Portal Architect's Toolbox (Continued)
Microsoft: From Department to Enterprise
Microsoft's Architect's Toolbox
Maintaining its traditional focus on end-user productivity, Microsoft competes in the portal marketplace today with a department-level solution with strong features for unstructured data access and team collaboration. Version 2 of SharePoint Portal Server, due this year, will provide support for .Net Framework, though full migration to a standards-based portal layer over enterprise infrastructure awaits integration with the delayed Windows .Net Server. Though it's a leader in the Web services community, Microsoft has not participated in standards efforts for accessing portlets—what Microsoft calls Web Parts. Meanwhile, as its enterprise story takes shape, Microsoft positions its current technology as a decentralized alternative to hierarchical portal architectures.
Technology
SharePoint Portal Server integrates with and makes use of key Microsoft technologies, including Windows, Digital Dashboards, Office, Microsoft Internet Explorer, the Microsoft Exchange Server Web Storage System, and Microsoft Search Service (see Figure 3). The client components consist of extensions to Microsoft Office applications and Windows Explorer. These components allow users to perform document management and search tasks within those applications. The dashboard site, viewed through a browser, provides a Web-based view on the document management and search services the product provides. The core server components include Document Management Services, Search Services, and the Digital Dashboard and Web Part run-time environment.
Product
SharePoint Portal Server provides an easy way to create Web portals with integrated document management services and search capabilities. Portals establish a central point of access to existing business information and applications, as well as share information across file servers, databases, public folders, Internet sites, and SharePoint Team Services-based Web sites.
Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server Product Overview
Application
L'Oreal's MasterNet delivers an international e-business platform that can be used to create Web sites ranging from editorial (content only) to personalized e-commerce. L'Oreal's IT team installed SharePoint Portal Server on two servers: one to run the portal and manage documents and the other to index intranet sites. Afterward, the team simply plugged the product into the intranet, defined the document architecture, and created profiles and users. Approximately one week after receiving SharePoint Portal Server, team members were able to test it on a significant scale and discovered that it addressed 90 percent of the company's information-sharing needs straight out of the box.
Case Study: L'Oreal Deploys Out of the Box Portal to Increase Productivity, Collaboration
Analysts' View
SharePoint Portal Server 2.0 raises significant questions for Microsoft-oriented organizations evaluating their portal options. Central to Microsoft's SPS2 plans are promises to resolve SPS1's weaknesses—notably integrated personalization, single sign-on, stronger ties to Content Management Server (CMS) and BizTalk Server, and provision of user and application management services. Although we expect to improve on SPS1, SPS2's requirement for Windows .Net Server will delay early-adopter SPS2 deployments to year-end 2003, with majority adoption expected in 2004/05.
Ashim Pal, Meta Group Metabits, December 17, 2002
SharePoint has been fitted into .Net rather than .Net being built with SharePoint in mind.
David Gootzit, Gartner, December 2002
Back to top
|