KMWorld.com - Activity streams vs discussions_july_2012

Best Practices in
SharePoint Solutions
Andy Moore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 A Stroll Down SharePoint Lane
SharePoint has emerged as the most successful and ubiquitous software tool of
our lifetimes. However, it still isn’t everything it needs to be. A SharePoint “ecosystem”
has evolved to make sure that your SharePoint deployment is as effective and productive
as it can possibly be. Can SharePoint be a risk to your company? Yes. Can SharePoint
also be an incredible cost-sink for your IT department? Yes. Can SharePoint also be the
greatest collaboration, content management and productivity tool on the planet? . . .
Steven Murphy, Metalogix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 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. . . .
Rich Blank, NewsGator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Activity Streams vs. Discussion Forums
Social technology is changing how people communicate and share information both
on the consumer Web and within the enterprise. In particular, activity streams (a.k.a.
newsfeeds) are becoming a central focal point for users to engage in conversation
and discussions. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn all include activity streams and have
quickly challenged traditional Internet discussion forums such as Yahoo Message
Boards or Google Groups in the consumer space. . . .
Prateek Kathpal, Accusoft . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 The Role of Collaboration Tools for SharePoint
Improving productivity is, on its own, one of the top business objectives shared by
companies of all sizes, industries and geographies. Its direct correlation to a company’s
ability to increase profitability has a compounding effect on its importance. One of the
most cost-effective ways to drive productivity improvement initiatives is to increase
collaboration across the enterprise, both internally among employees as well as between
employees, partners and customers. . . .
Mike Hugos, Center for Systems Innovation. . . . 6 External SharePoint Collaboration—Without Compromise
and Jose Almandoz, IntraLinks According to an article on ZDNet about SharePoint, more than 7.3 million new
SharePoint users are added every year, making it a multi-billion dollar business for
Microsoft. But can a business collaborate with external partners outside the firewall
while ensuring complete security of its content? What viable solutions are out there?
Mike Hugos, CIO and author of books about the topics of IT best practices and
cloud computing, and Mike Lees of IntraLinks give us their insights. . . .
Martin Garland, Concept Searching . . . . . . . . . . 7 SharePoint Information Governance That Works
Every organization is unique in its requirements and approach to information
governance. These variations increase as SharePoint becomes prolific in organizations
of all sizes. Despite the rapid adoption of SharePoint, it has traditionally been used to
solve collaboration, content and records management challenges at the departmental
level, outside the view and control of a corporate IT function. While this gives
departments control of their content. . . .

Supplement to KMWorld July/August 2012

Andy Moore is the

A Stroll Down publisher of KMWorld
Magazine. In addition,
as the editorial
director of the

SharePoint Lane KMWorld Specialty
Publishing Group,
Andy Moore oversees
the content of the
monthly “KMWorld
By Andy Moore, Editorial Director, KMWorld Specialty Publishing Group Best Practices White
Andy Moore Paper series,” in print
and online, as well as

