July/August 2012

Best Practices in SharePoint Solutions

Andy Moore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 A Stroll Down SharePoint LaneSharePoint has emerged as the most successful and ubiquitous software tool of our lifetimes. However, it still isn’t everything it needs to be. A SharePoint “ecosystem”has evolved to make sure that your SharePoint deployment is as effective and productive as it can possibly be. Can SharePoint be a risk to your company? Yes. Can SharePoint also be an incredible cost-sink for your IT department? Yes. Can SharePoint also be thegreatest collaboration, content management and productivity tool on the planet? . . .

Steven Murphy, Metalogix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Enhancing The Use and Performance of SharePointRight now we are experiencing an explosion of digital content previously thoughtunimaginable, with volumes set to grow from 1.2 zettabytes in 2012 to 35 ZB by 2020.We create and consume more content than ever before, and IT teams are expected tomake that content highly available to meet business needs and keep workers as productive as possible. Microsoft SharePoint, with its ease of initial deployment, ease ofuse, range of features and low total cost of ownership. . . .

Rich Blank, NewsGator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Activity Streams vs. Discussion ForumsSocial technology is changing how people communicate and share information bothon the consumer Web and within the enterprise. In particular, activity streams (a.k.a.newsfeeds) are becoming a central focal point for users to engage in conversation and discussions. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn all include activity streams and havequickly challenged traditional Internet discussion forums such as Yahoo MessageBoards or Google Groups in the consumer space. . . .

Prateek Kathpal, Accusoft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 The Role of Collaboration Tools for SharePointImproving productivity is, on its own, one of the top business objectives shared by companies of all sizes, industries and geographies. Its direct correlation to a company’sability to increase profitability has a compounding effect on its importance. One of themost cost-effective ways to drive productivity improvement initiatives is to increase collaboration across the enterprise, both internally among employees as well as betweenemployees, partners and customers. . . .

Mike Hugos, Center for Systems Innovation. . . . 6 External SharePoint Collaboration—Without CompromiseAccording to an article on ZDNet about SharePoint, more than 7.3 million newSharePoint users are added every year, making it a multi-billion dollar business forMicrosoft. But can a business collaborate with external partners outside the firewallwhile ensuring complete security of its content? What viable solutions are out there?Mike Hugos, CIO and author of books about the topics of IT best practices and cloud computing, and Mike Lees of IntraLinks give us their insights. . . .

Martin Garland, Concept Searching . . . . . . . . . . 7 SharePoint Information Governance That WorksEvery organization is unique in its requirements and approach to information governance. These variations increase as SharePoint becomes prolific in organizationsof all sizes. Despite the rapid adoption of SharePoint, it has traditionally been used tosolve collaboration, content and records management challenges at the departmentallevel, outside the view and control of a corporate IT function. While this gives departments control of their content. . . .

and Jose Almandoz, IntraLinks

KMWorldSupplement to

added for emphasis) rather than having torespond to gaps in their toolbox.”

The Metalogix piece by Steven Murphyalso underscores the business value to begained from SharePoint: “Regardless of howyou use SharePoint, it gives you the freedomand flexibility to change your mind as businessneeds and goals change.” It’s a matter of deter-mining a basic organizational platform—andSharePoint fits that bill nicely—to “evolve intothe ECM of the future and be truly effective.”SharePoint can become that common under-pinning that “should include as much data aspossible from all parts of your organization.”And to that end, he recommends migratingmuch (if not all!) of your current content storesinto a common platform, such as SharePoint.“Evaluate why your current information silos,including file shares, legacy ECM systems anddepartmental SharePoint deployments, existacross the organization.” Then “move contentfrom SharePoint and other systems, minimizedowntime and eliminate any impact on workerproductivity.”

But it’s not all rainbows and unicorns. Asmy friend Martin Garland from ConceptSearching points out, SharePoint adoption isnot without peril. “Despite the rapid adoptionof SharePoint, it has traditionally been used tosolve collaboration, content and records man-agement challenges at the departmental level,outside the view and control of a corporate ITfunction,” Martin writes. “While this givesdepartments control of their content, it makesinformation governance more difficult for theIT staff, having no control of or insight into thecontent. From an enterprise perspective, thisincreases organizational risk, non-complianceissues and the risk of data privacy exposures,and impacts decision-making.

“The crux of the problem with infor-mation governance,” he continues, “is theinability to rely on end users to accuratelyand consistently add metadata to contentand process information according to policies. Poorly designed and managedrepositories of content result in multipleversions of the same document and cancause decision makers to find and rely oninaccurate data. Unmanaged Web serversrunning SharePoint can deliver unantici-pated results, such as security exposures,

inconsistent regulatory compliance issuesand non-declaration of records.”

