vereniging Eigen Huis behartigt de belangen van de eigenwoningbezitter. Dit uit zich op drie vlakken: diensten en producten, informatie en advies en collectief ledenbelang. De ontwikkeling van de diverse diensten en de partijen waarmee ze als vereniging samenwerken, worden zorgvuldig geselecteerd. Eigen huis behartigt de belangen van ruim 680.000 eigenwoningbezitters. Er werken ruim tweehonderd medewerkers.
REDENEN VOOR ECSPAND VOLGENS VERENIGING EIGEN HUIS
- Perfecte aansluiting op MS SharePoint Server
- Snel de gewenste informatie beschikbaar.
- Overzicht van alle contracten.
- Makkelijk en snel zoeken naar bijbehorende documenten.
- Gemakkelijk lopende contracten inzien.
- Tijdig de juiste persoon informeren over contractstatus.
- Digitaal notities toevoegen aan documenten.
- Webgebaseerde oplossing.
- Gebruiksvriendelijk.
- Snelle implementatie.
- Onderhoud in eigen beheer.
Voordelen contractmanagement:
- Tijdbesparing door snel terugvinden van contracten op leveranciersnummer, boeknummer, datum bereik etc.).
- Kostenbesparing door inzicht in alle lopende contracten en (opzeg-)termijnen voor de betrokken personen.
- Tijdig per e-mail informeren over de status van een contract.
- Snel en op elk gewenst tijdstip contracten inzien.
- Databeveiliging, toekenning gebruikersrechten op contractniveau.
- Kostenbesparing: geen papieren archief meer nodig.
- Overzichtelijke administratie per leverancier.
- Volledigheid, alle documenten zijn per leverancier in één digitaal dossier revisiezeker opgeslagen.
DOELGROEP
ecspand is bestemd voor middelgrote tot grote (inter-)nationale bedrijven die Sharepoint hebben ingezet en dit wensen uit te breiden naar een bedrijfsbreed informatieplatform. Ecspand is een 100 procent geïntegreerde dms/ecm-oplossing met Sharepoint 2007/2010.
Read more: http://www.computable.nl/artikel/ict_topics/erp/3791074/1276992/vereniging-eigen-huis-integreert-contract-in-sharepoint.html#ixzz1EqhovxRN
De hoogste prioriteit kreeg de oplossing voor contractmanagement. Het project bestond uit het inrichten van vijftien contractsoorten met behulp van ecspand. Het doel is om meer inzicht te krijgen in de lopende contracten, de looptijden bij te houden en de betrokken personen te informeren over de status wanneer bijvoorbeeld een opzegtermijn nadert. Vereniging Eigen Huis wenste contracten snel en makkelijk terug te vinden en wilde geen lades meer doorzoeken.
Door consultants van Docdynamic zijn vijftien verschillende contractsoorten ingericht, elk met eigen specifieke kenmerken. Tot op heden werd van elk contract een papieren versie bewaard en gearchiveerd in ladekasten. Een aantal afdelingen hield een Excel-sheet bij. Het was lastig om de looptijden bij te houden en de betrokken personen op tijd te informeren over opzegtermijnen, omdat deze alleen op de papieren versie stond vermeld. Een consultant van Docdynamic regelde uiteindelijk alles en implementeerde ecspand bij Vereniging Eigen Huis.
Fase 2: Inkoopfacturen digitaal archiveren
Nadat het contractmanagement was geïmplementeerd bij Vereniging Eigen Huis is het vervolg ingezet met de implementatie van inkoopfactuurverwerking met ecspand. De software is ingericht om facturen te scannen en te koppelen aan leveranciersnummer en deze zo op te zoeken in het contractbeheersysteem. De toegevoegde waarde hiervan werd onvoldoende prioriteit toegekend door de afdeling inkoop en F&C, waardoor is besloten hier nog niet mee te gaan werken.
De inkoopfacturen scannen met ecspand, al dan niet voorzien van een barcode en vervolgens digitaal archiveren. De barcode bevat het boekstuknummer uit Navision. Hiermee worden alle kopgegevens van de inkoopfactuur uit Navision opgehaald.
Toekomstplannen
Het proces van beoordelen en goedkeuren van facturen kan in veel organisaties versneld en verbeterd worden. Door de workflow van ecspand in te zetten voor het digitaal beoordelen en het versnellen van het goedkeuringsproces van inkoopfacturen wordt een enorme efficiencyslag gemaakt. Hiervan wordt de toegevoegde waarde wel erkend door de afdeling inkoop en F&C. Deze afdelingen zullen samen alle mogelijkheden inventariseren en de uitbreidingen van ecspand in de toekomst invullen.
OPDRACHTGEVER: VERENIGING EIGEN HUIS
Vereniging Eigen Huis behartigt de belangen van de eigenwoningbezitter. Dit uit zich op drie vlakken: diensten en producten, informatie en advies en collectief ledenbelang. De ontwikkeling van de diverse diensten en de partijen waarmee ze als vereniging samenwerken, worden zorgvuldig geselecteerd. Eigen huis behartigt de belangen van ruim 680.000 eigenwoningbezitters. Er werken ruim tweehonderd medewerkers.
REDENEN VOOR ECSPAND VOLGENS VERENIGING EIGEN HUIS
- Perfecte aansluiting op MS SharePoint Server
- Snel de gewenste informatie beschikbaar.
- Overzicht van alle contracten.
- Makkelijk en snel zoeken naar bijbehorende documenten.
- Gemakkelijk lopende contracten inzien.
- Tijdig de juiste persoon informeren over contractstatus.
- Digitaal notities toevoegen aan documenten.
- Webgebaseerde oplossing.
- Gebruiksvriendelijk.
- Snelle implementatie.
- Onderhoud in eigen beheer.
Voordelen contractmanagement:
- Tijdbesparing door snel terugvinden van contracten op leveranciersnummer, boeknummer, datum bereik etc.).
- Kostenbesparing door inzicht in alle lopende contracten en (opzeg-)termijnen voor de betrokken personen.
- Tijdig per e-mail informeren over de status van een contract.
- Snel en op elk gewenst tijdstip contracten inzien.
- Databeveiliging, toekenning gebruikersrechten op contractniveau.
- Kostenbesparing: geen papieren archief meer nodig.
- Overzichtelijke administratie per leverancier.
- Volledigheid, alle documenten zijn per leverancier in één digitaal dossier revisiezeker opgeslagen.
DOELGROEP
ecspand is bestemd voor middelgrote tot grote (inter-)nationale bedrijven die Sharepoint hebben ingezet en dit wensen uit te breiden naar een bedrijfsbreed informatieplatform. Ecspand is een 100 procent geïntegreerde dms/ecm-oplossing met Sharepoint 2007/2010.
Read more: http://www.computable.nl/artikel/ict_topics/erp/3791074/1276992/vereniging-eigen-huis-integreert-contract-in-sharepoint.html#ixzz1EqhovxRN
T-Systems helpt Shell aan Sharepoint
Olieconcern Shell heeft Microsoft en T-Systems de opdracht gegeven om een op maat gesneden Sharepoint-oplossing te leveren. Beide ict-leveranciers hebben voor die opdracht de bestaande samenwerkingsbanden aangehaald. Voor april 2011 moeten de eerste medewerkers van Shell bestanden uitwisselen via Sharepoint.
Het is niet bekendgemaakt om hoeveel accounts het gaat. T-Systems schrijft in een persbericht dat op termijn alle Shell-medewerkers wereldwijd kunnen samenwerken en informatie uitwisselen via het gestandaardiseerde platform op basis van Microsoft Sharepoint. Shell heeft wereldwijd bijna honderdduizend medewerkers.
Medewerkers krijgen via cloud computing toegang tot de software voor gegevensuitwisseling. Het gaat om een zogenoemde hybride oplossing. Dat betekent dat informatie zowel lokaal als in datacenters verspreid over verschillende vestigingen wereldwijd is opgeslagen. Het prijsmodel is op basis van gebruik.
Cloud computing
T-Systems en Microsoft werken al sinds 2004 samen. In 2009 kondigden de bedrijven gezamenlijke plannen op het gebied van cloud computing aan. Daarbij bieden de ict-dienstverlener en de sofwareleverancier werkplekken aan via het bedrijfsnetwerk.
Door de opdracht verbreedt T-Systems zijn hosting en opslagactiviteiten naar applicatiebeheer en collaboration.
Ontevreden
Eerder meldde de Duitse zakenkrant Handelsblatt dat Shell en Philips ontevereden zouden zijn over de prestaties van T-Systems.
reageer print stuur door
GERELATEERDE ARTIKELEN
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18-05-2010 AT&T helpt Shell aan Unified Communications
01-03-2010 IBM helpt Shell bij rekenwerk olieproductie
29-10-2009 Shell: Ook ICT’er moet vrezen voor baan
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31-10-2008 Shell niet langer de populairste werkgever
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Read more: http://www.computable.nl/artikel/ict_topics/ecm/3791472/1277020/tsystems-helpt-shell-aan-sharepoint.html#ixzz1EqhCFCuC
Het is niet bekendgemaakt om hoeveel accounts het gaat. T-Systems schrijft in een persbericht dat op termijn alle Shell-medewerkers wereldwijd kunnen samenwerken en informatie uitwisselen via het gestandaardiseerde platform op basis van Microsoft Sharepoint. Shell heeft wereldwijd bijna honderdduizend medewerkers.
Medewerkers krijgen via cloud computing toegang tot de software voor gegevensuitwisseling. Het gaat om een zogenoemde hybride oplossing. Dat betekent dat informatie zowel lokaal als in datacenters verspreid over verschillende vestigingen wereldwijd is opgeslagen. Het prijsmodel is op basis van gebruik.