A s everyone already knows, Microsoft
SharePoint has helped create an entire cot-
added for emphasis) rather than having to
respond to gaps in their toolbox.”
assisting with the creation and content of several
single-sponsored “positioning papers” per year.
He is also the host and moderator of the popular
tage industry around itself. It would be as The Metalogix piece by Steven Murphy KMWorld Web event online broadcast series.
though the automotive aftermarket—which also underscores the business value to be Moore is based in Camden, Maine, and can be
took decades to develop—erupted overnight. gained from SharePoint: “Regardless of how reached at andy_moore@kmworld.com
An unprecedented business event. you use SharePoint, it gives you the freedom
It’s prominently called the “SharePoint and flexibility to change your mind as business inconsistent regulatory compliance issues
ecosystem,” somewhat spectacularly, and needs and goals change.” It’s a matter of deter- and non-declaration of records.”
perhaps over-gilded. But the fact remains that mining a basic organizational platform—and Ugh.
SharePoint wouldn’t have nearly the stature SharePoint fits that bill nicely—to “evolve into I like how Mike Hugos and Jose Alman-
or market penetration if it weren’t for the the ECM of the future and be truly effective.” doz talk about SharePoint as a solid, but lim-
many independent software vendors that SharePoint can become that common under- ited platform, especially for communicating
have emerged to support it. pinning that “should include as much data as with people outside of your organization.
Take, for example, NewsGator, whose possible from all parts of your organization.” Because, keep in mind, SharePoint was never
focus on news feeds has led them to take the And to that end, he recommends migrating intended for that purpose. It has been altered
best of that technology and apply it to the inher- much (if not all!) of your current content stores and jerry-rigged to do so, but that really isn’t
ent collaboration that imbues SharePoint. As into a common platform, such as SharePoint. its greatest strength: “SharePoint was never
Rich Blank points out in his article, “When it “Evaluate why your current information silos, designed to operate beyond the firewall,” says
comes to activity streams on SharePoint, the including file shares, legacy ECM systems and Mike Hugo. “You need the right add-on
out-of-the-box social functionality of Share- departmental SharePoint deployments, exist because it doesn’t come out of the box as an
Point 2010 is limited when compared to across the organization.” Then “move content external tool.” Jose Almandoz adds, “Making
LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter.” He notes that from SharePoint and other systems, minimize SharePoint secure for external content sharing
vendors (such as NewsGator, of course!) have can be extremely difficult. It has some weak-
downtime and eliminate any impact on worker
nesses, such as inadequate auditing and access
emerged to “address SharePoint’s limitations productivity.”
reporting, file encryption, document locking
by building consumer-like social capabilities But it’s not all rainbows and unicorns. As and protection limitations, and provisioning
within the platform.” my friend Martin Garland from Concept and supporting a community of external
Prateek Kathpal, of Accusoft, underscores Searching points out, SharePoint adoption is users... The challenge for CIOs with sizable
the need to assert management over the many not without peril. “Despite the rapid adoption SharePoint investments is to build on it as an
potentially random documents that can infect of SharePoint, it has traditionally been used to existing foundation.”
a SharePoint site: “Despite the best-laid plans solve collaboration, content and records man-
to document and enforce a logical, intuitive agement challenges at the departmental level,
structure for an organization’s digital informa- outside the view and control of a corporate IT The Trouble With Tribbles
tion, many SharePoint sites become unwieldy function,” Martin writes. “While this gives As we’ve already gathered, SharePoint is
from an end-user perspective; hard to navigate departments control of their content, it makes so ubiquitous in today’s organizations that it
and full of homeless documents that could add information governance more difficult for the has developed not only an “ecosystem,” but
incredible value—if only the right people knew IT staff, having no control of or insight into the also a language of its own. It’s like the Na’vi
where to find them.” The solution, Prateek content. From an enterprise perspective, this in the movie Avatar.
insists, is an integrated, embedded viewer, so increases organizational risk, non-compliance One of the more common expressions is
that all those “homeless documents” speak in issues and the risk of data privacy exposures, “SharePoint Sprawl.” This refers to the unfor-
tunate tendency of SharePoint websites—
a common parlance... a lingua franca, if you and impacts decision-making.
largely because they’re so easy to create—to
will. And there are greater business advantages “The crux of the problem with infor- proliferate like the Tribbles in “Star Trek.”
to be had as well. “Imagine a workforce with mation governance,” he continues, “is the Wonder what’s gotten me onto this sci-fi thing?
the ability to collaborate on documents and inability to rely on end users to accurately Anyway, SharePoint Sprawl is surely one of its
process complete workflows without ever hav- and consistently add metadata to content least attractive attributes. The notion is that a
ing to leave their SharePoint site, download and process information according to SharePoint collaboration site can be created for
specialty software, search tirelessly through policies. Poorly designed and managed a relatively short-lived project. The problem is:
email, or compile manual versions of team- repositories of content result in multiple nobody ever tidies up afterward. So you have
member markups. It’s easy to see why an versions of the same document and can all these forgotten websites, which dangerously
organization with an end-to-end document cause decision makers to find and rely on contain content, intellectual property, confi-
management and collaboration solution in inaccurate data. Unmanaged Web servers dential matter... SharePoint Sprawl is a difficult
place can spend more time working with their running SharePoint can deliver unantici- and prevalent invasive species... sort of like...
extended enterprise to innovate, (my italics pated results, such as security exposures, oh, never mind. T

S2 KMWorld July/August 2012

Manager for SharePoint, that allow you to

Enhancing The Use and move content from SharePoint and other sys-
tems, minimize downtime and eliminate any
impact on worker productivity.