Ugh. I like how Mike Hugos and Jose Alman-

doz talk about SharePoint as a solid, but lim-ited platform, especially for communicatingwith people outside of your organization.Because, keep in mind, SharePoint was neverintended for that purpose. It has been alteredand jerry-rigged to do so, but that really isn’tits greatest strength: “SharePoint was neverdesigned to operate beyond the firewall,” saysMike Hugo. “You need the right add-onbecause it doesn’t come out of the box as anexternal tool.” Jose Almandoz adds, “MakingSharePoint secure for external content sharingcan be extremely difficult. It has some weak-nesses, such as inadequate auditing and accessreporting, file encryption, document lockingand protection limitations, and provisioningand supporting a community of externalusers... The challenge for CIOs with sizableSharePoint investments is to build on it as anexisting foundation.”

The Trouble With TribblesAs we’ve already gathered, SharePoint is

so ubiquitous in today’s organizations that ithas developed not only an “ecosystem,” butalso a language of its own. It’s like the Na’viin the movie Avatar.

One of the more common expressions is“SharePoint Sprawl.” This refers to the unfor-tunate tendency of SharePoint websites—largely because they’re so easy to create—toproliferate like the Tribbles in “Star Trek.”Wonder what’s gotten me onto this sci-fi thing?Anyway, SharePoint Sprawl is surely one of itsleast attractive attributes. The notion is that aSharePoint collaboration site can be created fora relatively short-lived project. The problem is:nobody ever tidies up afterward. So you haveall these forgotten websites, which dangerouslycontain content, intellectual property, confi-dential matter... SharePoint Sprawl is a difficultand prevalent invasive species... sort of like...oh, never mind. z

A Stroll DownSharePoint Lane

As everyone already knows, MicrosoftSharePoint has helped create an entire cot-tage industry around itself. It would be asthough the automotive aftermarket—whichtook decades to develop—erupted overnight.An unprecedented business event.

It’s prominently called the “SharePointecosystem,” somewhat spectacularly, andperhaps over-gilded. But the fact remains thatSharePoint wouldn’t have nearly the statureor market penetration if it weren’t for themany independent software vendors thathave emerged to support it.

Take, for example, NewsGator, whosefocus on news feeds has led them to take thebest of that technology and apply it to the inher-ent collaboration that imbues SharePoint. AsRich Blank points out in his article, “When itcomes to activity streams on SharePoint, theout-of-the-box social functionality of Share-Point 2010 is limited when compared toLinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter.” He notes thatvendors (such as NewsGator, of course!) haveemerged to “address SharePoint’s limitationsby building consumer-like social capabilitieswithin the platform.”

Prateek Kathpal, of Accusoft, underscoresthe need to assert management over the manypotentially random documents that can infecta SharePoint site: “Despite the best-laid plansto document and enforce a logical, intuitivestructure for an organization’s digital informa-tion, many SharePoint sites become unwieldyfrom an end-user perspective; hard to navigateand full of homeless documents that could addincredible value—if only the right people knewwhere to find them.” The solution, Prateekinsists, is an integrated, embedded viewer, sothat all those “homeless documents” speak ina common parlance... a lingua franca, if youwill. And there are greater business advantagesto be had as well. “Imagine a workforce withthe ability to collaborate on documents andprocess complete workflows without ever hav-ing to leave their SharePoint site, downloadspecialty software, search tirelessly throughemail, or compile manual versions of team-member markups. It’s easy to see why anorganization with an end-to-end documentmanagement and collaboration solution inplace can spend more time working with theirextended enterprise to innovate, (my italics

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Andy Moore is thepublisher of KMWorldMagazine. In addition,as the editorialdirector of theKMWorld SpecialtyPublishing Group,Andy Moore overseesthe content of themonthly “KMWorldBest Practices WhitePaper series,” in printand online, as well as

assisting with the creation and content of severalsingle-sponsored “positioning papers” per year.He is also the host and moderator of the popularKMWorld Web event online broadcast series.

Moore is based in Camden, Maine, and can bereached at andy_moore@kmworld.com

Andy MooreBy Andy Moore, Editorial Director, KMWorld Specialty Publishing Group

July/August 2012 S3

could be a private cloud, a multi-tenantcloud, a hybrid cloud or some combination.

Controlling the SprawlAs business needs evolve, many organiza-

tions will experience “SharePoint sprawl.”Whether an organization has adopted addi-tional SharePoint systems through a mergeror acquisition, inherited a number ofSharePoint platforms from various depart-ments, or simply didn’t adhere to aSharePoint governance policy, SharePointsprawl can slow performance, bloat storagesystems and hold content captive.

While SharePoint freedom can mean dif-ferent things to individual organizations,based on their own unique business needs,there are best practices that any organizationcan employ. By implementing these simple,but important practices, any organization canrealize the full value of SharePoint as a trulypowerful and flexible ECM solution.

