SharePoint 2007 Architecture, Planning & Deployment

Deploying SharePoint 2007 on a single server is actually quite simple. Deploying SharePoint 2007 on multi-servers, ensuring security and customizing it is a totally different scenario. This is why aXelerate has developed a solution, the SharePoint 2007 Architecture, Planning and Deployment Solution, to quickly and effectively design, plan and deploy SharePoint in any organization in the most effective way.

aXelerate has designed this solution which allows a customer to quickly reach a decision point with a minimum investment. This solution has the following three phases:

Solution Briefing	The solution briefing phase is designed to establish the parameters of the deployment of the solution since two customers are never the same. During this initial step, the key players are identified and the goals of the engagement are reviewed and mutually agreed upon.

Architecture & Planning	The Architecture & Planning is composed of 6 different steps outlined below. Each step is designed to map the requirements between the capabilities of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and the features required by the customer. At the end of this part, we produce a document outlining the architecture of the SharePoint solution for your needs as well as a planning for the deployment.

Proof Of Concept	The purpose of the POC is to address the needs for technical evidences that some or all the requirements are met with a SharePoint solution. A POC is designed to address one of those four categories: Demonstrate that a basic feature works out-of-the-box Demonstrate that a complex feature works out-of-the-box Demonstrate that a feature works in the customer's environment Demonstrate that the solution can scale to the customer's needs

Details of Deploying SharePoint 2007

	SharePoint 2007 can manage content in a variety of format and storage: documents library, records and Web content. Each content management requires a strategy in order to handle properly the storage in SharePoint. For example, documents might require respecting taxonomy while records management must follow a very strict security model. This step identifies the needs of the customers when it comes to content Management.
	Exploiting fully the business intelligence capabilities of SharePoint requires defining precisely the source of information, the security required and the reporting capabilities. In this step, we analyze the requirements to deploy successfully a business intelligence solution based on SharePoint 2007.
	SharePoint 2007 includes workflows for all the lists and libraries to control the publication of any SharePoint items, including documents. Since Workflows are a very powerful feature of SharePoint and can be complex to put in place, this step is essential to determine the features to be implemented when deploying SharePoint.
	The amount of information stored in SharePoint can grow exponentially very quickly. The enterprise option of Microsoft SharePoint allows to perform extremely quick search among a huge number of items, even geographically dispersed. Designing the proper search for SharePoint has an impact on the design and architecture of the solution and need to be taken into account as early as possible in the decision process.
	Integrating SharePoint with line-of-business applications is done through the Business Data Catalog (BDC). The BDC allows integration with any back-end applications and enables them to make data available as SharePoint properties. Integrating an LOB application with SharePoint requires some planning and properly architect the solution, hence this step to ensure that all the parameters are taking into account.
	Deploying a SharePoint solution often requires the migration of content of an existing WSS and/or SharePoint 2003 while maintaining the current information architecture. It might also require the migration of the content of other intranet/extranet web sites or the incorporation of documents which are stored in other repositories. This step allows the evaluation of the effort required to upgrade and/or migrate existing content into SharePoint 2007.
	While SharePoint 2007 includes many features out-of-the-box, it is sometimes necessary to define applications which are specifically tailored to the end user. In SharePoint, those custom applications are defined as Web Parts and can be managed directly within the SharePoint platform. In this step, we analyze the requirements and the amount of effort required to build custom applications.

SharePoint 2007 Architecture, Planning & Deployment

Solution Briefing

Architecture & Planning

Proof Of Concept

Details of Deploying SharePoint 2007

Are you ready to learn more? Contact us for a detailed proposition to get started with SharePoint 2007