Performance of SharePoint
Another important practice is to under-
stand the information architecture, which
includes how site collections, sites, document
libraries and lists are organized within
the SharePoint structure. Consolidating or
By Steven Murphy, CEO, Metalogix upgrading to SharePoint 2010 presents an
ideal opportunity to reorganize your
SharePoint implementation and ensure that
R ight now we are experiencing an explo-
sion of digital content previously thought
could be a private cloud, a multi-tenant
cloud, a hybrid cloud or some combination.
your information architecture is future-
ready for the next version of SharePoint.
unimaginable, with volumes set to grow from Organizations often discover that their
1.2 zettabytes in 2012 to 35 ZB by 2020.We existing information architecture for
Controlling the Sprawl SharePoint is less than optimal.
create and consume more content than ever
before, and IT teams are expected to make As business needs evolve, many organiza- With the availability of Microsoft Office
that content highly available to meet business tions will experience “SharePoint sprawl.” 365, SharePoint 2010 is in the cloud and
needs and keep workers as productive as pos- Whether an organization has adopted addi- SharePoint Online is poised to go main-
tional SharePoint systems through a merger stream. Organizations are increasingly
sible. Microsoft SharePoint, with its ease of
or acquisition, inherited a number of looking to hybrid cloud environments that
initial deployment, ease of use, range of fea-
SharePoint platforms from various depart- leverage both SharePoint on-premises and
tures and low total cost of ownership (TCO),
ments, or simply didn’t adhere to a SharePoint Online or Office 365. There are
has quickly proven to be a solution that can SharePoint governance policy, SharePoint several business drivers for this, including
accommodate the explosive data growth and sprawl can slow performance, bloat storage organizations that would like an easy way to
consolidation to help knowledge workers ef- systems and hold content captive. create an extranet for their customers or part-
fectively collaborate and share data. While SharePoint freedom can mean dif- ners. The value is in the ability to share data
Although the breadth of features and ferent things to individual organizations, between SharePoint on-premises and their
high user adoption have meant that many based on their own unique business needs, extranet. This allows extranet users to share
organizations are now focusing on there are best practices that any organization data and collaborate with the organization’s
SharePoint for their content management can employ. By implementing these simple, intranet users.
needs, there are some content, migration, but important practices, any organization can Some organizations want to move to the
management and storage barriers that must realize the full value of SharePoint as a truly cloud gradually because fully migrating to
be addressed before these organizations powerful and flexible ECM solution. the cloud might be a stretch goal. Content
can fully achieve their goals. You may have One of these best practices is to freedom means being able to migrate some
chosen SharePoint for a help desk applica- embrace growth. Ninety-five percent of of your content—maybe an office or a
tion, knowledge management or a host of digital content is unstructured data, which department—to the cloud without having
other things, but regardless of how you’re does not have a pre-defined data model and to move entirely off your on-premises
using SharePoint, the content you put in is does not fit well into relational databases. servers. This gradual or granular type of
critical and will continue to grow. SharePoint content creates BLOBs of migration allows organizations to signifi-
Wouldn’t it be great to have the flexi- unstructured data associated with SharePoint cantly minimize risk while taking advan-
bility to manage content the way your files (e.g., PDF files, images, Office docu- tage of the new cloud technology.
organization demands, without the con- ments, etc.), that can significantly impact Another driver is geo-replication, which
straints and barriers inherent in traditional your storage requirements. One approach to is the sharing of data between SharePoint
content management systems? overcoming this challenge is to move the servers in disparate locations. Using a
You have the choice to embrace freedom unstructured BLOBs out of SharePoint’s product such as Metalogix Replicator for
for your content and maximize the full content databases and offload them onto a SharePoint, data from around the world
potential of SharePoint by making it your mix of NAS, SAN or cloud storage plat- can be easily replicated, providing a better
forms. By using products (one of which is experience for users who are located far
sole enterprise content management (ECM)
Metalogix StoragePoint) to externalize this from the on-premises servers or have lower
solution. By choosing to set your content
BLOB content to less expensive storage, bandwidth.
free, your entire organization can embrace
organizations often enjoy up to a 95% reduc- Regardless of how you use SharePoint,
growth and expand its productivity. tion in SQL Server storage requirements.
This freedom can mean upgrading from it gives you the freedom and flexibility to
To evolve into the ECM of the future and change your mind as business needs and
SharePoint 2003 or SharePoint 2007 to be truly effective, SharePoint should include
SharePoint 2010 (or soon Wave 15) to take goals change. T
as much data as possible from all parts of
advantage of the breakthrough features. It your organization. Before a consolidation Metalogix is a trusted provider of innovative manage-
can take the form of SharePoint storage strategy is implemented, evaluate why cur- ment solutions for Microsoft SharePoint, Exchange and
optimization, by offloading unstructured rent information silos, including file shares, cloud platforms. We deliver high-performance solutions
content known as binary large objects to scale and cost-effectively manage, migrate, store,
legacy ECM systems (Google Apps,
(BLOBs) from the underlying SQL Server archive and protect enterprise content. Metalogix pro-
Documentum, eRoom, Exchange Public vides global support to thousands of customers and
database to less expensive tiers of storage, Folders, etc.) and departmental SharePoint strategic partners and is a Microsoft Gold Partner, a
including the cloud. Many organizations deployments, exist across the organization. managed partner in Microsoft’s High Potential ISV
are also looking to manage and move Be sure to consider SharePoint migration Group and a GSA provider. For more information please
between on-premises and the cloud, which products, such as Metalogix Migration call 202.609.9100 or visit www.metalogix.com.