One of these best practices is toembrace growth. Ninety-five percent ofdigital content is unstructured data, whichdoes not have a pre-defined data model anddoes not fit well into relational databases.

SharePoint content creates BLOBs ofunstructured data associated with SharePointfiles (e.g., PDF files, images, Office docu-ments, etc.), that can significantly impactyour storage requirements. One approach toovercoming this challenge is to move theunstructured BLOBs out of SharePoint’scontent databases and offload them onto amix of NAS, SAN or cloud storage plat-forms. By using products (one of which isMetalogix StoragePoint) to externalize thisBLOB content to less expensive storage,organizations often enjoy up to a 95% reduc-tion in SQL Server storage requirements.

To evolve into the ECM of the future andbe truly effective, SharePoint should includeas much data as possible from all parts ofyour organization. Before a consolidationstrategy is implemented, evaluate why cur-rent information silos, including file shares,legacy ECM systems (Google Apps,Documentum, eRoom, Exchange PublicFolders, etc.) and departmental SharePointdeployments, exist across the organization.Be sure to consider SharePoint migrationproducts, such as Metalogix Migration

Manager for SharePoint, that allow you tomove content from SharePoint and other sys-tems, minimize downtime and eliminate anyimpact on worker productivity.

Another important practice is to under-stand the information architecture, whichincludes how site collections, sites, documentlibraries and lists are organized within the SharePoint structure. Consolidating orupgrading to SharePoint 2010 presents anideal opportunity to reorganize yourSharePoint implementation and ensure thatyour information architecture is future-ready for the next version of SharePoint.Organizations often discover that theirexisting information architecture forSharePoint is less than optimal.

With the availability of Microsoft Office365, SharePoint 2010 is in the cloud andSharePoint Online is poised to go main-stream. Organizations are increasingly looking to hybrid cloud environments thatleverage both SharePoint on-premises andSharePoint Online or Office 365. There areseveral business drivers for this, includingorganizations that would like an easy way tocreate an extranet for their customers or part-ners. The value is in the ability to share databetween SharePoint on-premises and theirextranet. This allows extranet users to sharedata and collaborate with the organization’sintranet users.

Some organizations want to move to thecloud gradually because fully migrating tothe cloud might be a stretch goal. Contentfreedom means being able to migrate someof your content—maybe an office or adepartment—to the cloud without havingto move entirely off your on-premisesservers. This gradual or granular type ofmigration allows organizations to signifi-cantly minimize risk while taking advan-tage of the new cloud technology.

Another driver is geo-replication, whichis the sharing of data between SharePointservers in disparate locations. Using aproduct such as Metalogix Replicator forSharePoint, data from around the worldcan be easily replicated, providing a betterexperience for users who are located farfrom the on-premises servers or have lowerbandwidth.

Regardless of how you use SharePoint,it gives you the freedom and flexibility tochange your mind as business needs andgoals change. z

Metalogix is a trusted provider of innovative manage-ment solutions for Microsoft SharePoint, Exchange andcloud platforms. We deliver high-performance solutionsto scale and cost-effectively manage, migrate, store,archive and protect enterprise content. Metalogix pro-vides global support to thousands of customers andstrategic partners and is a Microsoft Gold Partner, amanaged partner in Microsoft’s High Potential ISVGroup and a GSA provider. For more information pleasecall 202.609.9100 or visit www.metalogix.com.

Enhancing The Use andPerformance of SharePoint

Right now we are experiencing an explo-sion of digital content previously thoughtunimaginable, with volumes set to grow from1.2 zettabytes in 2012 to 35 ZB by 2020.Wecreate and consume more content than everbefore, and IT teams are expected to makethat content highly available to meet businessneeds and keep workers as productive as pos-sible. Microsoft SharePoint, with its ease ofinitial deployment, ease of use, range of fea-tures and low total cost of ownership (TCO),has quickly proven to be a solution that canaccommodate the explosive data growth andconsolidation to help knowledge workers ef-fectively collaborate and share data.

Although the breadth of features andhigh user adoption have meant that manyorganizations are now focusing onSharePoint for their content managementneeds, there are some content, migration,management and storage barriers that mustbe addressed before these organizationscan fully achieve their goals. You may havechosen SharePoint for a help desk applica-tion, knowledge management or a host ofother things, but regardless of how you’reusing SharePoint, the content you put in iscritical and will continue to grow.

Wouldn’t it be great to have the flexi-bility to manage content the way yourorganization demands, without the con-straints and barriers inherent in traditionalcontent management systems?

You have the choice to embrace freedomfor your content and maximize the fullpotential of SharePoint by making it yoursole enterprise content management (ECM)solution. By choosing to set your contentfree, your entire organization can embracegrowth and expand its productivity.

