Information from Anywhere, Any Time

Some solutions that integrate external content into SharePoint consist of custom Web Parts that present information from a single repository with unique and proprietary functionality and behavior. These types of approaches merely move the content access problem to multiple SharePoint pages—new SharePoint pages with custom Web Parts that must be created (and maintained) to view content from each repository.

Microsoft's Business Connectivity Services (BCS) can be used to integrate external information into SharePoint, which can provide a common look and feel for various repositories. However, Microsoft's approach does not address the need to horizontally integrate content from multiple data sources—a single SharePoint "viewing" page with standard Web Parts to view content from multiple repositories. Further, to implement BCS requires configuration, and often code development effort, if working with anything other than a SQL database. BCS also does not support content presentment; it is geared toward structured metadata.

To access content outside of SharePoint through the SharePoint user interface, CIOs need to implement a unified, federated, integration-enabling layer that combines the functions of search, discovery and presentation into a single user interface while normalizing dissimilar but related terms and metadata across various data sources. The solution should leverage the familiarity, power and flexibility of BCS, and then enhance it with zero coding, out-of-the-box integration of both external metadata and the content delivered to standard BCS Web Parts. This will result in content from external repositories being displayed through standard BCS Web Parts in the SharePoint user interface.

Ultimately, you want the content to be delivered to SharePoint, but that's not always needed or practical. Having the ability to render content and data in multiple viewing formats should be a standard requirement. For example, keeping with the theme of "information anywhere and at any time," you may need to create a partner or customer portal that uses content and data from both SharePoint and other repositories. Instead of duplicating that information, the integration-enabling layer should obtain the content from the source repositories in its native format and render it for viewing in several different ways:

• Web browser: Content is transformed from native formats into a wide range of browser-friendly formats, including SVG, HTML, XML, VML, JPG, PDF, PNG and image.
• Desktop application: Content can be rendered in an associated application on the desktop, which is particularly useful when retrieving content such as Microsoft Office documents, HTML files, JPG or Adobe PDF images, video files (such as MPEG), and email. For example, when a user accesses a PDF document, the integration enabling layer finds the file in the target repository and sends all pages to the desktop. A standard viewer, such as Adobe Acrobat Reader, is automatically launched to display the document and to provide navigation across pages.
• Native repository viewer: Using the viewer of the source repository enables the user to take advantage of the native controls in the document viewer, including facilities like zoom, rotate, annotate, download, print, and library services, such as check in/check out.

Imagine the innovative impact a CIO can have on the organization by enabling the ability to pull information from any connected repository, e.g., ERP system and/or contract database, into SharePoint, a Web browser or customized application viewer and populate the user interface with relevant content automatically and instantaneously!

Archive SharePoint content early and often.
SharePoint stores documents in the SharePoint SQL Server database(s). This storage mechanism presents challenges for storing large volumes of documents, especially in regard to documents with long retention periods and binary large objects (BLOBs). Database growth, as well as backup and recovery processes, affects the long-term scalability and reliability of the SharePoint repository. Further, it is difficult to leverage compliant and read-only storage devices when documents remain in the database. Database-based storage makes it difficult to use more cost-effective storage technology during the lifecycle of the document, such as archiving documents to a cheaper, slower magnetic disk after the document reaches a certain stage in its lifecycle.

The unified, federated, content integration-enabling layer should allow you to directly respond to these challenges by allowing documents from SharePoint to be archived in a repository of record—a highly scalable, platform-independent, universal repository that indexes all content and its changes in any connected repository, and provides centrally controlled retention and disposition for all enterprise content, including SharePoint documents. It should also provide archiving functionality that can be fully defined by SharePoint administrators while presenting options for determining archive triggers based on your organization's unique needs.

Archiving SharePoint documents helps maximize cost reduction from IT operations, compliance departments, and other areas in several ways:

• The backup, recovery and maintenance times for SQL Server databases are dramatically reduced by removing the bulky documents and BLOBs from the dataset;
• The most cost-efficient storage technology can be used to store these documents, without affecting the performance of SharePoint or SQL Server. In fact, SQL Server performance can be positively impacted;
• Document retention policies can be applied to SharePoint documents, consistent with the retention applied to other business records; and
• In regulated environments, choices of compliant or WORM media are equally available to SharePoint documents, making internal governance and external compliance easier to attain.

Microsoft SharePoint is a good content management and collaboration system. It is often budget-friendly and addresses many content management challenges. Conduct your due diligence and evaluate your organization's IT and business needs in a holistic fashion—focusing on data access, integration, delivery and storage to provide information anywhere and at any time, creating business technology environments that encourage innovation and growth and delivering on the promise to provide information to create positive customer experiences. The best practice in content management for SharePoint is to remember that SharePoint isn't perfect and may fall short of expectations. Identify a Microsoft SharePoint partner that can give you the ability to federate all of your enterprise content and data, serve that information anywhere and at any time, and archive SharePoint documents to maximize cost reductions from IT operations.