Whitepaper - Share Point as Face of Your Enterprise Architecture - Sp_face_of_your_ea

8/7/2019 Whitepaper - Share Point as Face of Your Enterprise Architecture - Sp_face_of_your_ea

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Whitepaper

SharePoint – The Face of your Enterprise Architecture

Read this whitepaper to learn how SharePoint as aplatform can be utilized to integrate enterprise businessinfrastructure and solutions for your organization




Executive Summary

Business Users today have to operate on tens, if nothundreds of applications, as part of their daily

routine to run through their quota of work, movingfrom one information system to another, and if thatisn’t enough, the increased application access andpassword complexity, makes it absolutely hard tomaintain focus on their core jobs. Add to that, alack of interoperability between these systems, anda lack of a truly integrated experience just takes outthe productivity and efficiency of the end usersmaking them spend more time on searching andgathering information rather than working on theinformation for an effective end of the daydeliverable. Not to mention, the virtual nightmare

that it is, for the IT departments, to manage andmaintain these varied platforms and applications onan everyday basis.

In a world where the focus has moved from “ onesolution for all “ to “doing one thing, and doing itright”, vendors are building software solutions thatmeet some specific need of an Enterprise.Enterprises, in an attempt to stay current and togive their employees the best-of-the-breed workingsystems end up spending on a myriad of

applications and platforms within theirenvironments adding to the already disorganizedinfrastructure.

Microsoft SharePoint has emerged to be a leadingplatform for implementing Enterprise levelapplication implementation and integrationcapabilities. The reason for this being thatSharePoint provides an integrated suite of featuresand functionalities that include Web ContentManagement, Enterprise Content Management,Document Management, Workflow Foundation,

Forms, Extensible Search, Social collaboration toolsand components like blogs, wikis and discussions,basic metadata and taxonomy managementcapabilities, out of the box capabilities to integratewith backend systems among others, along with thecapability to lend itself, as a single platform forimplementing intranets, extranets, internet websitesand enterprise wide departmental portals thatdeliver information in context and in a self servicemanner.

In this whitepaper, we discuss some of the keychallenges faced by Enterprises, and explore thefeatures and functionalities of SharePoint thatmakes it a key component of your EnterpriseArchitecture.

Issues Bogging the EnterpriseToday

Too many systems§ Users have to learn and adapt to new systems

on a very frequent basis, leading to a constantlearning curve

§ Every application comes with a specificlimitation. What exists in one does not exist in

the other. This change within the enterpriseforces the end users to learn and adapt to thenew processes per software making it difficultfor them to define a complete, overall vision of the Enterprise processes and methodologies

§ IT is under constant pressure to learn to supportand manage these ever changing systems

Difficulty in information structuring andstandardization§ IT and information architects have to constantly

redefine and remodel the information structure,

in a failed attempt to achieve standardizationacross the board, leading to a humongousamount of wasted enterprise time andresources.

Lack of interoperability§ Inability to reuse data and promote

collaboration between multiple applications,causing duplication of data, and leading to alack of in-context information

§ Though, the web services architecture could be

a mechanism to surface data, the sheer amountof work that is required to deliver it in acentralized, in-context fashion, lends itinefficient

Lack of an integrated search§ Inability to search through all the content and

documents within the Enterprise related tospecific search criteria, means opportunities,worth hundreds of thousands, if not millions,lost.




All of the points made earlier, leads to an Enterprisewhich does not perform to its full potential becausevaluable information is hidden away and lost in silosand there is no way to securely expose theinformation such that Enterprise users can utilize itand be empowered and better informed.

The Vision of an IntegratedEnterpriseEnterprises today need a myriad of applications torun their businesses, from financial applications toHRMS systems, Project Management tools to bugtracking systems, Inventory Management systemsto issue tracking software, ERP to CustomerRelationship Management systems, and the list

continues to grow. With this kind of a landscape, noone vendor can support all of the above softwareneeds within an enterprise. Does that mean,collaboration across departments and/or evenwithin them is not achievable? Absolutely NOT!