KMWorld July/August 2012 S3

connections into the discussions. Of course,

Activity Streams vs. there is also Twitter—one big stream of dis-
cussions where hashtags are used for context,
uniqueness and filtering of news and conver-

Discussion Forums
sations of all kinds. Twitter has leveraged the
speed of sharing and conversation making it a
global destination for discussion and news.
When it comes to activity streams on
SharePoint, the out-of-the-box social func-
By Rich Blank, Solutions Engineer, NewsGator tionality of SharePoint 2010 is limited when
compared to LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter.
Vendors such as NewsGator address
SharePoint’s limitations by building con-
sumer-like social capabilities within the plat-
S ocial technology is changing how people
communicate and share information both on
are all security trimmed. This means users
without access to a forum or topic won’t see
form. With both secure private streams and
more public streams, NewsGator offers a rich
the consumer Web and within the enterprise. it. Discussions in SharePoint can be accessed social user experience, filtering, enterprise
In particular, activity streams (a.k.a. news- via a Web browser or users can send inbound Q&A, hashtagging, @targeting, ideas, news
feeds) are becoming a central focal point for email to a discussion list or connect the and more. Enhancing the social computing
users to engage in conversation and discus- list to Outlook for easier participation. capabilities of SharePoint will create that
sions. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn Attachments, rich text and embedded images “pull” of users into discussions that are occur-
all include activity streams and have quickly are all included. SharePoint discussion ring within the stream.
challenged traditional Internet discussion fo- boards leverage the platform’s “list” content
rums such as Yahoo Message Boards or model for storing content, adding custom Activity Streams Engage Users
Google Groups in the consumer space. Within fields, custom views, exporting and structur-
the firewall, platforms like Microsoft Share- In the end, online discussions are only
ing the categorization of discussion topics.
Point have been used to create discussion as good as the people, information and
Discussions in SharePoint also conform to
boards within team sites and portals. Like the knowledge contributed to them. There
branding theme/CSS changes made to the
consumer space, enterprise discussion forums are limitations to activity streams when
site or portal.
are also seeing conversations shift to newer compared to discussion boards. Some char-
While discussion forums have stood the
enterprise social software with microblogging acter, rich-text and single-attachment limi-
test of time, today’s world of information
and activity streams. So which is a better tool tations are just a few. As a result, activity
overload and social media has challenged
for capturing tacit knowledge and Q&A: dis- the user engagement model of discussion streams may not always replace discussion
cussion forums or activity streams? boards. Social networking has introduced boards in every use case. For example,
For many years, discussion forums activity streams as a single aggregated feed some heavily R&D-focused organizations
(a.k.a. discussion groups, discussion of discussions. Streams offer an easier way might utilize traditional discussion boards
boards, message boards) have provided an for users to subscribe, find, post and con- for rich scientific or product discussions.
online place where people can post a ques- tribute to existing discussions. Gone is the Generally, any use case with requirements
tion, receive responses, search, browse by hierarchical categorization of topics for for a more structured approach to Q&A or
topic, and subscribe to alerts via email. browsing. Social activity streams use knowledgebases might still find value in
Discussion forums actually date back to microblogging and hashtagging to provide discussion forums as opposed to microblog
pre-Internet bulletin boards and Usenet context about topics, Q&A, knowledge discussions in activity streams. And we’ll
newsgroups and subsequently evolved into being shared and trending topics. likely see online discussions evolve into a
thousands of public Internet sites offering hybrid approach of streams and discussion
discussion capabilities seen today. forums that satisfy all use cases. It’s simply
Discussion forums usually allow upload- The Challenge for Online Forums important to recognize that activity streams
ing of multiple attachments to a post and Generally, people don’t have time today create a viral effect and “pull” of people
are multi-threaded showing responses to browse a Web page showing a list of into online discussions making it easier for
three or four levels deep. They have little dozens of discussion topics. People are those that have questions to connect with
restriction on the number of characters “pulled” into a discussion by subscribing to those experts with the answer. T
within a single post and offer rich text for- community events and following individu-
matting options (e.g., bold, bullets, etc...). als all within their activity stream—a Rich Blank advises on social computing, collaboration &
content management technology and strategy. He has
stream they access on multiple devices
published articles about collaboration and social busi-
anywhere anytime. Activity streams simply
Discussions forums: provide a much faster and more visible
ness in CMSWire.com and SocialMediaToday.com and is
also a featured MS SharePoint expert and regular blog-
A Less Restrictive and Secure Place means for users to engage. ger on AIIM.org. He has spoken at events including 2011
Within the firewall, discussion forums As evidenced in the consumer space, back Social Media Summit, 2010 SharePoint Summit, and
face different requirements than Internet in October of 2011, Facebook removed their Business and IT Alignment Conference and regional
forums including restrictions around securi- discussion tab altogether in favor of the activ- SharePoint User Groups. You can follow Rich on
ty and compliance. SharePoint discussion ity stream. Public discussion board sites such Facebook or Twitter @pmpinsights
lists have some advantages as they leverage as Quora have also attempted to evolve the
As a Microsoft Gold Certified and Depth Managed
the authentication, profiles and security discussion board to include an activity stream Partner, NewsGator delivers robust social technology to
model of the underlying platform. as the engagement point for users. LinkedIn the enterprise with proven scalability and security.
Discussion boards and posts all conform to Groups have exploded offering discussion Microsoft honored them as its 2011 US Partner of the
SharePoint’s native security roles (e.g., capabilities with group level streams and Year. For additional information follow them on Twitter
Reader, Contributor, Owner, custom), and visibility of contributions that pull one’s @newsgator or visit www.newsgator.com.


