Collaboration and Content Management Have Never Been Easier
Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 brings together strong team collaboration capabilities with social networking, simplified content management and faster, more effective enterprise search. Its business intelligence along with a more scalable services architecture and easier management tools make it a platform of choice for both business and IT.
For organizations that are currently using SharePoint Server 2003 or 2007, an upgrade to SharePoint 2010 can deliver the value-added functionality to make their collaboration environments more enterprise-ready and effective. For those considering a move to Microsoft Exchange 2010 or Office 2010, SharePoint 2010 offers tight integration and ease-of-use to help businesses establish a unified collaboration, document management and knowledge management platform.
Infogain's SharePoint upgrade services offer a direct path for businesses to take full advantage of the SharePoint platform for increased productivity and a measurable return on investment.
An Objective Expert's Viewpoint
"SharePoint 2010 has been stable and feature-rich from the get-go, but nonetheless, Microsoft recently released Service Pack 1 for it. I've heard few complaints regarding its performance and a great deal of praise regarding the leaps taken beyond its predecessor."
"SharePoint 2010 SP1 doesn't bring game-changing features, but it doesn't need to. SharePoint 2010 itself was that game changer, and what we need now are reasonable enhancements -- exactly what Microsoft has delivered in SharePoint 2010 SP1."
J. Peter Bruzzese, InfoWorld, SharePoint 2010 SP1: What it does -- and does not do, July 13, 2011
Benefits of Upgrading to SharePoint 2010 with Service Pack 1
SharePoint 2010 offers a number of upgrade benefits for business users, IT managers and developers. Now, with the release of SP1 and the latest Cumulative Update (CU), the platform incorporates support for the Google Chrome browser when using Office Web Apps, support for SQL Server 2011, and an increase in the content database size limitations. Microsoft recommends a combined update of SP1 with the June CU in order to bring your platform up to the latest release level, as SP1 itself resets the baseline for your SharePoint environment while the June CU builds upon SP1 with additional fixes and capabilities.
For more information on SP1, the June CU and the recommended approach for upgrading, please visit the Microsoft Office Sustained Engineering and Release Team's official Blog.
Features of SharePoint 2010 include:
 Collaboration & Social Computing
SharePoint 2010 is ultimately an enterprise collaboration platform which is designed to enhance organizational productivity. Integration via the new Office Ribbon reduces the learning curve and empowers knowledge workers who can easily create, manage, share and access information based on their organizational role, team membership, interest, security group, or other membership criteria.
Integrated enterprise social computing and social networking tools enable fast and effective business collaboration which can be managed within a company’s IT governance framework. Personalized MySites and social content technologies like wikis, blogs, tagging and discussion forums facilitate interaction and peer-to-peer collaboration across projects; while integration with Microsoft Exchange makes it possible to organize and mine this otherwise unstructured data.
LOB Integration
Users can now interact with line of business data, surface it in their SharePoint interface, analyze it, and make updates that will be reflected in the external data source like ERP and CRM systems. Through an interface that is very similar to SharePoint lists, users can edit LOB data directly in SharePoint in a secure and efficient manner.
Enterprise Search
SharePoint 2010's enterprise search is more powerful than ever with FAST Search which allows them to find information and see a preview of search results without opening the documents and contextual search which delivers more relevant results. Search results provide easier and more flexible filtration and having the ability to include federated search from Google or Bing makes search results efficient.
Business Intelligence
The SharePoint Server 2010 BI Stack extends the capability to develop BI Dashboards and KPIs that will enable business users to have an executive view of the business. Using PerformancePoint Services, users can easily create dashboards, KPIs, scorecards, graphs and more. Integration with Microsoft Visio and Chart Web Parts enables users to make visualizations of data quickly and easily. The new Business Intelligence Center provides a reporting hub for business users.
Scalability and Manageability
SharePoint 2010 is architected to be more flexible and scalable than before. It incorporates a health monitoring system and simplified data backup and restore facilities. With its new architecture, control mechanisms, and scalability features, companies can deploy either on premise or in the cloud without losing functionality or control. From a security standpoint, SharePoint 2010 has added several control features that allow for IT to retain control and prevent unauthorized access to company resources. IT can sandbox end user solutions and limit their exposure to specific SharePoint Server Resources at a granular level.
Infogain's SharePoint Upgrade Services
Businesses considering a move to SharePoint 2010 can leverage Infogain’s structured approach and upgrade framework to ensure an efficient and effective upgrade that incorporates the key functions of the platform which fit the organization’s unique business and IT requirements. Our approach begins with a business process and architectural assessment that results in a phased implementation roadmap with key milestones for the project mapped by function. The Infogain project team then works closely with the client IT organization to plan, implement and manage the data migration, system upgrade and required customizations to support the goals of the business.
Infogain’s SharePoint Collaboration practice team has deep experience with the platform—from architecture, integration and customization to implementation, performance optimization and support. Our unique approach to SharePoint upgrades and migrations incorporates best practices as outlined by Microsoft and leading industry analysts, such as Gartner.
Infogain's 4-step upgrade approach
| Project Assessment and planning |
Product implementation and upgrade |
System Testing and Optimization |
System Roll-out |
- 64-bit readiness assessment
- Identification and evaluation of current customizations
- Evaluation of upgrade approach alternatives
- Assessment of migration tool fit and usage
- Advising of corporate security and integrate Rights Management Server
- Phased implementation roadmap including training and governance plans
|
- Product implementation on 64-bit server farm
- Migration of existing customizations and development of new required customizations (templates, reporting, web parts, workflow integration, etc.)
- Data and content migration
- Integration with Active Directory, Exchange, Office, LOB systems
|
- Requirements Definition
- Development of corporate 64-bit Windows Server virtualization standard
- Optimization for high availability and performance
- Implementation of system life cycle environment stack for optimal release management
- Comprehensive testing
|
- "Retrospective" content integration and communication to end users
- Comprehensive governance processes
- End user and SharePoint leader training on usage and governance rules
- Retirement of out-dated content after the stated grace period for user self-service migration
|
Why Infogain?
With more than 20 years of experience as a premier enterprise IT services firm including SharePoint, portals, integration and enterprise systems, Infogain brings a unique blend of talent to collaboration projects to ensure the best possible ROI for clients. Key strengths of Infogain’s SharePoint and Collaboration practice include:
- Proven Strategy for SharePoint Governance: the development of governance plans, information architectures, service level agreements, environmental metrics to judge performance, as well as support models and organizational structures.
- System Integration Expertise: architecting SOA visions and solutions at an enterprise level to connect the SharePoint solution with as many systems as necessary without increasing support - driving end user productivity.
- Microsoft Software and .Net Knowledge: skilled developers and architects who build complex solutions using Microsoft products such as SharePoint, BizTalk, MS SQL Server, etc. as well as custom solutions using .NET and custom web parts.
- Business Process Optimization: documented and streamlined business processes for SharePoint projects to optimize processes through online collaboration.
Please Contact us for more information or to get started with your SharePoint 2010 upgrade project today. |
