Datasheet

SharePoint as the hub

With the significant investment companies have made already in people and

technology, how can SharePoint possibly have a role in this already crowded

information systems environment? With IT staff overburdened already, it’s

little wonder at the lack of enthusiasm in implementing yet another system.

Despite all the technological advances, the big budgets, and the far-reaching

plans, many end users and members of the business community find them-

selves increasingly alienated from their company’s information environments.

Most end users can tell you that something is clearly missing. SharePoint aims

to be the missing link in a company’s information systems environment by

acting as the hub, as shown in Figure 1-4. As the hub, SharePoint is an integral

player in providing users access to information assets.

Whereas your current information environment uses file shares, e-mail Inboxes,

and databases as storage repositories for information assets, SharePoint pro-

vides its own set of repositories for creating manageable information environ-

ments. These organizing containers are organized in a hierarchy. Organizing

them in a hierarchy creates parent-child relationships between containers,

which makes it possible for the settings in a higher-level container to apply to

a lower-level container — a process called inheritance. Using a hierarchy also

makes it possible for administrative tasks to be delegated to administrators of

lower-level containers. For example, a higher-level administrator might choose

to enable a set of features so lower-level administrators can disable those fea-

tures if they want to.

Whether containers are administered by IT staff, power users, or information

workers depends on how the company chooses to make administrative

assignments. The containers that are often managed by IT include these:

 Server farm: Like most server software, SharePoint often requires multi-

ple servers — dubbed a server farm — to work productively. Although

it’s possible to have multiple server farms, most companies only ever

need one. IT is responsible for deploying the server farm and managing

its health. I walk you through setting up SharePoint in a single-server or

server farm configuration in Chapter 2.

Some editions of SharePoint (those based on MOSS 2007) have an addi-

tional component — the Shared Services Provider (SSP). The SSP is

responsible for providing services that are required across the entire

server farm, regardless of how many servers you have. Each server farm

usually only has one SSP. See Chapter 2 for details on setting up the SSP.

SharePoint provides special administrative interfaces — Central

Administration and Shared Services Administration — for managing

the server farm and SSP, respectively.

Part I: Setting Up SharePoint

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