This freedom can mean upgrading fromSharePoint 2003 or SharePoint 2007 toSharePoint 2010 (or soon Wave 15) to takeadvantage of the breakthrough features. Itcan take the form of SharePoint storageoptimization, by offloading unstructuredcontent known as binary large objects(BLOBs) from the underlying SQL Serverdatabase to less expensive tiers of storage,including the cloud. Many organizationsare also looking to manage and movebetween on-premises and the cloud, which

KMWorld

By Steven Murphy, CEO, Metalogix

are all security trimmed. This means userswithout access to a forum or topic won’t seeit. Discussions in SharePoint can be accessedvia a Web browser or users can send inboundemail to a discussion list or connect the list to Outlook for easier participation.Attachments, rich text and embedded imagesare all included. SharePoint discussionboards leverage the platform’s “list” contentmodel for storing content, adding customfields, custom views, exporting and structur-ing the categorization of discussion topics.Discussions in SharePoint also conform tobranding theme/CSS changes made to thesite or portal.

While discussion forums have stood thetest of time, today’s world of informationoverload and social media has challengedthe user engagement model of discussionboards. Social networking has introducedactivity streams as a single aggregated feedof discussions. Streams offer an easier wayfor users to subscribe, find, post and con-tribute to existing discussions. Gone is thehierarchical categorization of topics forbrowsing. Social activity streams usemicroblogging and hashtagging to providecontext about topics, Q&A, knowledgebeing shared and trending topics.

The Challenge for Online ForumsGenerally, people don’t have time today

to browse a Web page showing a list ofdozens of discussion topics. People are“pulled” into a discussion by subscribing tocommunity events and following individu-als all within their activity stream—astream they access on multiple devicesanywhere anytime. Activity streams simplyprovide a much faster and more visiblemeans for users to engage.

As evidenced in the consumer space, backin October of 2011, Facebook removed theirdiscussion tab altogether in favor of the activ-ity stream. Public discussion board sites suchas Quora have also attempted to evolve thediscussion board to include an activity streamas the engagement point for users. LinkedInGroups have exploded offering discussioncapabilities with group level streams and visibility of contributions that pull one’s

connections into the discussions. Of course,there is also Twitter—one big stream of dis-cussions where hashtags are used for context,uniqueness and filtering of news and conver-sations of all kinds. Twitter has leveraged thespeed of sharing and conversation making it aglobal destination for discussion and news.

When it comes to activity streams onSharePoint, the out-of-the-box social func-tionality of SharePoint 2010 is limited whencompared to LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter.Vendors such as NewsGator addressSharePoint’s limitations by building con-sumer-like social capabilities within the plat-form. With both secure private streams andmore public streams, NewsGator offers a richsocial user experience, filtering, enterpriseQ&A, hashtagging, @targeting, ideas, newsand more. Enhancing the social computingcapabilities of SharePoint will create that“pull” of users into discussions that are occur-ring within the stream.

Activity Streams Engage UsersIn the end, online discussions are only

as good as the people, information andknowledge contributed to them. There are limitations to activity streams when compared to discussion boards. Some char-acter, rich-text and single-attachment limi-tations are just a few. As a result, activitystreams may not always replace discussionboards in every use case. For example,some heavily R&D-focused organizationsmight utilize traditional discussion boardsfor rich scientific or product discussions.Generally, any use case with requirementsfor a more structured approach to Q&A orknowledgebases might still find value indiscussion forums as opposed to microblogdiscussions in activity streams. And we’lllikely see online discussions evolve into ahybrid approach of streams and discussionforums that satisfy all use cases. It’s simplyimportant to recognize that activity streamscreate a viral effect and “pull” of peopleinto online discussions making it easier forthose that have questions to connect withthose experts with the answer. z

Rich Blank advises on social computing, collaboration &content management technology and strategy. He haspublished articles about collaboration and social busi-ness in CMSWire.com and SocialMediaToday.com and isalso a featured MS SharePoint expert and regular blog-ger on AIIM.org. He has spoken at events including 2011Social Media Summit, 2010 SharePoint Summit, andBusiness and IT Alignment Conference and regionalSharePoint User Groups. You can follow Rich onFacebook or Twitter @pmpinsights

As a Microsoft Gold Certified and Depth ManagedPartner, NewsGator delivers robust social technology tothe enterprise with proven scalability and security.Microsoft honored them as its 2011 US Partner of theYear. For additional information follow them on Twitter@newsgator or visit www.newsgator.com.