digital rights management (DRM), coupled

The Role of Collaboration with the ability to burn-in redactions, there-
by preventing an outside user from select-
ing or otherwise revealing the underlying

Tools for SharePoint
text, ensures information security when
dealing with documents, including sensi-
tive data and/or intellectual property. DRM
prevents information from being printed,
Creating a Competitive Advantage modified, downloaded or saved by end
users. By adding DRM control in combina-
tion with redactions on the document, organ-
By Prateek Kathpal, Vice President of Viewing Product Strategy, Accusoft izations remain in control of exactly what
internal data external participants can see,
and most importantly what they can’t see.

I mproving productivity is, on its own, one of
the top business objectives shared by compa-
versions will be created simultaneously and
will have to be merged by hand.
Optimizing SharePoint Usage
nies of all sizes, industries and geographies. Its An integrated viewing platform with col- Despite the best laid plans to document
laboration capabilities, including annotations, and enforce a logical, intuitive structure for an
direct correlation to a company’s ability to in-
combined with SharePoint’s user tracking organization’s digital information, many
crease profitability has a compounding effect
capabilities, saves time and costs by allowing SharePoint sites become unwieldy from an
on its importance. One of the most cost-effec-
employees to open any document type in an end-user perspective; hard to navigate and full
tive ways to drive productivity improvement
embedded browser window, apply markup of homeless documents that could add incred-
initiatives is to increase collaboration across
and save the new version. Employees would ible value—if only the right people knew
the enterprise, both internally among employ-
no longer need to have client licenses for file where to find them. An integrated viewing
ees as well as between employees, partners and
format support, or use email to share infor- platform allows users to preview and select
customers, through the use of a standardized
mation. In fact they wouldn’t even need to documents to work with, using SharePoint’s
set of tools.
minimize or leave the SharePoint site to get keyword search to find documents throughout
Silos of knowledge and expertise are
work done. the site. An embedded viewer allows users to
inherent in every growing and diversified
open those documents in a Web browser win-
business, and they quickly become a drag on
dow, without leaving the site.
efficiency and expense. These can be over- Collaboration and Innovation Imagine a workforce with the ability to
come with the introduction of information
Eric Reis, advisor to venture capital firm collaborate on documents and process com-
management tools equipped with built-in or
Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, states that plete workflows without ever having to leave
add-on collaboration capabilities. SharePoint
companies that practice “ferocious, customer- their SharePoint site, download specialty soft-
is dominating the capture of market share in
centric, rapid iteration,” in other words, that ware, search tirelessly through email, or
the information management space, and
demonstrate an ability to drive innovation compile manual versions of team-member
collaboration-enabling add-ons are sure to through collaboration with the “extended markups. It’s easy to see why an organization
follow. This article investigates some of the enterprise” (consisting not only of employees, with an end-to-end document management
critical elements and benefits of instituting but customers and partners as well) will real- and collaboration solution in place can spend
effective SharePoint collaboration. ize the return on their investment in the form more time working with their extended enter-
of market leadership. Standardizing on a com- prise to innovate, rather than having to
Controlling Costs mon, easily shareable file type, such as PDF, respond to gaps in their toolbox. Integrating a
Through Collaboration enables an organization to quickly share and powerful, fully featured viewing platform, as
extend information, regardless of the original described above, with SharePoint takes you
The need to control costs organization- file format in which a document was created. one step closer to realizing return—not only
wide is a key reason to implement collabora- Deploying a SharePoint-integrated viewing on your SharePoint infrastructure investment,
tion within SharePoint. The economics of platform that enables any file type to be con- but also on your investment in employees,
supporting document-sharing within the verted to PDF, either on demand or in batch partners, and customers. T
enterprise can be prohibitive, especially when mode, allows internal participants to work
supplemental individual licenses, per user, are seamlessly with their external counterparts to Prateek Kathpal is the founder of Adeptol, a software
required to support file format-specific pro- drive product improvements that give the company focused on developing imaging applications,
grams such as AutoCAD. Additionally, a soft which was acquired by Accusoft in 2011. He is currently
organization a competitive advantage.
cost that must be considered is the lag in pro- responsible for the viewing products strategy at
Sharing proprietary or non-public infor- Accusoft. Kathpal founded Adeptol to create an enter-
ductivity when employees have to switch mation with external sources, in the pursuit prisewide viewing platform and associated solutions, to
between the document management portal of collaborative innovation, is often a pro- replace traditional thick-client products. Prior to found-
and these individual applications to view posal that is met with some trepidation. ing Adeptol, Kathpal held senior positions within the
documents. Enabling collaboration in real- Loss of intellectual property, exposure of content management division of EMC. He has also
time using SharePoint improves the overall confidential strategies to the marketplace, worked with EMC Documentum, NEC, Sapient,
speed of an end-to-end workflow, because all and even lawsuits arising from indiscreet Cognizant, JPMorgan Chase and other organizations.
team members have access to necessary information transfer to third parties are real
Accusoft provides a full spectrum of document, content
documents, including all versions of each factors. While information sharing is and imaging solutions as applications and software
document. Emailing document versions back increasingly a critical factor for realizing development kits. Capture, process, store and view
and forth has a number of disadvantages— competitive advantage, the same data must images, documents and more. Features include thin
not only the wasted time between replies, but be reasonably protected. A platform that client, zero footprint and mobile viewing, barcode recog-
also the possibility that several different includes user-level and document-level nition, OCR, image processing and forms processing.