Cloud computing
T-Systems en Microsoft werken al sinds 2004 samen. In 2009 kondigden de bedrijven gezamenlijke plannen op het gebied van cloud computing aan. Daarbij bieden de ict-dienstverlener en de sofwareleverancier werkplekken aan via het bedrijfsnetwerk.
Door de opdracht verbreedt T-Systems zijn hosting en opslagactiviteiten naar applicatiebeheer en collaboration.
Ontevreden
Eerder meldde de Duitse zakenkrant Handelsblatt dat Shell en Philips ontevereden zouden zijn over de prestaties van T-Systems.
reageer print stuur door
GERELATEERDE ARTIKELEN
18-02-2011 Logica participeert in Shell-deal van 300 miljoen
03-01-2011 'Shell en Philips ontevreden over T-Systems'
09-12-2010 AT&T en Cisco bekijken energieverbruik Shell
18-05-2010 AT&T helpt Shell aan Unified Communications
01-03-2010 IBM helpt Shell bij rekenwerk olieproductie
29-10-2009 Shell: Ook ICT’er moet vrezen voor baan
09-07-2009 Shell vraagt lager tarief van ingehuurde ICT'ers
09-02-2009 EDS: meer dan on-site werkplekbeheer bij Shell
02-02-2009 Getronics beheert alle 90.000 Shell-werkplekken
29-01-2009 Getronics helpt EDS bij uitbesteding Shell
31-10-2008 Shell niet langer de populairste werkgever
18-09-2008 Migratieklus Shell door T-Systems duurt jaren
07-04-2008 Dienstverleners pronken met Shell-contract
Read more: http://www.computable.nl/artikel/ict_topics/ecm/3791472/1277020/tsystems-helpt-shell-aan-sharepoint.html#ixzz1EqhCFCuC
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Friesland kiest Sharepoint voor subsidies
De provincie Friesland gaat subsidieaanvragen en de archivering van bijbehorende stukken automatiseren met een document- en dossiermanagementsysteem op basis van Microsoft Sharepoint. Het gaat om het product 360 van de Zweedse leverancier Sofware Innovation. Het pakket is door Microsoft-dienstverlener Wortell uit Lijnden in het Nederlands vertaald en aangepast aan de in Nederland geldende wet- en regelgeving van de Archiefwet. De subsidie-aanvragen werden voorheen handmatig verwerkt.
Voor de provincie Friesland is dit het eerste project volgens de methode zaakgericht werken. Bij die werkwijze worden alle officiële documenten die bij een subsidiezaak horen, zoals inkomende en uitgaande brieven, besluiten, controlelijsten en mailwisseling in één digitaal dossier opgeslagen.
360 (360 graden) is gebaseerd op Microsoft Sharepoint en maakt het mogelijk de complete informatiehuishouding van een organisatie te digitaliseren.
De provincie werkt aan de implementatie van een servicegeoriënteerde architectuur om aan te kunnen sluiten op de Nederlandse Overheid Referentie Architectuur (Nora). De provincie heeft de ambitie om steeds meer te gaan samenwerken met andere instanties. Daarnaast wil de provincie bezuinigen door zo efficiënt mogelijk te werken en hebben de Friezen tot doel gesteld om zoveel mogelijk zonder papier te werken.
Vijfduizend subsidie-aanvragen
Het contract heeft een looptijd van drie jaar. Het zaaksysteem wordt gebruikt door zeventig medewerkers van de afdeling subsidies. Jaarlijks worden vijfduizend subsidie-aanvragen gedaan. In totaal werken ongeveer duizend mensen bij de provincie.
bekijk reacties (2) print stuur door
GERELATEERDE ARTIKELEN
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Read more: http://www.computable.nl/artikel/ict_topics/ecm/3751888/1277020/friesland-kiest-sharepoint-voor-subsidies.html#ixzz1C3Sc0z9Z
Voor de provincie Friesland is dit het eerste project volgens de methode zaakgericht werken. Bij die werkwijze worden alle officiële documenten die bij een subsidiezaak horen, zoals inkomende en uitgaande brieven, besluiten, controlelijsten en mailwisseling in één digitaal dossier opgeslagen.
360 (360 graden) is gebaseerd op Microsoft Sharepoint en maakt het mogelijk de complete informatiehuishouding van een organisatie te digitaliseren.
De provincie werkt aan de implementatie van een servicegeoriënteerde architectuur om aan te kunnen sluiten op de Nederlandse Overheid Referentie Architectuur (Nora). De provincie heeft de ambitie om steeds meer te gaan samenwerken met andere instanties. Daarnaast wil de provincie bezuinigen door zo efficiënt mogelijk te werken en hebben de Friezen tot doel gesteld om zoveel mogelijk zonder papier te werken.
Vijfduizend subsidie-aanvragen
Het contract heeft een looptijd van drie jaar. Het zaaksysteem wordt gebruikt door zeventig medewerkers van de afdeling subsidies. Jaarlijks worden vijfduizend subsidie-aanvragen gedaan. In totaal werken ongeveer duizend mensen bij de provincie.
bekijk reacties (2) print stuur door
GERELATEERDE ARTIKELEN
24-01-2011 Dienstverleners zetten Sharepoint in de cloud
24-11-2010 Smart SharePoint Solutions biedt Financial Suite
04-11-2010 Sociale software en Microsoft SharePoint 2010
07-09-2010 SharePoint 2010: standaard document management-functies
28-06-2010 Nederlander is trots op 'zijn' Sharepoint 2010
12-11-2009 EMC Documentum ondersteunt SharePoint
Read more: http://www.computable.nl/artikel/ict_topics/ecm/3751888/1277020/friesland-kiest-sharepoint-voor-subsidies.html#ixzz1C3Sc0z9Z
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
A first look at Office 2010
Mary Branscombe reports as Microsoft reveals an improved interface and promises real-time collaboration and web apps
Published: July 14 2009 13:29 | Last updated: July 14 2009 13:29
The technical preview of Office 2010 is an early look at some of the new features coming in the next release. Updates to the desktop apps are welcome if not revolutionary, but the real shift is that Microsoft is embracing the cloud (and the mobile phone), albeit carefully and without undermining the market for the full-featured desktop versions.
There are some users who dislike the “ribbon” interface introduced in Office 2007 but according to Microsoft product manager Chris Bryant “the ribbon has helped people use more of the Office applications in Office 2007 than ever before”.
He compares it to drag and drop, first introduced in Word in 1991: “Now it’s a fundamental part of the productivity experience; we think the ribbon will be very much the same in 10 years.”
Office 2010 extends the ribbon to all the applications and it does an excellent job of it. It also introduces the option to customise the ribbon completely, which should mollify most remaining critics.
The Office menu, which replaced the File menu in Office 2007 is in turn replaced by the Backstage menu which combines useful tools and settings once found in a variety of dialog boxes in one handy place, including file properties, previews of file templates, print preview, advanced printer settings and options for sharing files (by methods such as e-mail, SharePoint or Excel services) and packaging presentations.
Expect the look of Backstage to evolve as it currently takes up rather more space than necessary for many of the features it includes.
Otherwise, the interface of Office 2010 is generally cleaner and more efficient than the previous version, using the space better and presenting appropriate commands more intelligently.
Microsoft has gone back to basics on the core application features such as text formating, copy and paste, printing and integration between the different applications says Mr Bryant, noting that around 20 per cent of all commands used in Office are about copying and pasting.
“The long-term mission of Office is really to deliver that best productivity experience. We spent more energy and more time implementing those essentials and making sure they work the way people expect.”
Integration includes making more features common across applications. Some of that is playing catch-up. PowerPoint 2010 can now compare and merge presentations the way Word lets you compare and merge versions of a document.
But new features such as a preview that helps you pick the right format for pasting information such as tables, instant translations and tools for editing photos inside applications (adjusting the brightness, contrast and colour tone or adding Photoshop-style artistic effects) are in almost all the Office programs.
PowerPoint has basic video editing tools; they don’t replace sophisticated video editing software but if you only need to adjust the contrast or brightness and select a section to play then being able to do it all in your presentation will save a lot of time.
PowerPoint also gets the first connection to the cloud: you can embed videos from online services such as YouTube into slides and upload your presentation to the PowerPoint Live service, send the URL to participants at different companies and control the presentation in their browsers (which can be Firefox or Safari as well as Internet Explorer).
Excel’s new sparklines place mini-charts into tables, highlighting trends and key figures more clearly and new Slicer tools make it easier to explore large PivotTables and PivotCharts.
Outlook has Quick Steps and Mail Tips to streamline common tasks and help you avoid common mistakes, plus a very welcome Ignore tool for dropping out of e-mail conversations that take on a life of their own. Word gets an improved navigation pane for browsing and searching within long documents.
Useful as they are, these features are not compelling reasons to upgrade and that underlines the fact that this is very much a preview version (although it’s robust enough to do real work with).
It doesn’t include the Office Web applications (available as a preview in August) or the new version of SharePoint (expected in beta in October) that will enable collaboration between document authors and allow businesses to host the web apps themselves, suggesting Microsoft still has a lot of work to do.
The real test will come when businesses can evaluate whether the collaborative tools and web apps deliver Mr Bryant’s claim of “the best productivity experience across the PC, phone and browser”.
Most collaboration today is what he calls “linear”: using e-mail to send documents. “Today, not many people co-author in real time, but we think it will be a fundamental expectation of the future.”