Activity Streams vs.Discussion Forums

Social technology is changing how peoplecommunicate and share information both onthe consumer Web and within the enterprise.In particular, activity streams (a.k.a. news-feeds) are becoming a central focal point forusers to engage in conversation and discus-sions. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn all include activity streams and have quicklychallenged traditional Internet discussion fo-rums such as Yahoo Message Boards orGoogle Groups in the consumer space.Withinthe firewall, platforms like Microsoft Share-Point have been used to create discussionboards within team sites and portals. Like theconsumer space, enterprise discussion forumsare also seeing conversations shift to newerenterprise social software with microbloggingand activity streams. So which is a better toolfor capturing tacit knowledge and Q&A: dis-cussion forums or activity streams?

For many years, discussion forums(a.k.a. discussion groups, discussionboards, message boards) have provided anonline place where people can post a ques-tion, receive responses, search, browse bytopic, and subscribe to alerts via email.Discussion forums actually date back topre-Internet bulletin boards and Usenetnewsgroups and subsequently evolved intothousands of public Internet sites offeringdiscussion capabilities seen today.Discussion forums usually allow upload-ing of multiple attachments to a post andare multi-threaded showing responsesthree or four levels deep. They have littlerestriction on the number of characterswithin a single post and offer rich text for-matting options (e.g., bold, bullets, etc...).

Discussions forums: A Less Restrictive and Secure Place

Within the firewall, discussion forumsface different requirements than Internetforums including restrictions around securi-ty and compliance. SharePoint discussionlists have some advantages as they leveragethe authentication, profiles and securitymodel of the underlying platform.Discussion boards and posts all conform toSharePoint’s native security roles (e.g.,Reader, Contributor, Owner, custom), and

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By Rich Blank, Solutions Engineer, NewsGator

July/August 2012 S5

versions will be created simultaneously andwill have to be merged by hand.

An integrated viewing platform with col-laboration capabilities, including annotations,combined with SharePoint’s user trackingcapabilities, saves time and costs by allowingemployees to open any document type in anembedded browser window, apply markupand save the new version. Employees wouldno longer need to have client licenses for fileformat support, or use email to share infor-mation. In fact they wouldn’t even need tominimize or leave the SharePoint site to getwork done.

Collaboration and InnovationEric Reis, advisor to venture capital firm

Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, states thatcompanies that practice “ferocious, customer-centric, rapid iteration,” in other words, thatdemonstrate an ability to drive innovationthrough collaboration with the “extendedenterprise” (consisting not only of employees,but customers and partners as well) will real-ize the return on their investment in the formof market leadership. Standardizing on a com-mon, easily shareable file type, such as PDF,enables an organization to quickly share andextend information, regardless of the originalfile format in which a document was created.Deploying a SharePoint-integrated viewingplatform that enables any file type to be con-verted to PDF, either on demand or in batchmode, allows internal participants to workseamlessly with their external counterparts todrive product improvements that give theorganization a competitive advantage.

Sharing proprietary or non-public infor-mation with external sources, in the pursuitof collaborative innovation, is often a pro-posal that is met with some trepidation.Loss of intellectual property, exposure ofconfidential strategies to the marketplace,and even lawsuits arising from indiscreetinformation transfer to third parties are realfactors. While information sharing isincreasingly a critical factor for realizingcompetitive advantage, the same data mustbe reasonably protected. A platform thatincludes user-level and document-level

digital rights management (DRM), coupledwith the ability to burn-in redactions, there-by preventing an outside user from select-ing or otherwise revealing the underlyingtext, ensures information security whendealing with documents, including sensi-tive data and/or intellectual property. DRMprevents information from being printed,modified, downloaded or saved by endusers. By adding DRM control in combina-tion with redactions on the document, organ-izations remain in control of exactly whatinternal data external participants can see,and most importantly what they can’t see.

Optimizing SharePoint UsageDespite the best laid plans to document

and enforce a logical, intuitive structure for anorganization’s digital information, manySharePoint sites become unwieldy from anend-user perspective; hard to navigate and fullof homeless documents that could add incred-ible value—if only the right people knewwhere to find them. An integrated viewingplatform allows users to preview and selectdocuments to work with, using SharePoint’skeyword search to find documents throughoutthe site. An embedded viewer allows users toopen those documents in a Web browser win-dow, without leaving the site.

Imagine a workforce with the ability tocollaborate on documents and process com-plete workflows without ever having to leavetheir SharePoint site, download specialty soft-ware, search tirelessly through email, or compile manual versions of team-membermarkups. It’s easy to see why an organizationwith an end-to-end document managementand collaboration solution in place can spendmore time working with their extended enter-prise to innovate, rather than having torespond to gaps in their toolbox. Integrating apowerful, fully featured viewing platform, asdescribed above, with SharePoint takes youone step closer to realizing return—not onlyon your SharePoint infrastructure investment,but also on your investment in employees,partners, and customers. z

Prateek Kathpal is the founder of Adeptol, a softwarecompany focused on developing imaging applications,which was acquired by Accusoft in 2011. He is currentlyresponsible for the viewing products strategy atAccusoft. Kathpal founded Adeptol to create an enter-prisewide viewing platform and associated solutions, toreplace traditional thick-client products. Prior to found-ing Adeptol, Kathpal held senior positions within thecontent management division of EMC. He has alsoworked with EMC Documentum, NEC, Sapient,Cognizant, JPMorgan Chase and other organizations.