you need to make sure there are unique re-

External SharePoint quirements that no off-the-shelf solution meets.
Why is a hybrid, cloud-based solution
ideal to leverage your existing SharePoint

Collaboration—Without implementation?
MH: The days of trying to connect every-
thing in house to the outside world are already

Compromise over. The cloud-based skills allow us to be
comfortable in a hybrid environment. But the
IT professional needs to guide his company
through the hybrid world right now. It’s
already in existence. The real skill is in know-
By Mike Hugos, CIO-at-Large, Center for Systems Innovation ing how to respond to it.
and Jose Almandoz, EVP of Business Operations, IntraLinks JA: A cloud-based hybrid allows internal
users to continue using their familiar Share-
A ccording to an article on ZDNet about
SharePoint, more than 7.3 million new
externally. Internally, it provides a stable and
scalable foundation for document sharing,
Point-based platform and applications with lit-
tle or no change. It also helps simplify identity
management tasks and takes workload off of
SharePoint users are added every year, team collaboration, electronic forms and so- internal SharePoint servers. Too many people
making it a multi-billion dollar business for cial enterprise portals. performing content searches and queries can
Microsoft. But can a business collaborate In addition, IT staff has been trained in its reduce performance.
with external partners outside the firewall operation and support, and business people
while ensuring the security of its content? have learned its user interface and depend on What are some of the additional security
What viable solutions are out there? Mike it for intra-company document sharing and benefits of a hybrid solution?
Hugos, CIO and author of books on IT best content management. JA: For starters, virus protection—and file
practices and cloud computing, and Jose MH: The value of that knowledge pos- encryption beyond the firewall is vital. Hackers
Almandoz, EVP of Business Operations for sessed by IT and line-of-business employ- can find a way into almost any system if they
IntraLinks, give us their insights. ees is incalculable—and it’s all on top of a are determined enough, but when a system’s
company’s hard-dollar investment. But data is encrypted, that data remains secure.
What are the key elements of a secure Integrated digital rights management is
collaboration solution? SharePoint was never designed to operate
beyond the firewall. You need to have the also key, so IT departments can manage con-
Mike Hugos: The right solution enables tent after a document has been distributed. This
agile response, leverages but unburdens the in- right add-on because it doesn’t come out of
the box as an external tool. helps ensure the user will not inadvertently
house IT infrastructure, and comes with a lose or leak the document.
business model that creates predictable and re- JA: Making SharePoint secure for external
content sharing can be extremely difficult. It Then there’s real-time monitoring: which
curring costs, and lowers up-front investment. people are looking at what documents, for how
Jose Almandoz: A proper solution needs has some weaknesses, such as inadequate au-
long, and the ability to create audit reports
to provide external partners access to the same diting and access reporting, file encryption,
from this information to meet compliance. Ad-
tools and security beyond the firewall as document locking and protection limitations,
ministrators also need to be able to manage
within it. At the same time, it needs to feature and provisioning and supporting a community
document access and download privileges.
a user interface that is familiar to internal users, of external users.
These are assets that companies sometimes
and intuitive to external users. The challenge for CIOs with sizable
don’t realize they’re missing when they use
Consumer-grade solutions sometimes lack SharePoint investments is to build on it as
consumer-grade products such as Dropbox or
the enterprise security to achieve that integrity. an existing foundation, which is exactly
Google. A good solution adds security, com-
MH: There are also procedural and techni- how a platform like IntraLinks can serve as
pliance and information governance capabili-
cal parts to a good, secure collaboration an alternative: one that integrates seamlessly ties without requiring additional SharePoint
solution. The technical part is assessing the abil- into SharePoint, but with that added secu- customization, or introducing a new interface
ity to encrypt and de-encrypt documents, and rity for external users. that internal users have to learn.
to assign the right access to the right people. What is the cost of build versus buy on MH: When you have a well-architected
You need to be able to determine who can read SharePoint externalization mechanisms? hybrid solution, you can focus on the APIs
content online, or read—and download—it. JA: IT departments work under tight that connect your in-house system with your
Then there’s the procedural aspect. What budgets. They need an alternative that lets cloud-based apps. In that API, you have the
is the “need-to-know” content? What are its them enjoy secure collaboration without opportunity to put in very comprehensive
parameters? Administrators need to be able to buying more servers or investing in cus- data screening and identity management. The
set parameters to provision and support users tomization. When a company uses Share- architecture that works in the hybrid envi-
according to their organization’s information Point externally, they have to maintain ronment leverages the APIs as control points
management policies. those external collaborators. With that for data security.
Why is SharePoint ideal, but also chal- comes thousands of dollars in IT costs. When I think about the importance of the
lenging as a solution for external information With a cloud-based information sharing role this plays in the security scenario, I always
sharing? solution, IT departments can rapidly out- think of the famous scene from The Graduate,
MH: SharePoint is ideal because many source the support of external collaborators, where Mr. McGuire tells Ben, “I just want to
companies already use it. It’s great to leverage and reduce costs. say one word to you... ‘plastics’.”
what is already in place when working with MH: I always look first to see if there’s an In one word, I would say, “API”. T
external users. off-the-shelf plug-in to meet my needs before IntraLinks is a leading provider of integrated Software-
JA: It’s an ideal internal collaboration tool, going into custom coding—which is typically as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions for secure internal/external
but challenging for sharing information the most costly solution. If you take that route, collaboration.