Both the desktop and web applications will allow real-time collaboration, and Word will allow desktop and web users to work on the same document; Microsoft is also promoting its note-taking app, OneNote, as a collaborative tool for both storing and sharing information.
Similarly most people expect to use a PC (usually their own) to edit documents but that attitude is changing: “The freedom to work from anywhere is becoming a fundamental expectation.”
For Office to remain a key business tool, Microsoft has to judge those expectations correctly and satisfy them on the platforms business users care about.
The Office web apps need to deliver the same rich features and formats as desktop Office programs rather than the basic tools of most web apps today.
Businesses will welcome the flexibility of hosting the web applications on their SharePoint servers at no extra charge and making those available through an extranet. But apart from the promise that the web apps will be included in the Office Professional Pro edition for enterprise and free to consumers and small business users through the Live service, Microsoft hasn’t finalised business models or what collaboration will be possible across these kind of boundaries.
Those issues will be as important as the features in the desktop or the web apps.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009. Print a single copy of this article for personal use. Contact us if you wish to print more to distribute to others.
Published: July 14 2009 13:29 | Last updated: July 14 2009 13:29
The technical preview of Office 2010 is an early look at some of the new features coming in the next release. Updates to the desktop apps are welcome if not revolutionary, but the real shift is that Microsoft is embracing the cloud (and the mobile phone), albeit carefully and without undermining the market for the full-featured desktop versions.
There are some users who dislike the “ribbon” interface introduced in Office 2007 but according to Microsoft product manager Chris Bryant “the ribbon has helped people use more of the Office applications in Office 2007 than ever before”.
He compares it to drag and drop, first introduced in Word in 1991: “Now it’s a fundamental part of the productivity experience; we think the ribbon will be very much the same in 10 years.”
Office 2010 extends the ribbon to all the applications and it does an excellent job of it. It also introduces the option to customise the ribbon completely, which should mollify most remaining critics.
The Office menu, which replaced the File menu in Office 2007 is in turn replaced by the Backstage menu which combines useful tools and settings once found in a variety of dialog boxes in one handy place, including file properties, previews of file templates, print preview, advanced printer settings and options for sharing files (by methods such as e-mail, SharePoint or Excel services) and packaging presentations.
Expect the look of Backstage to evolve as it currently takes up rather more space than necessary for many of the features it includes.
Otherwise, the interface of Office 2010 is generally cleaner and more efficient than the previous version, using the space better and presenting appropriate commands more intelligently.
Microsoft has gone back to basics on the core application features such as text formating, copy and paste, printing and integration between the different applications says Mr Bryant, noting that around 20 per cent of all commands used in Office are about copying and pasting.
“The long-term mission of Office is really to deliver that best productivity experience. We spent more energy and more time implementing those essentials and making sure they work the way people expect.”
Integration includes making more features common across applications. Some of that is playing catch-up. PowerPoint 2010 can now compare and merge presentations the way Word lets you compare and merge versions of a document.
But new features such as a preview that helps you pick the right format for pasting information such as tables, instant translations and tools for editing photos inside applications (adjusting the brightness, contrast and colour tone or adding Photoshop-style artistic effects) are in almost all the Office programs.
PowerPoint has basic video editing tools; they don’t replace sophisticated video editing software but if you only need to adjust the contrast or brightness and select a section to play then being able to do it all in your presentation will save a lot of time.
PowerPoint also gets the first connection to the cloud: you can embed videos from online services such as YouTube into slides and upload your presentation to the PowerPoint Live service, send the URL to participants at different companies and control the presentation in their browsers (which can be Firefox or Safari as well as Internet Explorer).
Excel’s new sparklines place mini-charts into tables, highlighting trends and key figures more clearly and new Slicer tools make it easier to explore large PivotTables and PivotCharts.
Outlook has Quick Steps and Mail Tips to streamline common tasks and help you avoid common mistakes, plus a very welcome Ignore tool for dropping out of e-mail conversations that take on a life of their own. Word gets an improved navigation pane for browsing and searching within long documents.
Useful as they are, these features are not compelling reasons to upgrade and that underlines the fact that this is very much a preview version (although it’s robust enough to do real work with).
It doesn’t include the Office Web applications (available as a preview in August) or the new version of SharePoint (expected in beta in October) that will enable collaboration between document authors and allow businesses to host the web apps themselves, suggesting Microsoft still has a lot of work to do.
The real test will come when businesses can evaluate whether the collaborative tools and web apps deliver Mr Bryant’s claim of “the best productivity experience across the PC, phone and browser”.
Most collaboration today is what he calls “linear”: using e-mail to send documents. “Today, not many people co-author in real time, but we think it will be a fundamental expectation of the future.”
Both the desktop and web applications will allow real-time collaboration, and Word will allow desktop and web users to work on the same document; Microsoft is also promoting its note-taking app, OneNote, as a collaborative tool for both storing and sharing information.
Similarly most people expect to use a PC (usually their own) to edit documents but that attitude is changing: “The freedom to work from anywhere is becoming a fundamental expectation.”
For Office to remain a key business tool, Microsoft has to judge those expectations correctly and satisfy them on the platforms business users care about.
The Office web apps need to deliver the same rich features and formats as desktop Office programs rather than the basic tools of most web apps today.
Businesses will welcome the flexibility of hosting the web applications on their SharePoint servers at no extra charge and making those available through an extranet. But apart from the promise that the web apps will be included in the Office Professional Pro edition for enterprise and free to consumers and small business users through the Live service, Microsoft hasn’t finalised business models or what collaboration will be possible across these kind of boundaries.
Those issues will be as important as the features in the desktop or the web apps.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009. Print a single copy of this article for personal use. Contact us if you wish to print more to distribute to others.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
SharePoint alternatives seek to fill in the gaps
BUSINESS SOFTWARE FOR THE MIDMARKET
SharePoint alternatives seek to fill in the gaps
Christina Torode, Senior News Writer
12.18.2008
When it comes to departmental file sharing or collaborative workspaces, Microsoft's SharePoint has legions of fans in midsized companies. But for those not interested in paying for SharePoint (the basic version is free), or who find some features immature in the latest version, there are SharePoint alternatives.
The reason for SharePoint adoption is clear: Many organizations (and non-IT departments) began grassroots deployments after they upgraded to Windows Server and got a basic SharePoint feature set for free. There were also products in the SharePoint family available for a fee, including SharePoint Portal Server 2003, which many organizations used as a steppingstone to Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007 (MOSS 2007). MOSS 2007 is a major upgrade from SharePoint Server 2003, with a lot more functionality.
The move to MOSS 2007 seems to be natural once users install Office 2007. A Forrester Research Inc. survey conducted in March of 233 IT decision makers using Office 2007 showed that 24% said they had immediate plans to move to MOSS 2007 and 41% expected to install it within six months. And in yet-to-be-published research, Information Architected Inc. found that of 400 respondents surveyed, the majority of the midmarket companies already had MOSS 2007 installed. Midmarket companies accounted for 35% of the respondents, and among this group, half said price was not an inhibitor for MOSS deployments. Although nearly half -- 46% -- said the price was higher than they expected.
SharePoint add-ons:
A sampling
Microsoft typically leaves plenty of room for partners and competitors to fill in the gaps when it releases a new technology. Startups have grown out of developing applications and tools for Microsoft's server and desktop management products, and behemoths have built security add-ons for the Windows OS for years.
This tradition is continuing with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007). Below is a sampling of the many SharePoint add-ons now available.
NewsGator Social Sites 2.5 is a social computing enhancement that lets users create community discussions around documents within SharePoint.
MOSS Faceted Search is a free set of Web parts that refine search results by category.
Colligo for SharePoint lets users drag and drop emails and attachments into document libraries and gives mobile workers offline access to SharePoint.
Site Administrator for SharePoint from Quest Software Inc. comes with 30 standard reports and allows IT to manage permissions and set policies in SharePoint.
"When we asked [the survey respondents] if the cost of MOSS was in line with their expectations or more than they expected, 50% said the cost was pretty much in line with their expectations," said Carl Frappaolo, co-founder and principle of Boston-based Information Architected.
Microsoft estimates MOSS pricing at $4,424 for a server license and $94 per client access license in the U.S.
Microsoft's strategy with SharePoint is to undercut competing enterprise content management (ECM) products that are perceived as complex and expensive, with a product that promises ease of use, flexibility and a less costly enterprise-scale feature set. One key benefit is its tight integration with other Microsoft products such as Exchange Server, Office Communications Server, Office Live Meeting and Live Workspace. Simplicity allows business departments to create their own team workspaces.
"Basic functions like workspaces typically come first and getting governance around that, then people tend to explore other areas [of SharePoint] based on pain points or risk factors," said Rob Koplowitz, an analyst at Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester.
MOSS' capabilities range from basic collaboration to portal creation and business intelligence content management. Yet MOSS' breadth is both too much and not enough for some midmarket users.
While the portal capabilities in MOSS are mature, for example, some companies are holding off on what they perceive as less-developed features in the suite, such as social networking, enterprise search and Web content management capabilities. These companies are waiting until Microsoft releases the next version, Koplowitz said.
Another potential drawback is a dearth in skill sets, as well as a lack of SharePoint documentation coming from Microsoft, said John Bissa, a partner and Web development team leader at accounting firm Plante & Moran PLLC in Southfield, Mich. On the surface, SharePoint is easy to get off the ground, but he said he's finding that people quickly get in over their heads.
"There's a lot of bad SharePoint [deployments] out there because there are more people deploying it than those who know how to use it," he said.
The alternatives
Although SharePoint appears to be on a lot of CIOs' agendas, midmarket businesses have plenty of other choices.
