Enhancing The Use and Performance of SharePoint
Right now we are experiencing an explosion of digital content previously thought unimaginable, 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 to make that content highly available to meet business needs and keep workers as productive as possible. Microsoft SharePoint, with its ease of initial deployment, ease of use, range of features and low total cost of ownership (TCO), has quickly proven to be a solution that can accommodate the explosive data growth and consolidation to help knowledge workers effectively collaborate and share data.
Although the breadth of features and high user adoption have meant that many organizations are now focusing on SharePoint for their content management needs, there are some content, migration, management and storage barriers that must be addressed before these organizations can fully achieve their goals. You may have chosen SharePoint for a help desk application, knowledge management or a host of other things, but regardless of how you're using SharePoint, the content you put in is critical and will continue to grow.
Wouldn't it be great to have the flexibility to manage content the way your organization demands, without the constraints and barriers inherent in traditional content management systems?
You have the choice to embrace freedom for your content and maximize the full potential of SharePoint by making it your sole enterprise content management (ECM) solution. By choosing to set your content free, your entire organization can embrace growth and expand its productivity.
This freedom can mean upgrading from SharePoint 2003 or SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010 (or soon Wave 15) to take advantage of the breakthrough features. It can take the form of SharePoint storage optimization, by offloading unstructured content known as binary large objects (BLOBs) from the underlying SQL Server database to less expensive tiers of storage, including the cloud. Many organizations are also looking to manage and move between on-premises and the cloud, which could be a private cloud, a multi-tenant cloud, a hybrid cloud or some combination.
Controlling the Sprawl
As business needs evolve, many organizations will experience "SharePoint sprawl." Whether an organization has adopted additional SharePoint systems through a merger or acquisition, inherited a number of SharePoint platforms from various departments, or simply didn't adhere to a SharePoint governance policy, SharePoint sprawl can slow performance, bloat storage systems and hold content captive.
While SharePoint freedom can mean different things to individual organizations, based on their own unique business needs, there are best practices that any organization can employ. By implementing these simple, but important practices, any organization can realize the full value of SharePoint as a truly powerful and flexible ECM solution.
One of these best practices is to embrace growth. Ninety-five percent of digital content is unstructured data, which does not have a pre-defined data model and does not fit well into relational databases.
SharePoint content creates BLOBs of unstructured data associated with SharePoint files (e.g., PDF files, images, Office documents, etc.), that can significantly impact your storage requirements. One approach to overcoming this challenge is to move the unstructured BLOBs out of SharePoint's content databases and offload them onto a mix of NAS, SAN or cloud storage platforms. By using products (one of which is Metalogix StoragePoint) to externalize this BLOB content to less expensive storage, organizations often enjoy up to a 95% reduction in SQL Server storage requirements.
To evolve into the ECM of the future and be truly effective, SharePoint should include as much data as possible from all parts of your organization. Before a consolidation strategy is implemented, evaluate why current information silos, including file shares, legacy ECM systems (Google Apps, Documentum, eRoom, Exchange Public Folders, etc.) and departmental SharePoint deployments, exist across the organization. Be sure to consider SharePoint migration products, such as Metalogix Migration Manager for SharePoint, that allow you to move content from SharePoint and other systems, minimize downtime and eliminate any impact on worker productivity.
Another important practice is to understand the information architecture, which includes how site collections, sites, document libraries and lists are organized within the SharePoint structure. Consolidating or upgrading to SharePoint 2010 presents an ideal opportunity to reorganize your SharePoint implementation and ensure that your information architecture is future-ready for the next version of SharePoint. Organizations often discover that their existing information architecture for SharePoint is less than optimal.
With the availability of Microsoft Office 365, SharePoint 2010 is in the cloud and SharePoint Online is poised to go mainstream. Organizations are increasingly looking to hybrid cloud environments that leverage both SharePoint on-premises and SharePoint Online or Office 365. There are several business drivers for this, including organizations that would like an easy way to create an extranet for their customers or partners. The value is in the ability to share data between SharePoint on-premises and their extranet. This allows extranet users to share data and collaborate with the organization's intranet users.
Some organizations want to move to the cloud gradually because fully migrating to the cloud might be a stretch goal. Content freedom means being able to migrate some of your content—maybe an office or a department—to the cloud without having to move entirely off your on-premises servers. This gradual or granular type of migration allows organizations to significantly minimize risk while taking advantage of the new cloud technology.
Another driver is geo-replication, which is the sharing of data between SharePoint servers in disparate locations. Using a product such as Metalogix Replicator for SharePoint, data from around the world can be easily replicated, providing a better experience for users who are located far from the on-premises servers or have lower bandwidth.
Regardless of how you use SharePoint, it gives you the freedom and flexibility to change your mind as business needs and goals change.
Metalogix is a trusted provider of innovative management solutions for Microsoft SharePoint, Exchange and cloud platforms. We deliver high-performance solutions to scale and cost-effectively manage, migrate, store, archive and protect enterprise content. Metalogix provides global support to thousands of customers and strategic partners and is a Microsoft Gold Partner, a managed partner in Microsoft's High Potential ISV Group and a GSA provider. For more information please call 202.609.9100 or visit www.metalogix.com.