Enterprise search. People interact with information from many different sources (e.g., internal and external Web sites, email, file shares, WSS sites, people directories, public folders, custom applications). SPS enterprise search capabilities let you index data held in multiple content sources, enabling efficient and relevant search results. End users can access the search service through options on portal site pages, and you can include search capabilities in Web Parts and custom applications.
Personal sites. Personal sites enable portal users to have their own WSS site—typically called My Site—with their own libraries, lists, views, and Web Part pages. Personal sites also provide a location for others to display user-targeted content. For example, a piece of news might be relevant for only a particular group of users, so it can be targeted at this group and displayed in the News For Me Web Part on each user's My Site. Personal sites also collect and display SPS-generated alerts that notify users about changes to information, documents, or applications.
Audience targeting. Audience targeting lets you ensure that the right information is delivered to the right people. You can specify content to appear in special audience-targeted Web Parts such as Links For You. These Web Parts would typically appear on a user's personal site but can also appear on any main portal page.
Single sign-on. Single sign-on (SSO) technology lets you store and map account credentials so that users don't need to sign on again when portal-based applications retrieve information from other enterprise applications.
What Extras Will Your Deployment Need?
All enterprise WSS and SPS deployments require careful design and management. The three areas of most concern to any deployment are overall administration, extending the platform's reach, and delivering relevant information. Many third-party tools can extend WSS and SPS functionality in these areas. As you investigate third-party add-ons, make sure that they specifically support WSS or SPS 2003. SPS 2003 architecture is completely different from that of SPS 2001, so suppliers will need to release new versions of their products for SPS 2003. Table 1 lists some vendors of WSS and SPS add-ons.
Administration
The three-tier WSS architecture is designed to support thousands of Web sites containing numerous documents and lists. This huge hierarchy is enough to send most administrators into a panic wondering how they'll manage and administer such a large beast: Can I meet my service-level agreements (SLAs)? Can I adequately protect the data? Do I have enough storage? Can I keep my system healthy?
SPS allows some life-cycle management in terms of controlling the number and size of Web sites and identifying candidates for deletion. However, certain administration areas fall short of an enterprise's needs—in particular, backup and restore, antivirus protection, and archiving.
WSS and SPS provide different backup and restore tools, which can be confusing for administrators. Furthermore, although you can script WSS to back up and restore individual sites, SPS can restore only an entire portal. Most administrators require more granular restoration, such as single-item restoration, to meet specific SLAs. Third-party products available from companies such as AvePoint, VERITAS Software, and CommVault Systems can augment the backup and restore process and provide more granular functionality.
When you empower users to populate document libraries, they can unwittingly introduce viruses into your organization. Simply providing virus protection on the desktop isn't adequate. You need to provide protection at the server and application level also. Microsoft has provided hooks in the product that antivirus vendors can exploit in much the same way they can hook antivirus products into Microsoft Exchange Server. Products from companies such as Sybari Software and Trend Micro can safeguard your important intellectual property from viruses.
Although you can manually archive site information with the base administration tools, no easy end-user retrieval mechanism is available. Given that some industries require data to be kept—and, more important, easily retrieved—for a certain number of years, a more elegant solution is required in this area. Products from companies such as KVS, asOne, and Documentum can provide additional archiving and retrieval functionality.
A few other administration areas might require extended features to meet your enterprise needs. For example, monitoring and reporting can be addressed through Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) feature packs or the HP OpenView product suite.
Extending the Platform
The two most common ways to extend the SPS platform are extending the reach of enterprise searches and controlling the document life cycle. If companies want to fully exploit all their intellectual property, they need to make that content easily discoverable regardless of its source. Here's where SPS enterprise search capabilities become important.
SPS enterprise searches rely on the program's content-indexing capabilities. SPS can index content contained in WSS sites, file shares, public folders, Web sites, and Lotus Notes databases, and it supports all Office documents as well as .html, .tiff, and .txt files. The SPS indexing architecture supports extending the content sources and file types through mechanisms called protocol handlers and Ifilters. Many third-party Ifilters are available, including those that support PDF format and Microsoft Project files. Meridio is an example of a company that provides a protocol handler that indexes its database content. You can also find products that enhance the presentation of search results, such as those that Tzunami Information Works provides.
The need to control document creation and document life cycles has led to many interesting extensions. Workflow management typically means ensuring that users adhere to particular business processes when they create and publish documents and finally lay them to rest. Because workflow is typically business-process-specific, you tend to find extension toolkits rather than fully functional applications in this space. Companies such as Ultimus and HP provide add-on products that address workflow management.
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