There's integration with enterprise content management systems. IBM offers integration between FileNet ECM and MOSS 2007, for example. Fellow competitor Oracle Corp. has made it possible for users to access Oracle Universal Content Management files from the SharePoint interface.
There's a lot of bad SharePoint [deployments] out there because there are more people deploying it than those who know how to use it. John Bissa
partner and Web development team leader, Plante & Moran PLLC
There are also third-party add-ons (see related story, above right).
Lotus Notes and Domino's collaboration and content management capabilities are often stacked up as a SharePoint alternative, as are Lotus Quickr and Novell's SiteScape for workspaces. There is also Oracle's WebCenter suite for portals and Web application development and its Beehive online workplace.
Open Text Corp., with its ECM suite, is another company that both competes and integrates with SharePoint.
Competing products and vendors in the Web 2.0 space include Jive Software's Clearspace business social community software, which has customers in the midsized market, and Atlassian Software Systems Pty Ltd. and Socialtext Inc. These started out as wikis but are broadening their community-based collaborative offerings.
For open source alternatives, Alfresco Software Inc. has its ECM platform and Drupal is free software that lets you build community workspaces and portals.
Yet for all these options, SharePoint may be the 800-pound gorilla -- at least for now.
"Competitors are trying to do similar things [as SharePoint], but they really only have point solutions in comparison," said Peter O'Kelly, a Boston-based independent industry analyst.
Let us know what you think about the story; email: Christina Torode, Senior News Writer.
SharePoint alternatives seek to fill in the gaps
Christina Torode, Senior News Writer
12.18.2008
When it comes to departmental file sharing or collaborative workspaces, Microsoft's SharePoint has legions of fans in midsized companies. But for those not interested in paying for SharePoint (the basic version is free), or who find some features immature in the latest version, there are SharePoint alternatives.
The reason for SharePoint adoption is clear: Many organizations (and non-IT departments) began grassroots deployments after they upgraded to Windows Server and got a basic SharePoint feature set for free. There were also products in the SharePoint family available for a fee, including SharePoint Portal Server 2003, which many organizations used as a steppingstone to Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007 (MOSS 2007). MOSS 2007 is a major upgrade from SharePoint Server 2003, with a lot more functionality.
The move to MOSS 2007 seems to be natural once users install Office 2007. A Forrester Research Inc. survey conducted in March of 233 IT decision makers using Office 2007 showed that 24% said they had immediate plans to move to MOSS 2007 and 41% expected to install it within six months. And in yet-to-be-published research, Information Architected Inc. found that of 400 respondents surveyed, the majority of the midmarket companies already had MOSS 2007 installed. Midmarket companies accounted for 35% of the respondents, and among this group, half said price was not an inhibitor for MOSS deployments. Although nearly half -- 46% -- said the price was higher than they expected.
SharePoint add-ons:
A sampling
Microsoft typically leaves plenty of room for partners and competitors to fill in the gaps when it releases a new technology. Startups have grown out of developing applications and tools for Microsoft's server and desktop management products, and behemoths have built security add-ons for the Windows OS for years.
This tradition is continuing with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007). Below is a sampling of the many SharePoint add-ons now available.
NewsGator Social Sites 2.5 is a social computing enhancement that lets users create community discussions around documents within SharePoint.
MOSS Faceted Search is a free set of Web parts that refine search results by category.
Colligo for SharePoint lets users drag and drop emails and attachments into document libraries and gives mobile workers offline access to SharePoint.
Site Administrator for SharePoint from Quest Software Inc. comes with 30 standard reports and allows IT to manage permissions and set policies in SharePoint.
"When we asked [the survey respondents] if the cost of MOSS was in line with their expectations or more than they expected, 50% said the cost was pretty much in line with their expectations," said Carl Frappaolo, co-founder and principle of Boston-based Information Architected.
Microsoft estimates MOSS pricing at $4,424 for a server license and $94 per client access license in the U.S.
Microsoft's strategy with SharePoint is to undercut competing enterprise content management (ECM) products that are perceived as complex and expensive, with a product that promises ease of use, flexibility and a less costly enterprise-scale feature set. One key benefit is its tight integration with other Microsoft products such as Exchange Server, Office Communications Server, Office Live Meeting and Live Workspace. Simplicity allows business departments to create their own team workspaces.
"Basic functions like workspaces typically come first and getting governance around that, then people tend to explore other areas [of SharePoint] based on pain points or risk factors," said Rob Koplowitz, an analyst at Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester.
MOSS' capabilities range from basic collaboration to portal creation and business intelligence content management. Yet MOSS' breadth is both too much and not enough for some midmarket users.
While the portal capabilities in MOSS are mature, for example, some companies are holding off on what they perceive as less-developed features in the suite, such as social networking, enterprise search and Web content management capabilities. These companies are waiting until Microsoft releases the next version, Koplowitz said.
Another potential drawback is a dearth in skill sets, as well as a lack of SharePoint documentation coming from Microsoft, said John Bissa, a partner and Web development team leader at accounting firm Plante & Moran PLLC in Southfield, Mich. On the surface, SharePoint is easy to get off the ground, but he said he's finding that people quickly get in over their heads.
"There's a lot of bad SharePoint [deployments] out there because there are more people deploying it than those who know how to use it," he said.
The alternatives
Although SharePoint appears to be on a lot of CIOs' agendas, midmarket businesses have plenty of other choices.
There's integration with enterprise content management systems. IBM offers integration between FileNet ECM and MOSS 2007, for example. Fellow competitor Oracle Corp. has made it possible for users to access Oracle Universal Content Management files from the SharePoint interface.
There's a lot of bad SharePoint [deployments] out there because there are more people deploying it than those who know how to use it. John Bissa
partner and Web development team leader, Plante & Moran PLLC
There are also third-party add-ons (see related story, above right).
Lotus Notes and Domino's collaboration and content management capabilities are often stacked up as a SharePoint alternative, as are Lotus Quickr and Novell's SiteScape for workspaces. There is also Oracle's WebCenter suite for portals and Web application development and its Beehive online workplace.
Open Text Corp., with its ECM suite, is another company that both competes and integrates with SharePoint.
Competing products and vendors in the Web 2.0 space include Jive Software's Clearspace business social community software, which has customers in the midsized market, and Atlassian Software Systems Pty Ltd. and Socialtext Inc. These started out as wikis but are broadening their community-based collaborative offerings.
For open source alternatives, Alfresco Software Inc. has its ECM platform and Drupal is free software that lets you build community workspaces and portals.
Yet for all these options, SharePoint may be the 800-pound gorilla -- at least for now.
"Competitors are trying to do similar things [as SharePoint], but they really only have point solutions in comparison," said Peter O'Kelly, a Boston-based independent industry analyst.
Let us know what you think about the story; email: Christina Torode, Senior News Writer.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Bring Your SharePoint Sites Under Control…
Bring Your SharePoint Sites Under Control…
SharePoint has become one of the most popular, fastest-growing products ever shipped by Microsoft®. It’s designed to be easy to deploy and manage without significant IT involvement or expertise.
That’s the good news…the bad news is that the ease and convenience of SharePoint can create a security nightmare, especially if sensitive data winds up on the wrong site.
Key Features & Benefits
Know what SharePoint sites are in use – automatically locate and identify sites.
Determine who has access rights – Identify users and groups with access to the site and evaluate their permissions and access rights.
Identify security issues – Highlight users or groups with access rights that are inconsistent with corporate policy or industry best practices.
Correct deficiencies – Integration with Courion’s compliance solutions provides managers with the ability to quickly and effectively remediate permissions and inappropriate access rights.
Reduce or eliminate potential security risks – Verify that only users with the appropriate permissions have access to SharePoint sites containing sensitive data.
SharePoint Identity and Access Concerns
SharePoint is powerful, flexible and easy to implement, but it has a limited security and governance model.
Given the popularity of SharePoint, system administrators and security personnel have some thorny questions they need to answer:
What SharePoint sites are on our network and who owns them?
Who has access to these sites and what Permissions do they have?
Are sites with sensitive data are being managed using best practices consistent with the organization’s security policies?
How can I fix sites that are exposing the organization to security problems?
Protect Your SharePoint Sites
Courion, a leader in access management and compliance, has responded to customer’s needs by producing Courion Solutions for SharePoint, which gives IT managers the ability to analyze, evaluate and manage an organization’s exposure to risk as a result of inadequate SharePoint governance.
The solution is designed to enable system administrators to identify and reduce risk by remediating inappropriate access to SharePoint sites and bringing them into compliance with corporate policy. Using Courion, you can be assured that SharePoint users aren’t opening security holes and demonstrate to your auditors or industry regulators that you’re in compliance with corporate policy.
Courion Solutions for SharePoint can scan a SharePoint server and identify all the SharePoint sites on the server. For each site, the solution identifies all users who have access rights to the site. If the organization uses Active Directory, Courion also identifies users and groups who have been granted access to SharePoint sites through their Active Directory profile.
If the administrator determines that users have inappropriate rights to access data on a SharePoint site, he or she has the option to initiate a process to remediate those rights.
The administrator examining the SharePoint site can perform the following reviews:
Policy Review
This process allows the IT administrator to review a list of potential policy violations (such as a Finance portal with “Everyone” group access enabled). He or she can select a particular policy violation, evaluate the security implications of the violation and accept or modify the site configuration.
Privileged Access
The Privileged Access review allows the administrator to identify individuals with elevated SharePoint privileges (such as Administrator or Web Designer) and the sites where they are privileged access. If a user is identified as having inappropriate privileged access, action can be taken to either block the individual from accessing the site or reduce their permissions level.