Accusoft provides a full spectrum of document, contentand imaging solutions as applications and softwaredevelopment kits. Capture, process, store and viewimages, documents and more. Features include thinclient, zero footprint and mobile viewing, barcode recog-nition, OCR, image processing and forms processing.

The Role of CollaborationTools for SharePointCreating a Competitive Advantage

Improving productivity is, on its own, one ofthe top business objectives shared by compa-nies of all sizes, industries and geographies. Itsdirect correlation to a company’s ability to in-crease profitability has a compounding effecton its importance. One of the most cost-effec-tive ways to drive productivity improvementinitiatives is to increase collaboration acrossthe enterprise, both internally among employ-ees as well as between employees, partners andcustomers, through the use of a standardizedset of tools.

Silos of knowledge and expertise areinherent in every growing and diversifiedbusiness, and they quickly become a drag onefficiency and expense. These can be over-come with the introduction of informationmanagement tools equipped with built-in oradd-on collaboration capabilities. SharePointis dominating the capture of market share inthe information management space, and collaboration-enabling add-ons are sure tofollow. This article investigates some of thecritical elements and benefits of institutingeffective SharePoint collaboration.

Controlling Costs Through Collaboration

The need to control costs organization-wide is a key reason to implement collabora-tion within SharePoint. The economics ofsupporting document-sharing within theenterprise can be prohibitive, especially whensupplemental individual licenses, per user, arerequired to support file format-specific pro-grams such as AutoCAD. Additionally, a softcost that must be considered is the lag in pro-ductivity when employees have to switchbetween the document management portaland these individual applications to view documents. Enabling collaboration in real-time using SharePoint improves the overallspeed of an end-to-end workflow, because allteam members have access to necessary documents, including all versions of eachdocument. Emailing document versions backand forth has a number of disadvantages—not only the wasted time between replies, butalso the possibility that several different

KMWorld

By Prateek Kathpal, Vice President of Viewing Product Strategy, Accusoft

externally. Internally, it provides a stable andscalable foundation for document sharing,team collaboration, electronic forms and so-cial enterprise portals.

In addition, IT staff has been trained in itsoperation and support, and business peoplehave learned its user interface and depend onit for intra-company document sharing andcontent management.

MH: The value of that knowledge pos-sessed by IT and line-of-business employ-ees is incalculable—and it’s all on top of acompany’s hard-dollar investment. ButSharePoint was never designed to operatebeyond the firewall. You need to have theright add-on because it doesn’t come out ofthe box as an external tool.

JA: Making SharePoint secure for externalcontent sharing can be extremely difficult. Ithas some weaknesses, such as inadequate au-diting and access reporting, file encryption,document locking and protection limitations,and provisioning and supporting a communityof external users.

The challenge for CIOs with sizableSharePoint investments is to build on it asan existing foundation, which is exactlyhow a platform like IntraLinks can serve asan alternative: one that integrates seamlesslyinto SharePoint, but with that added secu-rity for external users.

What is the cost of build versus buy onSharePoint externalization mechanisms?

JA: IT departments work under tightbudgets. They need an alternative that letsthem enjoy secure collaboration withoutbuying more servers or investing in cus-tomization. When a company uses Share-Point externally, they have to maintainthose external collaborators. With thatcomes thousands of dollars in IT costs.With a cloud-based information sharing solution, IT departments can rapidly out-source the support of external collaborators,and reduce costs.

MH: I always look first to see if there’s anoff-the-shelf plug-in to meet my needs beforegoing into custom coding—which is typicallythe most costly solution. If you take that route,

you need to make sure there are unique re-quirements that no off-the-shelf solution meets.

Why is a hybrid, cloud-based solutionideal to leverage your existing SharePoint implementation?

MH: The days of trying to connect every-thing in house to the outside world are alreadyover. The cloud-based skills allow us to becomfortable in a hybrid environment. But theIT professional needs to guide his companythrough the hybrid world right now. It’s already in existence. The real skill is in know-ing how to respond to it.

JA: A cloud-based hybrid allows internalusers to continue using their familiar Share-Point-based platform and applications with lit-tle or no change. It also helps simplify identitymanagement tasks and takes workload off ofinternal SharePoint servers. Too many peopleperforming content searches and queries canreduce performance.

What are some of the additional securitybenefits of a hybrid solution?

JA: For starters, virus protection—and fileencryption beyond the firewall is vital. Hackerscan find a way into almost any system if theyare determined enough, but when a system’sdata is encrypted, that data remains secure.