Martin Garland has

SharePoint Information more than 20 years’
experience in search,
classification and
enterprise content

Governance That Works management within the
broader information
management industry.
He has focused on
sales, marketing and
By Martin Garland, President, Concept Searching general management,
Martin Garland and has expertise in
both startup and
E very organization is unique in its require-
ments and approach to information gover-
primary building block in any information
governance plan, which enables the proactive
turnaround operations throughout Europe, the US
and Asia Pacific. One of the founders of Concept
Searching, he is responsible for both marketing
nance. These variations increase as SharePoint management of content. strategy and North American and international
becomes prolific in organizations of all sizes. A sound information governance strategy operations.
Despite the rapid adoption of SharePoint, it has includes enterprise search. Most end users are
traditionally been used to solve collaboration, unable to find relevant information to support
content and records management challenges at business objectives, resulting in the inability content as it is created or ingested. Clients are
the departmental level, outside the view and to find, reuse and repurpose information. The able to automatically secure sensitive informa-
control of a corporate IT function. While this second building block in our framework is tion, declare documents of record and automate
gives departments control of their content, it insight. Regardless of the enterprise search workflow initiation, so comply with federal
makes information governance more difficult solution, the delivery of meaningful results regulations and reduce organizational risk.
for the IT staff, having no control of or insight depends on the ability to effectively index and Within SharePoint, this includes the ability to
into the content. From an enterprise perspec- classify content and to develop taxonomies to automatically apply correct content types when
tive, this increases organizational risk, non- better manage the content. The search engine organizationally defined descriptors and
compliance issues and the risk of data privacy itself provides the features, functions and vocabulary reside within documents.
exposures, and impacts decision-making. interface while the classification structure
The enterprise IT challenge is to continue delivers relevant results. Adding Social to the Mix
to provide business benefits to end users A key component in any information gov-
while maintaining a level of consistency and Social networking tools, which encourage
ernance is governance itself. The overarching collaboration, can link employees, partners,
control. A governance plan is necessary, but if enterprise governance structure allows staff to
it is unrealistic or impractical to implement it suppliers and customers in order to share
work in the most efficient and effective way information, are becoming useful tools for
will fail. It is essential to ensure that it deliv- possible by giving them access to information
ers relevant content to its users in an effective business communication. The primary busi-
assets in a controlled and secure manner. ness benefits of these collaborative and social
way, while protecting the enterprise from A key component is ease of use and trans-
legal, regulatory and non-compliance issues. tools are also accompanied by inherent weak-
parency. This building block consists of tools nesses. There are several concerns such as
Concept Searching’s approach has resulted in
that ensure information quality, maintain the security, unauthorized use and communication
the development of the Smart Content
lifecycle of information, address the retention noise. Enterprise 2.0 must be managed within
Framework, which complements our
and disposition of records, secure and protect the information governance plan. This pro-
SharePoint technology suite and addresses
privacy, and establish standards when dealing vides structure and protects the organization
information governance and the tactical
building blocks to implement in order to real- with information assets, including unstruc- from data exposures and reduces risk. Adding
istically achieve objectives. This framework tured content. structure to these tools increases productivity
was developed to solve the challenges of A comprehensive approach for managing and enables knowledge workers to find correct