Site Access
This workflow allows the IT manager to review a list of sites. After selecting a site, the manager sees a list of all users with access to the site, sorted by their permission level. At that point, the manager can select individual users and accept or modify their access rights to the site.
SharePoint has become one of the most popular, fastest-growing products ever shipped by Microsoft®. It’s designed to be easy to deploy and manage without significant IT involvement or expertise.
That’s the good news…the bad news is that the ease and convenience of SharePoint can create a security nightmare, especially if sensitive data winds up on the wrong site.
Key Features & Benefits
Know what SharePoint sites are in use – automatically locate and identify sites.
Determine who has access rights – Identify users and groups with access to the site and evaluate their permissions and access rights.
Identify security issues – Highlight users or groups with access rights that are inconsistent with corporate policy or industry best practices.
Correct deficiencies – Integration with Courion’s compliance solutions provides managers with the ability to quickly and effectively remediate permissions and inappropriate access rights.
Reduce or eliminate potential security risks – Verify that only users with the appropriate permissions have access to SharePoint sites containing sensitive data.
SharePoint Identity and Access Concerns
SharePoint is powerful, flexible and easy to implement, but it has a limited security and governance model.
Given the popularity of SharePoint, system administrators and security personnel have some thorny questions they need to answer:
What SharePoint sites are on our network and who owns them?
Who has access to these sites and what Permissions do they have?
Are sites with sensitive data are being managed using best practices consistent with the organization’s security policies?
How can I fix sites that are exposing the organization to security problems?
Protect Your SharePoint Sites
Courion, a leader in access management and compliance, has responded to customer’s needs by producing Courion Solutions for SharePoint, which gives IT managers the ability to analyze, evaluate and manage an organization’s exposure to risk as a result of inadequate SharePoint governance.
The solution is designed to enable system administrators to identify and reduce risk by remediating inappropriate access to SharePoint sites and bringing them into compliance with corporate policy. Using Courion, you can be assured that SharePoint users aren’t opening security holes and demonstrate to your auditors or industry regulators that you’re in compliance with corporate policy.
Courion Solutions for SharePoint can scan a SharePoint server and identify all the SharePoint sites on the server. For each site, the solution identifies all users who have access rights to the site. If the organization uses Active Directory, Courion also identifies users and groups who have been granted access to SharePoint sites through their Active Directory profile.
If the administrator determines that users have inappropriate rights to access data on a SharePoint site, he or she has the option to initiate a process to remediate those rights.
The administrator examining the SharePoint site can perform the following reviews:
Policy Review
This process allows the IT administrator to review a list of potential policy violations (such as a Finance portal with “Everyone” group access enabled). He or she can select a particular policy violation, evaluate the security implications of the violation and accept or modify the site configuration.
Privileged Access
The Privileged Access review allows the administrator to identify individuals with elevated SharePoint privileges (such as Administrator or Web Designer) and the sites where they are privileged access. If a user is identified as having inappropriate privileged access, action can be taken to either block the individual from accessing the site or reduce their permissions level.
Site Access
This workflow allows the IT manager to review a list of sites. After selecting a site, the manager sees a list of all users with access to the site, sorted by their permission level. At that point, the manager can select individual users and accept or modify their access rights to the site.
Courion Survey: Most Corporations Ignore Microsoft SharePoint Security and Data Risks
Courion Survey: Most Corporations Ignore Microsoft SharePoint Security and Data Risks
Courion Corporation
87% of Companies Cite SharePoint as a Source of Concern for Sensitive Data Leaks; Two Thirds Do Not Have Tools to Monitor and Control SharePoint Usage FRAMINGHAM, Mass., Nov. 18 /PRNewswire/ --
WHAT: Courion(R) Corporation, leaders in access management and compliance, releases survey results revealing that while many organizations are adopting collaborative work environments such as Microsoft SharePoint to improve productivity, they are not effectively addressing the considerable security and compliance risks associated with these environments.
DETAILS: A survey of more than 150 business managers reveals that companies are largely unaware of what is happening within Microsoft SharePoint Environments. They do not know if sensitive data is being shared in these sites, who is using these sites, who has access to them and who needs access. And in many cases, companies do not even have acceptable use policies in place for SharePoint, nor is there anyone in the organization responsible for ensuring SharePoint security and compliance.
Key survey results include:
-- The majority of respondents (86.7%) cite SharePoint as a point of
concern for data theft.
-- More than one-third (33.8%) of respondents do not have a policy defining
acceptable usage for SharePoint.
-- More than 36% of companies do not currently monitor their SharePoint
usage.
-- Nearly two-thirds (62.7%) do not currently have tools in place to
monitor SharePoint usage, access or policy compliance
Courion recommends that organizations establish risk-based governance and controls in these environments to ensure long term security and compliance with business policy and industry regulations. System administrators and security personnel need to be able to answer the following questions:
-- What SharePoint sites are on our network and who owns them?
-- Who has access to these sites and what Permissions do they have?
-- Are sites with sensitive data being managed using best practices
consistent with the organization's security policies?
-- How can I fix sites that are exposing the organization to security
problems?
To download a copy of the survey report, please visit: http://www.courion.com/solutions/sharepoint.aspx
To arrange an interview with experts who can discuss SharePoint security and compliance issues, contact:
Brenda Menard
Davies Murphy Group
bmenard@daviesmurphy.com
781-418-2435
Courion Corporation
87% of Companies Cite SharePoint as a Source of Concern for Sensitive Data Leaks; Two Thirds Do Not Have Tools to Monitor and Control SharePoint Usage FRAMINGHAM, Mass., Nov. 18 /PRNewswire/ --
WHAT: Courion(R) Corporation, leaders in access management and compliance, releases survey results revealing that while many organizations are adopting collaborative work environments such as Microsoft SharePoint to improve productivity, they are not effectively addressing the considerable security and compliance risks associated with these environments.
DETAILS: A survey of more than 150 business managers reveals that companies are largely unaware of what is happening within Microsoft SharePoint Environments. They do not know if sensitive data is being shared in these sites, who is using these sites, who has access to them and who needs access. And in many cases, companies do not even have acceptable use policies in place for SharePoint, nor is there anyone in the organization responsible for ensuring SharePoint security and compliance.
Key survey results include:
-- The majority of respondents (86.7%) cite SharePoint as a point of
concern for data theft.
-- More than one-third (33.8%) of respondents do not have a policy defining
acceptable usage for SharePoint.
-- More than 36% of companies do not currently monitor their SharePoint
usage.
-- Nearly two-thirds (62.7%) do not currently have tools in place to
monitor SharePoint usage, access or policy compliance
Courion recommends that organizations establish risk-based governance and controls in these environments to ensure long term security and compliance with business policy and industry regulations. System administrators and security personnel need to be able to answer the following questions:
-- What SharePoint sites are on our network and who owns them?
-- Who has access to these sites and what Permissions do they have?
-- Are sites with sensitive data being managed using best practices
consistent with the organization's security policies?
-- How can I fix sites that are exposing the organization to security
problems?
To download a copy of the survey report, please visit: http://www.courion.com/solutions/sharepoint.aspx
To arrange an interview with experts who can discuss SharePoint security and compliance issues, contact:
Brenda Menard
Davies Murphy Group
bmenard@daviesmurphy.com
781-418-2435
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
SharePoint Proving a Goldmine for Microsoft Partners
About 80 percent of businesses are expected to be using SharePoint by 2010, according to Gartner. That means for the Microsoft channel community, SharePoint is a potential goldmine, a repeat revenue generator, and customer relationship builder – if you get it right.
Monday, November 03, 2008
Autonomy automation (FT.com)
Autonomy automation
Autonomy, the search specialist, has unveiled Autonomy ControlPoint, a compliance solution for organisations running Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. It is designed to automate the otherwise cumbersome process of searching for documents stored in SharePoint and tagging them to comply with corporate, legal and regulatory standards for document retention. ControlPoint can understand more than 1,000 different file types and can search across all the SharePoint servers and other repositories located on a corporate network.
Autonomy, the search specialist, has unveiled Autonomy ControlPoint, a compliance solution for organisations running Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. It is designed to automate the otherwise cumbersome process of searching for documents stored in SharePoint and tagging them to comply with corporate, legal and regulatory standards for document retention. ControlPoint can understand more than 1,000 different file types and can search across all the SharePoint servers and other repositories located on a corporate network.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Microsoft SharePoint gets search, file sharing features
Add-ons let users search on document images and securely extend file creation and sharing across corporate boundaries.
John Fontana (Network World) 30/09/2008 09:11:00
Data capture vendor Captaris and security software developer Epok had developed add-ons to Microsoft's SharePoint Server 2007 that let users search on document images and securely extend file creation and sharing across corporate boundaries.
Captaris, best known for its RightFax software for distributing faxes, recently introduced the TIFF iFilter for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.
The iFilter takes an image, scans it using optical character recognition (OCR) technology, and then stores it in SharePoint along with all its meta data. The resulting file is then available for discovery by SharePoint's search engine.
IFilter components are used by Microsoft Indexing Service and other Microsoft Search-based products, such as SharePoint Portal Server, Windows SharePoint Services, Exchange Full Text Search and SQL Server FTS.
Captaris, which is in the process of being acquired by OpenText, thinks paper-centric industries benefit the most from its TIFF iFilter such as insurance, governments, health care and financial services.
The iFilter supports Windows Server 2003 and 2008 and works on both 32- and 64-bit versions of the Windows OS, SharePoint Server, and SQL Server.
The Captaris TIFF iFilter comes in three editions: Standard (for two core systems), Pro (four core systems) and Enterprise (unlimited cores).