Integrated digital rights management isalso key, so IT departments can manage con-tent after a document has been distributed. Thishelps ensure the user will not inadvertentlylose or leak the document.

Then there’s real-time monitoring: whichpeople are looking at what documents, for howlong, and the ability to create audit reportsfrom this information to meet compliance. Ad-ministrators also need to be able to managedocument access and download privileges.

These are assets that companies sometimesdon’t realize they’re missing when they useconsumer-grade products such as Dropbox orGoogle. A good solution adds security, com-pliance and information governance capabili-ties without requiring additional SharePointcustomization, or introducing a new interfacethat internal users have to learn.

MH: When you have a well-architected hybrid solution, you can focus on the APIsthat connect your in-house system with your cloud-based apps. In that API, you have theopportunity to put in very comprehensivedata screening and identity management. Thearchitecture that works in the hybrid envi-ronment leverages the APIs as control pointsfor data security.

When I think about the importance of therole this plays in the security scenario, I alwaysthink of the famous scene from The Graduate,where Mr. McGuire tells Ben, “I just want tosay one word to you... ‘plastics’.”

In one word, I would say, “API”. z

IntraLinks is a leading provider of integrated Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions for secure internal/externalcollaboration.

External SharePointCollaboration—WithoutCompromise

A ccording to an article on ZDNet aboutSharePoint, more than 7.3 million newSharePoint users are added every year,making it a multi-billion dollar business forMicrosoft. But can a business collaboratewith external partners outside the firewallwhile ensuring the security of its content?What viable solutions are out there? MikeHugos, CIO and author of books on IT bestpractices and cloud computing, and Jose Almandoz, EVP of Business Operations forIntraLinks, give us their insights.

What are the key elements of a securecollaboration solution?

Mike Hugos: The right solution enablesagile response, leverages but unburdens the in-house IT infrastructure, and comes with abusiness model that creates predictable and re-curring costs, and lowers up-front investment.

Jose Almandoz: A proper solution needsto provide external partners access to the sametools and security beyond the firewall aswithin it. At the same time, it needs to featurea user interface that is familiar to internal users,and intuitive to external users.

Consumer-grade solutions sometimes lackthe enterprise security to achieve that integrity.

MH: There are also procedural and techni-cal parts to a good, secure collaboration solution. The technical part is assessing the abil-ity to encrypt and de-encrypt documents, andto assign the right access to the right people.You need to be able to determine who can readcontent online, or read—and download—it.

Then there’s the procedural aspect. Whatis the “need-to-know” content? What are itsparameters? Administrators need to be able toset parameters to provision and support usersaccording to their organization’s informationmanagement policies.

Why is SharePoint ideal, but also chal-lenging as a solution for external informationsharing?

MH: SharePoint is ideal because manycompanies already use it. It’s great to leveragewhat is already in place when working withexternal users.

JA: It’s an ideal internal collaboration tool,but challenging for sharing information

July/August 2012S6 KMWorld

By Mike Hugos, CIO-at-Large, Center for Systems Innovationand Jose Almandoz, EVP of Business Operations, IntraLinks

July/August 2012 S7

primary building block in any informationgovernance plan, which enables the proactivemanagement of content.

A sound information governance strategyincludes enterprise search. Most end users areunable to find relevant information to supportbusiness objectives, resulting in the inabilityto find, reuse and repurpose information. Thesecond building block in our framework isinsight. Regardless of the enterprise searchsolution, the delivery of meaningful resultsdepends on the ability to effectively index andclassify content and to develop taxonomies tobetter manage the content. The search engineitself provides the features, functions andinterface while the classification structuredelivers relevant results.

A key component in any information gov-ernance is governance itself. The overarchingenterprise governance structure allows staff towork in the most efficient and effective waypossible by giving them access to informationassets in a controlled and secure manner. A key component is ease of use and trans-parency. This building block consists of toolsthat ensure information quality, maintain thelifecycle of information, address the retentionand disposition of records, secure and protectprivacy, and establish standards when dealingwith information assets, including unstruc-tured content.

A comprehensive approach for managinginformation is necessary to ensure compliancewith policies. This approach ensures consis-tency, is implemented transparently, improvesrecordkeeping, and enables the establishmentof monitoring and auditing processes to ensureproof of compliance and data protection.

Our fifth building block is policy. Thisbuilding block includes the ability to identifyrecords, privacy information and intellectualassets, and fully automate the process to han-dle the appropriate disposition of the content.This includes discovering where the contentresides, cleansing the content through organi-zationally defined concepts and descriptors,identifying the relationships within the con-tent and then defining the policies with auto-matic enforcement.