information governance in SharePoint for information is necessary to ensure compliance information and collaborate with peers.
organizations including the US Army with policies. This approach ensures consis- As you plan or augment your information
Medical Command, OppenheimerFunds, tency, is implemented transparently, improves governance plan, evaluate technologies that gain
Perkins+Will, and the NASA Safety Center. recordkeeping, and enables the establishment control of unstructured content and run natively
The crux of the problem with information of monitoring and auditing processes to ensure in SharePoint. In addition, look for vendors that
governance is the inability to rely on end users proof of compliance and data protection. have a proven track record in successfully solv-
to accurately and consistently add metadata to Our fifth building block is policy. This ing information governance challenges in
content and process information according to building block includes the ability to identify SharePoint. A technology solution should lever-
policies. Poorly designed and managed repos- records, privacy information and intellectual age features in SharePoint for sharing metadata
itories of content result in multiple versions of assets, and fully automate the process to han- across multiple site collections and server farms.
the same document and can cause decision dle the appropriate disposition of the content. The organizational role is to develop the rules
makers to find and rely on inaccurate data. This includes discovering where the content and processes to adopt and enforce, and utilize
Unmanaged Web servers running SharePoint resides, cleansing the content through organi- the strengths of SharePoint, while maximizing
can deliver unanticipated results, such as secu- zationally defined concepts and descriptors, the value and minimizing the risk associated
rity exposures, inconsistent regulatory compli- identifying the relationships within the con- with information from within SharePoint, as
ance issues and non-declaration of records. tent and then defining the policies with auto- well as from diverse repositories. T
At a fundamental level, enterprises strug- matic enforcement.
Concept Searching software products deliver conceptual
gle with managing content assets which Part of an information governance plan
metadata generation, auto-classification, and powerful
stems from end users’ inability to accurately includes the proactive identification and protec- taxonomy management utilizing the Smart Content
and consistently tag content for search, reuse, tion of unknown privacy exposures before they Framework for information governance. Please contact
records identification and archival purposes. occur, as well as monitor in real time organiza- us at info-usa@conceptsearching.com for additional
An enterprise metadata repository is the tionally defined vocabulary and descriptors in information.


For more information on the companies who contributed to
this white paper, visit their websites or contact them directly:

Accusoft
4001 N. Riverside Drive
Tampa FL 33603
PH: 800.875.7009 or 813.875.7575
FAX: 813.875.7705
Contact: www.accusoft.com/contactform.htm
Web: www.accusoft.com

Concept Searching, Inc.
8300 Greensboro Drive, Suite 800
McLean VA 22102
PH: 703.531.8567
Twitter: @conceptsearch
Contact: info-usa@conceptsearching.com
Web: www.conceptsearching.com

IntraLinks, Inc.
150 East 42nd Street, 8th floor
New York NY 10017
PH: 212.543.7700
FAX: 212.543.7978
Contact: www.intralinks.com/contact
Web: www.intralinks.com

Metalogix
5335 Wisconsin NW
Washington DC 20015
PH: 202.609.9100
Contact: info@metalogix.com
Web: www.metalogix.com

NewsGator Technologies
950 17th Street, Suite 2500
Denver CO 80202
PH: 800.608.4597
FAX: 303.552.3901
Contact: insidesales@newsgator.com
Web: www.newsgator.com

Produced by:
Kathryn Rogals Paul Rosenlund Andy Moore
KMWorld Magazine 561-483-5190 561-483-5190 207-236-8524 Ext. 309
Specialty Publishing Group kathy_rogals@kmworld.com paul_rosenlund@kmworld.com andy_moore@kmworld.com

For information on participating in the next white paper in the “Best Practices” series, contact:
paul_rosenlund@kmworld.com or kathy_rogals@kmworld.com • 561-483-5190

www.kmworld.com www.infotoday.com

KMWorld.com - Activity streams vs discussions_july_2012

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