Standard is priced starting at US$299. Pro starts at $499, and Enterprise pricing will be announced before the end of the year.
SharePoint is Microsoft's fastest growing enterprise software in its history and the company counts 100 million licenses and more than a US$1 billion in revenue, according to figures released this summer. The platform also is attracting third-party vendors driven to plug some of the gaps in the platform.
Earlier versions of SharePoint had support for TIFF images, but it was dropped in the 2007 version of SharePoint. Microsoft released a Filter Pack for SharePoint in Dec. 2007, and specifically made apologies for the absence of the TIFF filter in the release.
Experts have also said that SharePoint has gaps in its access control story.
Epok in particular is attacking that need with an update to its cross-organization access management software called Epok Edition for SharePoint version 2.4. The platform extends user authentication to a company's partners.
The 2.4 version breaks the restriction that only a user within a SharePoint domain can use Microsoft Office to create, edit, and then save documents directly into SharePoint.
Epok extends that capability to any Office user in any domain as long as they have the needed access rights.
The upgrades also include a reporting system that can show such facts as who has access to a document and when the document expires. And a mouse over feature on user icons shows additional access details and expiration dates.
Epok can automatically enforce those expiration data on a user's access to certain documents while maintaining the user's overall access rights.
"SharePoint is creating a control problem and what we see is a huge demand wave for extranet access," says Nigel Simmons, vice president of product management.
Epok also takes maintenance of permissions for access controls out of the hands of IT and put them in the hands of business users.
In addition, the system can be configured to require users to view and/or acknowledge certain contractual obligations related to data such as non-disclosure agreements.
The Epok Edition for SharePoint version 2.4 is priced at US$25,000 per server.
John Fontana (Network World) 30/09/2008 09:11:00
Data capture vendor Captaris and security software developer Epok had developed add-ons to Microsoft's SharePoint Server 2007 that let users search on document images and securely extend file creation and sharing across corporate boundaries.
Captaris, best known for its RightFax software for distributing faxes, recently introduced the TIFF iFilter for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.
The iFilter takes an image, scans it using optical character recognition (OCR) technology, and then stores it in SharePoint along with all its meta data. The resulting file is then available for discovery by SharePoint's search engine.
IFilter components are used by Microsoft Indexing Service and other Microsoft Search-based products, such as SharePoint Portal Server, Windows SharePoint Services, Exchange Full Text Search and SQL Server FTS.
Captaris, which is in the process of being acquired by OpenText, thinks paper-centric industries benefit the most from its TIFF iFilter such as insurance, governments, health care and financial services.
The iFilter supports Windows Server 2003 and 2008 and works on both 32- and 64-bit versions of the Windows OS, SharePoint Server, and SQL Server.
The Captaris TIFF iFilter comes in three editions: Standard (for two core systems), Pro (four core systems) and Enterprise (unlimited cores).
Standard is priced starting at US$299. Pro starts at $499, and Enterprise pricing will be announced before the end of the year.
SharePoint is Microsoft's fastest growing enterprise software in its history and the company counts 100 million licenses and more than a US$1 billion in revenue, according to figures released this summer. The platform also is attracting third-party vendors driven to plug some of the gaps in the platform.
Earlier versions of SharePoint had support for TIFF images, but it was dropped in the 2007 version of SharePoint. Microsoft released a Filter Pack for SharePoint in Dec. 2007, and specifically made apologies for the absence of the TIFF filter in the release.
Experts have also said that SharePoint has gaps in its access control story.
Epok in particular is attacking that need with an update to its cross-organization access management software called Epok Edition for SharePoint version 2.4. The platform extends user authentication to a company's partners.
The 2.4 version breaks the restriction that only a user within a SharePoint domain can use Microsoft Office to create, edit, and then save documents directly into SharePoint.
Epok extends that capability to any Office user in any domain as long as they have the needed access rights.
The upgrades also include a reporting system that can show such facts as who has access to a document and when the document expires. And a mouse over feature on user icons shows additional access details and expiration dates.
Epok can automatically enforce those expiration data on a user's access to certain documents while maintaining the user's overall access rights.
"SharePoint is creating a control problem and what we see is a huge demand wave for extranet access," says Nigel Simmons, vice president of product management.
Epok also takes maintenance of permissions for access controls out of the hands of IT and put them in the hands of business users.
In addition, the system can be configured to require users to view and/or acknowledge certain contractual obligations related to data such as non-disclosure agreements.
The Epok Edition for SharePoint version 2.4 is priced at US$25,000 per server.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
HostReview : Web Hosting Guides : Apps4Rent: Why Windows SharePoint Services?
HostReview : Web Hosting Guides : Apps4Rent: Why Windows SharePoint Services?
Windows SharePoint Services is a versatile technology that organizations and business units of all sizes can use to increase the efficiency of business processes and improve team productivity. With tools for collaboration that help people stay connected across organizational and geographic boundaries, Windows SharePoint Services gives people access to information they need.
Windows SharePoint Services is a versatile technology that organizations and business units of all sizes can use to increase the efficiency of business processes and improve team productivity. With tools for collaboration that help people stay connected across organizational and geographic boundaries, Windows SharePoint Services gives people access to information they need.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
SharePoint: Improving Performance : Beyond Search
SharePoint: Improving Performance : Beyond Search
In my opinion, SharePoint is a slow poke. Among the reasons:
SQL Server bottlenecks
My old pal IIS
Churning when complex pages experience latency because needed data are scattered far and wide across the SharePoint landscape.
In what has to be the most amazing description of sluggish performance, Microsoft has released SharePoint Performance Optimization: How Microsoft IT Increases Availability and Decreases Rendering Time of SharePoint Sites . This is a 27 page Word document, which I was able to download here.
I scanned the white paper. I did not dig through it. The good stuff appears after the boilerplate about how to find out what part of the SharePoint system is the problem. In my experience, it’s not “one part”. Performance issues arise when there are lots of users, complex “sites”, and when some of the other required servers are tossed into the stew.
A happy quack to Nick MacKechnie who pointed to this Microsoft white paper in his Web log here.
Stephen Arnold, September 23, 2008
In my opinion, SharePoint is a slow poke. Among the reasons:
SQL Server bottlenecks
My old pal IIS
Churning when complex pages experience latency because needed data are scattered far and wide across the SharePoint landscape.
In what has to be the most amazing description of sluggish performance, Microsoft has released SharePoint Performance Optimization: How Microsoft IT Increases Availability and Decreases Rendering Time of SharePoint Sites . This is a 27 page Word document, which I was able to download here.
I scanned the white paper. I did not dig through it. The good stuff appears after the boilerplate about how to find out what part of the SharePoint system is the problem. In my experience, it’s not “one part”. Performance issues arise when there are lots of users, complex “sites”, and when some of the other required servers are tossed into the stew.
A happy quack to Nick MacKechnie who pointed to this Microsoft white paper in his Web log here.
Stephen Arnold, September 23, 2008
Redmond Developer News | Alfresco Gets SharePoint Savvy
Redmond Developer News | Alfresco Gets SharePoint Savvy
Alfresco Software’s open source enterprise content management system presents a new challenge to SharePoint.
Alfresco Software’s open source enterprise content management system presents a new challenge to SharePoint.
ITWeb :Autonomy 'enterprise-proofs' Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server for large, global enterprise customers
ITWeb :Autonomy 'enterprise-proofs' Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server for large, global enterprise customers
Microsoft hosts Autonomy's software to meet scalability, connectivity and conceptual search requirements of most demanding deployments.
[ Cambridge, UK and San Francisco, California, 22 September 2008 ] - Autonomy Corporation (LSE: AU. or AU.L), a global leader in infrastructure software for the enterprise, today announced its information processing technology extends Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) to meet customer requirements for scalability, connectivity and conceptual search.
Autonomy's Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL) software is hosted by Microsoft or deployed onsite by hundreds of large, global MOSS customers to enable SharePoint users to find and process content based on understanding the meaning of information. As an example, IDOL's highly scalable, distributed architecture is in use in one of the world's largest SharePoint retrieval projects, which consists of 400 000 users, 25 000 sites, and over one billion documents.
SharePoint's portal and collaboration capabilities have led to rapid adoption and widespread use in large, geographically dispersed organisations. IDOL's distributed and modular architecture complements MOSS by enabling users to access SharePoint files over Wide Area Networks (WANs), overcoming a major challenge for global companies with distributed servers as Shared Service Providers (SSPs) do not natively support WAN communications. Moreover, encrypted inter-machine and intra-process communication protocols are woven into the fabric of Autonomy's modular design at a fundamental level, providing secure transmission of information throughout the architecture. IDOL routinely supports millions of documents, hundreds of thousands of users, and hundreds of thousands of transactions on distributed commodity servers, with the largest installation exceeding 10 billion documents.
Autonomy further extends global MOSS scalability through its distributed, brokered architecture and "geo-efficient" design, which allows data to be automatically replicated in the most sensible location based on bandwidth, lag time, availability and demand. This enables high performance and gives users aggregated access to all enterprise information in a unified view in globally dispersed environments, while reducing bandwidth overhead. Because IDOL creates a stub, or shortcut, to the data and supports tiered storage rather than requiring that data be stored in SQL Server, organisations using IDOL with SharePoint can further benefit from dramatically reduced SQL Server licences and associated scalability limitations. In addition, large enterprises with complex deployments can take advantage of IDOL's redundancy, load balancing, mirroring and high failover to enable linear scalability, high availability and rapid performance of MOSS.