Part of an information governance planincludes the proactive identification and protec-tion of unknown privacy exposures before theyoccur, as well as monitor in real time organiza-tionally defined vocabulary and descriptors in

content as it is created or ingested. Clients areable to automatically secure sensitive informa-tion, declare documents of record and automateworkflow initiation, so comply with federalregulations and reduce organizational risk.Within SharePoint, this includes the ability toautomatically apply correct content types whenorganizationally defined descriptors andvocabulary reside within documents.

Adding Social to the MixSocial networking tools, which encourage

collaboration, can link employees, partners,suppliers and customers in order to shareinformation, are becoming useful tools forbusiness communication. The primary busi-ness benefits of these collaborative and socialtools are also accompanied by inherent weak-nesses. There are several concerns such assecurity, unauthorized use and communicationnoise. Enterprise 2.0 must be managed withinthe information governance plan. This pro-vides structure and protects the organizationfrom data exposures and reduces risk. Addingstructure to these tools increases productivityand enables knowledge workers to find correctinformation and collaborate with peers.

As you plan or augment your informationgovernance plan, evaluate technologies that gaincontrol of unstructured content and run nativelyin SharePoint. In addition, look for vendors thathave a proven track record in successfully solv-ing information governance challenges inSharePoint. A technology solution should lever-age features in SharePoint for sharing metadataacross multiple site collections and server farms.The organizational role is to develop the rulesand processes to adopt and enforce, and utilizethe strengths of SharePoint, while maximizingthe value and minimizing the risk associatedwith information from within SharePoint, aswell as from diverse repositories. z

Concept Searching software products deliver conceptualmetadata generation, auto-classification, and powerfultaxonomy management utilizing the Smart ContentFramework for information governance. Please contactus at info-usa@conceptsearching.com for additionalinformation.

SharePoint InformationGovernance That Works

Every organization is unique in its require-ments and approach to information gover-nance. These variations increase as SharePointbecomes prolific in organizations of all sizes.Despite the rapid adoption of SharePoint, it hastraditionally been used to solve collaboration,content and records management challenges atthe departmental level, outside the view andcontrol of a corporate IT function. While thisgives departments control of their content, itmakes information governance more difficultfor the IT staff, having no control of or insightinto the content. From an enterprise perspec-tive, this increases organizational risk, non-compliance issues and the risk of data privacyexposures, and impacts decision-making.

The enterprise IT challenge is to continueto provide business benefits to end userswhile maintaining a level of consistency andcontrol. A governance plan is necessary, but ifit is unrealistic or impractical to implement itwill fail. It is essential to ensure that it deliv-ers relevant content to its users in an effectiveway, while protecting the enterprise fromlegal, regulatory and non-compliance issues.Concept Searching’s approach has resulted inthe development of the Smart ContentFramework, which complements ourSharePoint technology suite and addressesinformation governance and the tacticalbuilding blocks to implement in order to real-istically achieve objectives. This frameworkwas developed to solve the challenges ofinformation governance in SharePoint fororganizations including the US ArmyMedical Command, OppenheimerFunds,Perkins+Will, and the NASA Safety Center.

The crux of the problem with informationgovernance is the inability to rely on end usersto accurately and consistently add metadata tocontent and process information according topolicies. Poorly designed and managed repos-itories of content result in multiple versions ofthe same document and can cause decisionmakers to find and rely on inaccurate data.Unmanaged Web servers running SharePointcan deliver unanticipated results, such as secu-rity exposures, inconsistent regulatory compli-ance issues and non-declaration of records.

At a fundamental level, enterprises strug-gle with managing content assets whichstems from end users’ inability to accuratelyand consistently tag content for search, reuse,records identification and archival purposes.An enterprise metadata repository is the

KMWorld

Martin Garland hasmore than 20 years’experience in search,classification andenterprise contentmanagement within thebroader informationmanagement industry.He has focused onsales, marketing andgeneral management,and has expertise inboth startup and

turnaround operations throughout Europe, the USand Asia Pacific. One of the founders of ConceptSearching, he is responsible for both marketingstrategy and North American and internationaloperations.

Martin GarlandBy Martin Garland, President, Concept Searching

www.infotoday.com

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Metalogix5335 Wisconsin NWWashington DC 20015

PH: 202.609.9100Contact: info@metalogix.comWeb: www.metalogix.com

IntraLinks, Inc. 150 East 42nd Street, 8th floorNew York NY 10017

PH: 212.543.7700FAX: 212.543.7978 Contact: www.intralinks.com/contactWeb: www.intralinks.com

Concept Searching, Inc.8300 Greensboro Drive, Suite 800McLean VA 22102

PH: 703.531.8567Twitter: @conceptsearchContact: info-usa@conceptsearching.comWeb: www.conceptsearching.com

Accusoft4001 N. Riverside DriveTampa FL 33603

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