Autonomy IDOL's mature connector framework, which supports over 400 repositories, is additionally leveraged by organisations with SharePoint to avoid custom creation of IFilters and Protocol Handlers and ensure all data will be indexed. Autonomy IDOL can index and automatically analyse any piece of information from over 1 000 different content formats, unifying enterprise information to allow an unprecedented view of the organisation's information assets. This enables SharePoint to transform from a departmental collaboration solution to enterprise collaboration.
Furthermore, Autonomy's advanced conceptual search functionality supplements native MOSS capabilities to enrich the search experience. IDOL forms an understanding of the content of any given page and makes contextual associations between pages, documents, multimedia and search queries to ensure users are always provided with information that is particularly relevant to them. Using the idea behind the given words, and not just the words themselves, IDOL avoids inaccuracy and retrieves not just the most popular content, but the most pertinent.
"SharePoint delivers excellent 'interface and workflow' frameworks for productivity and content applications, but the large and growing volumes of users and rapid increases in content in SharePoint deployments necessitate the highest levels of security and scalability, which Autonomy delivers," commented Mike Lynch, chief executive officer of Autonomy. "The advanced pan-enterprise search capabilities of IDOL leverage Meaning-Based Computing technology to form a conceptual understanding of all data, regardless of what or where it is. This enables customers to capitalise on their SharePoint investments and harness the full richness of human information."
Autonomy provides Microsoft's SharePoint Server customers with:
* A conceptual understanding of the information within MOSS to proactively make connections between users, enhancing collaboration among them.
* A modular, distributed architecture supporting enterprise-class scalability for hundreds of thousands of enterprise users accessing hundreds of terabytes of data with sub-second response, indexing in excess of 110GB/hour and supporting over 470 million documents on 64-bit platforms.
* Unique Mapped Security and native support for all enterprise security models, permitting MOSS to be run within security sensitive environments, such as DOD 5015, EAL, and Bell-LaPadula.
* Extension of standard Microsoft's IFilter file support from 16 to 1 000+ file formats, including ODF and PDFX, with native support for over 400 repositories regardless of operating system.
* Over 500 advanced functions, such as expertise location, communities, implicit profiling, explicit personalisation, automatic categorisation, clustering, geo searching, automatic query guidance, and automatic hyperlinking.
Autonomy
Autonomy Corporation (LSE: AU. or AU.L) is a global leader in infrastructure software for the enterprise and is spearheading the meaning-based computing movement. Autonomy's technology allows computers to harness the full richness of human information, forming a conceptual and contextual understanding of any piece of electronic data including unstructured information, be it text, e-mail, voice or video. Autonomy's software powers the full spectrum of mission-critical enterprise applications, including information access technology, pan-enterprise search, information governance, end-to-end eDiscovery and archiving, records management, business process management, customer interaction solutions, and video and audio analysis, and is recognised by industry analysts as the clear leader in enterprise search.
Autonomy's customer base comprises of more than 17 000 global companies and organisations, including: 3, ABN AMRO, AOL, BAE Systems, BBC, Bloomberg, Boeing, Citigroup, Coca Cola, Daimler Chrysler, Deutsche Bank, Ericsson, Ford, GlaxoSmithKline, Lloyd TSB, NASA, Nestle, the New York Stock Exchange, Reuters, Shell, T-Mobile, the US Department of Energy, the US Department of Homeland Security and the US Securities and Exchange Commission. More than 350 companies OEM Autonomy technology, including BEA, Citrix, EDS, H-P, Novell, Oracle, Sybase and TIBCO, and the company has over 400 VARs and Systems Integrators. The company has offices worldwide.
Autonomy and the Autonomy logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autonomy Corporation plc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Microsoft hosts Autonomy's software to meet scalability, connectivity and conceptual search requirements of most demanding deployments.
[ Cambridge, UK and San Francisco, California, 22 September 2008 ] - Autonomy Corporation (LSE: AU. or AU.L), a global leader in infrastructure software for the enterprise, today announced its information processing technology extends Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) to meet customer requirements for scalability, connectivity and conceptual search.
Autonomy's Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL) software is hosted by Microsoft or deployed onsite by hundreds of large, global MOSS customers to enable SharePoint users to find and process content based on understanding the meaning of information. As an example, IDOL's highly scalable, distributed architecture is in use in one of the world's largest SharePoint retrieval projects, which consists of 400 000 users, 25 000 sites, and over one billion documents.
SharePoint's portal and collaboration capabilities have led to rapid adoption and widespread use in large, geographically dispersed organisations. IDOL's distributed and modular architecture complements MOSS by enabling users to access SharePoint files over Wide Area Networks (WANs), overcoming a major challenge for global companies with distributed servers as Shared Service Providers (SSPs) do not natively support WAN communications. Moreover, encrypted inter-machine and intra-process communication protocols are woven into the fabric of Autonomy's modular design at a fundamental level, providing secure transmission of information throughout the architecture. IDOL routinely supports millions of documents, hundreds of thousands of users, and hundreds of thousands of transactions on distributed commodity servers, with the largest installation exceeding 10 billion documents.
Autonomy further extends global MOSS scalability through its distributed, brokered architecture and "geo-efficient" design, which allows data to be automatically replicated in the most sensible location based on bandwidth, lag time, availability and demand. This enables high performance and gives users aggregated access to all enterprise information in a unified view in globally dispersed environments, while reducing bandwidth overhead. Because IDOL creates a stub, or shortcut, to the data and supports tiered storage rather than requiring that data be stored in SQL Server, organisations using IDOL with SharePoint can further benefit from dramatically reduced SQL Server licences and associated scalability limitations. In addition, large enterprises with complex deployments can take advantage of IDOL's redundancy, load balancing, mirroring and high failover to enable linear scalability, high availability and rapid performance of MOSS.
Autonomy IDOL's mature connector framework, which supports over 400 repositories, is additionally leveraged by organisations with SharePoint to avoid custom creation of IFilters and Protocol Handlers and ensure all data will be indexed. Autonomy IDOL can index and automatically analyse any piece of information from over 1 000 different content formats, unifying enterprise information to allow an unprecedented view of the organisation's information assets. This enables SharePoint to transform from a departmental collaboration solution to enterprise collaboration.
Furthermore, Autonomy's advanced conceptual search functionality supplements native MOSS capabilities to enrich the search experience. IDOL forms an understanding of the content of any given page and makes contextual associations between pages, documents, multimedia and search queries to ensure users are always provided with information that is particularly relevant to them. Using the idea behind the given words, and not just the words themselves, IDOL avoids inaccuracy and retrieves not just the most popular content, but the most pertinent.
"SharePoint delivers excellent 'interface and workflow' frameworks for productivity and content applications, but the large and growing volumes of users and rapid increases in content in SharePoint deployments necessitate the highest levels of security and scalability, which Autonomy delivers," commented Mike Lynch, chief executive officer of Autonomy. "The advanced pan-enterprise search capabilities of IDOL leverage Meaning-Based Computing technology to form a conceptual understanding of all data, regardless of what or where it is. This enables customers to capitalise on their SharePoint investments and harness the full richness of human information."
Autonomy provides Microsoft's SharePoint Server customers with:
* A conceptual understanding of the information within MOSS to proactively make connections between users, enhancing collaboration among them.
* A modular, distributed architecture supporting enterprise-class scalability for hundreds of thousands of enterprise users accessing hundreds of terabytes of data with sub-second response, indexing in excess of 110GB/hour and supporting over 470 million documents on 64-bit platforms.
* Unique Mapped Security and native support for all enterprise security models, permitting MOSS to be run within security sensitive environments, such as DOD 5015, EAL, and Bell-LaPadula.
* Extension of standard Microsoft's IFilter file support from 16 to 1 000+ file formats, including ODF and PDFX, with native support for over 400 repositories regardless of operating system.
* Over 500 advanced functions, such as expertise location, communities, implicit profiling, explicit personalisation, automatic categorisation, clustering, geo searching, automatic query guidance, and automatic hyperlinking.
Autonomy
Autonomy Corporation (LSE: AU. or AU.L) is a global leader in infrastructure software for the enterprise and is spearheading the meaning-based computing movement. Autonomy's technology allows computers to harness the full richness of human information, forming a conceptual and contextual understanding of any piece of electronic data including unstructured information, be it text, e-mail, voice or video. Autonomy's software powers the full spectrum of mission-critical enterprise applications, including information access technology, pan-enterprise search, information governance, end-to-end eDiscovery and archiving, records management, business process management, customer interaction solutions, and video and audio analysis, and is recognised by industry analysts as the clear leader in enterprise search.
Autonomy's customer base comprises of more than 17 000 global companies and organisations, including: 3, ABN AMRO, AOL, BAE Systems, BBC, Bloomberg, Boeing, Citigroup, Coca Cola, Daimler Chrysler, Deutsche Bank, Ericsson, Ford, GlaxoSmithKline, Lloyd TSB, NASA, Nestle, the New York Stock Exchange, Reuters, Shell, T-Mobile, the US Department of Energy, the US Department of Homeland Security and the US Securities and Exchange Commission. More than 350 companies OEM Autonomy technology, including BEA, Citrix, EDS, H-P, Novell, Oracle, Sybase and TIBCO, and the company has over 400 VARs and Systems Integrators. The company has offices worldwide.
Autonomy and the Autonomy logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autonomy Corporation plc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Gustaf's Microsoft Dynamics CRM & SharePoint Blog: The power of SharePoint
Gustaf's Microsoft Dynamics CRM & SharePoint Blog: The power of SharePoint
The power of SharePoint
Presently I am employed at Logica as a consultant and the projects I am involved in are always Dynamcis CRM centered. However, I used to work at Humandata earlier, run by the SharePoint MVP Göran Husman and I am since this time a devoted SharePoint fan.
Apart from this, it is also a great tool for running projects in. Instead of millions of post-its with all the questionsmarks in the project, we use a discussion board. Instead of impossible hierarchies of folder for SureStep documents, we use one Document Library with Meta-data describing what part of SureStep the document should be connected to. This way, documents are easier to find, easier to work with, easier to share and we get version control all for free.
The power of SharePoint
Presently I am employed at Logica as a consultant and the projects I am involved in are always Dynamcis CRM centered. However, I used to work at Humandata earlier, run by the SharePoint MVP Göran Husman and I am since this time a devoted SharePoint fan.
Apart from this, it is also a great tool for running projects in. Instead of millions of post-its with all the questionsmarks in the project, we use a discussion board. Instead of impossible hierarchies of folder for SureStep documents, we use one Document Library with Meta-data describing what part of SureStep the document should be connected to. This way, documents are easier to find, easier to work with, easier to share and we get version control all for free.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Improve Your Collaboration with Microsoft® SharePoint®-based Solutions
Improve Your Collaboration with Microsoft® SharePoint®-based Solutions
Information sharing, both inside and outside the enterprise, continues to be a challenge for many organizations. BearingPoint believes that distributed information management supported by a centralized management infrastructure can help address this issue. We have been collaborating with Microsoft for nearly 10 years; we’re building on that experience to create enterprise information solutions based on Microsoft® SharePoint® technology.
Microsoft® SharePoint® provides a framework that can help improve:
- Collaboration
- Business intelligence
- Business processes
- Content management
- Search capabilities
SharePoint® -based solutions can help organizations manage information seamlessly across their enterprise. This technology facilitates collaboration and distributed project management by supporting central deployment of the infrastructure needed to create and support cross-enterprise activities. The technology is non-intrusive and integrates with desktop applications. However, it is also far reaching in terms of supporting the complex workflows and information sharing that communities of interests require.
BearingPoint consultants can combine SharePoint® with other core Microsoft technologies to create customized solutions that provide rich security, document management and collaboration features. And SharePoint® -based applications can grow as your organization grows and evolves.
Learn more about SharePoint®-based Solutions. Contact Us
Information sharing, both inside and outside the enterprise, continues to be a challenge for many organizations. BearingPoint believes that distributed information management supported by a centralized management infrastructure can help address this issue. We have been collaborating with Microsoft for nearly 10 years; we’re building on that experience to create enterprise information solutions based on Microsoft® SharePoint® technology.
Microsoft® SharePoint® provides a framework that can help improve:
- Collaboration
- Business intelligence
- Business processes
- Content management
- Search capabilities
SharePoint® -based solutions can help organizations manage information seamlessly across their enterprise. This technology facilitates collaboration and distributed project management by supporting central deployment of the infrastructure needed to create and support cross-enterprise activities. The technology is non-intrusive and integrates with desktop applications. However, it is also far reaching in terms of supporting the complex workflows and information sharing that communities of interests require.
BearingPoint consultants can combine SharePoint® with other core Microsoft technologies to create customized solutions that provide rich security, document management and collaboration features. And SharePoint® -based applications can grow as your organization grows and evolves.
Learn more about SharePoint®-based Solutions. Contact Us
Monday, September 15, 2008
Who will be the new king of CRM?
Who will be the new king of CRM?
By Geoff Nairn
Published: September 15 2008 14:29 | Last updated: September 15 2008 14:29
While the debate about hosted or on-premise customer relationship management software rages, Oracle claims to offer the best of both worlds. Its Oracle CRM On Demand Integration to Siebel CRM product synchronises customer data held in Oracle CRM On Demand – Oracle’s home-grown on-demand CRM offering – with Siebel CRM, which Oracle owns after acquiring Siebel Systems in 2005.
Siebel remains the undisputed king for traditional on-premises CRM but most of the growth in the CRM industry now comes from newer on-demand CRM providers such as Salesforce.com.
Improved world view
IBM has unveiled new software to help businesses make sense of their product data. InfoSphere Master Data Management Server for Product Information Server aims to provide a “single view” of all the information held on a product across geographic locations. Big Blue also added a global name recognition module for InfoSphere Information Server to improve name matching for businesses that operate in many countries.
Small and affordable
Dell is targeting small businesses in emerging markets with the four latest additions to its Vostro range of PCs launched in Beijing.
Affordability is the key selling point of the Vostro A860 and A840, two laptops that come with 15.6-inch or 14.1-inch HD screens, Celeron or Core 2 Duo processors and a choice of operating system – Ubuntu Linux or Windows Vista. There are also two desktop mini-towers, the Vostro 180 and A100 – interestingly the latter only comes with Ubuntu.
Virtual security gates
Internet security firm Check Software Technologies has introduced a virtual security gateway aimed at the growing number of businesses with virtualised IT environments.
VPN-1 Virtual Edition is optimised for VMware environments and provides similar levels of security for virtualised applications to those located on separate servers, the company claims. Pricing starts at $7,500 for five virtual machines.
Aid to compliance
Microsoft has teamed up with BearingPoint – KPMG Consulting as was – to offer a compliance product based on Microsoft’s SharePoint Server 2007. BearingPoint Enterprise Governance, Risk and Compliance helps organisations manage risk and compliance using alerts and analytical tools.
For example, if a key risk indicator is exceeded, e-mail alerts are triggered and employees guided through the necessary steps.
Red flag for danger
EMC aims to address the growing problem of identity theft with a solution comprising software and services. The catalyst for the new offering is the Facta regulations in the US which require organisations to put in place policies and procedures to address the risk of identity theft in a systematic fashion by detecting warning signs or “red flags”. EMC’s Facta Red Flags product is designed to help financial institutions and creditors meet the November 1 Facta deadline.
“Powered by Google”
Google has announced a new version of the Google Search Appliance, which integrates hardware and software is aimed at organisations that want to add a “powered by Google” sticker to their corporate intranet or website.
The appliance can index all of an organisation’s content, up to 10m documents, in a single box. It can also search the information held on leading content management systems such as EMC Documentum, IBM FileNet, OpenText Livelink and Microsoft SharePoint.
Siren call of open source
System management is the latest part of the software business to succumb to the advances of the open source movement. Fujitsu Siemens has announced that its Primergy servers can now be managed and monitored with the Nagios open source software suite.
Specialist outfit Netways has developed a downloadable plug-in that allows Nagios to monitor Fujitsu Siemens’ hardware for a wide range of variables such as network services, server resources and system temperature.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
By Geoff Nairn
Published: September 15 2008 14:29 | Last updated: September 15 2008 14:29
While the debate about hosted or on-premise customer relationship management software rages, Oracle claims to offer the best of both worlds. Its Oracle CRM On Demand Integration to Siebel CRM product synchronises customer data held in Oracle CRM On Demand – Oracle’s home-grown on-demand CRM offering – with Siebel CRM, which Oracle owns after acquiring Siebel Systems in 2005.
Siebel remains the undisputed king for traditional on-premises CRM but most of the growth in the CRM industry now comes from newer on-demand CRM providers such as Salesforce.com.
Improved world view
IBM has unveiled new software to help businesses make sense of their product data. InfoSphere Master Data Management Server for Product Information Server aims to provide a “single view” of all the information held on a product across geographic locations. Big Blue also added a global name recognition module for InfoSphere Information Server to improve name matching for businesses that operate in many countries.
Small and affordable
Dell is targeting small businesses in emerging markets with the four latest additions to its Vostro range of PCs launched in Beijing.
Affordability is the key selling point of the Vostro A860 and A840, two laptops that come with 15.6-inch or 14.1-inch HD screens, Celeron or Core 2 Duo processors and a choice of operating system – Ubuntu Linux or Windows Vista. There are also two desktop mini-towers, the Vostro 180 and A100 – interestingly the latter only comes with Ubuntu.
Virtual security gates
Internet security firm Check Software Technologies has introduced a virtual security gateway aimed at the growing number of businesses with virtualised IT environments.
VPN-1 Virtual Edition is optimised for VMware environments and provides similar levels of security for virtualised applications to those located on separate servers, the company claims. Pricing starts at $7,500 for five virtual machines.
Aid to compliance
Microsoft has teamed up with BearingPoint – KPMG Consulting as was – to offer a compliance product based on Microsoft’s SharePoint Server 2007. BearingPoint Enterprise Governance, Risk and Compliance helps organisations manage risk and compliance using alerts and analytical tools.
For example, if a key risk indicator is exceeded, e-mail alerts are triggered and employees guided through the necessary steps.
Red flag for danger
EMC aims to address the growing problem of identity theft with a solution comprising software and services. The catalyst for the new offering is the Facta regulations in the US which require organisations to put in place policies and procedures to address the risk of identity theft in a systematic fashion by detecting warning signs or “red flags”. EMC’s Facta Red Flags product is designed to help financial institutions and creditors meet the November 1 Facta deadline.
“Powered by Google”
Google has announced a new version of the Google Search Appliance, which integrates hardware and software is aimed at organisations that want to add a “powered by Google” sticker to their corporate intranet or website.
The appliance can index all of an organisation’s content, up to 10m documents, in a single box. It can also search the information held on leading content management systems such as EMC Documentum, IBM FileNet, OpenText Livelink and Microsoft SharePoint.
Siren call of open source
System management is the latest part of the software business to succumb to the advances of the open source movement. Fujitsu Siemens has announced that its Primergy servers can now be managed and monitored with the Nagios open source software suite.
Specialist outfit Netways has developed a downloadable plug-in that allows Nagios to monitor Fujitsu Siemens’ hardware for a wide range of variables such as network services, server resources and system temperature.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
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