The Service Oriented Architecture“Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a method for systems development and integration wherefunctionality is grouped around business processesand packaged as interoperable services” - Wikipedia.

SOA is a perspective on how to build systems thatemphasize reusability, loose coupling and standardsbased approaches. At the heart of the SOA lies theability of systems to define their service offerings,and publish them to be consumed by others,through a contract. Any system that understandsthe contract can consume this data.

Web Services“A Web Service is defined as a software system

designed to support interoperable machine tomachine interaction over a network. Web services arefrequently just Web based APIs that can be accessed over a network such as intranet and internet and executed on a remote system hosting the requested services.” – Wikipedia

RSS (Really Simple Syndication)

RSS is a family of web feeds publishing frequentlyupdated content. RSS feeds are easy to consume asthey are simple XML documents and can bemanipulated easily. The format and specification of

RSS is well documented and understood making it acommon platform for sharing data over the internetthat is in use today.

Mash ups at the Core of the Integrated

Enterprise VisionA Mash up is a method of creating compositeapplications that combine data from a number of different sources, yet appear to the user as oneseamless desktop / web experience. Mash ups areof three types .

§

Presentation Mash upsPresentation Mash ups are aimed at bringinginformation from multiple sources to a commonuser interface. The data exchange is done with theuse of RSS feeds, since it involves very littleintegration. Ex: web portals, which allow forcustomizing pages by adding, pre-configuredwidgets such as: iGoogle, Yahoo, pageflakes etc.

The vision of an integrated enterprise can beachieved with the use of SOA, RSS feeds, Webservices and Mash ups. All the above provide amechanism to integrate information from differentbackend sources, and also from the internet anddeliver it to the Enterprise users’ consumption in afast, centralized and contextual manner.




§ Data Mash upsData mash ups are aimed at extracting data frommultiple sources and combining it enabling crossreferencing and comparisons Ex: combininglocation based data and throwing up on a mapsoftware such as Google Maps, Live Earth, YahooPipes, Microsoft Popfly etc.

§ Logic Mash ups

Logic Mash ups are perhaps the most complex of allmash ups and involve more advanced connectionmanagement for integration of information frommultiple sources and are driven by events.

The capabilities of a good Mash up platform

§ Subscribe to data services and RSS feeds

§ Query external data sources for live information

§ Consume and provide WSDL based services

§

Store and retrieve local information§ Deliver live dashboard and historic reports easily

from aggregated data sources

§ Utilize pre configured application templates andwidgets

§ Show potential for integration intocommunication systems

Microsoft SharePoint as the Face of your Enterprise Architecture

As shown above Enterprises can position Microsoft SharePoint in between the Enterprise systems and theEnterprise users. Enterprises can utilize the extensibility features that it provides to build applications forcollaboration, information integration, search, document management, compliance, reporting and contextualinformation delivery among others. This delivers SharePoint as an entry point to the information stored withinthe silos in a centralized and collaborative manner and paves way for better utilization of information leadingto increased productivity and efficiency reducing the overall costs and management overheads.




Features of SharePoint that Supportthe Vision of an IntegratedEnterprise

Microsoft SharePoint provides Enterprises with ascalable business platform for managing contentand integrating Line of Business systems.SharePoint makes it possible for users to aggregateand consume information from a range of differentdata sources and application platforms, in a familiarinterface with the added benefit of self service,centralized access to all the information,personalization and social collaboration. Some of the key features of SharePoint that support thevision of an integrated Enterprise include –

§ Single Sign-onSharePoint provides a default SSO service forconnecting with third-party services or back-endsystems. Single Sign on allows end users to utilizeone single set of User Name and Passwordcombination to access information from multiplebackend systems from a centralized entry point andtakes them away from the unproductive activity of managing multiple logins, passwords andapplications.

§ iFilters for Search

IFilters are a capability of SharePoint search whichare used to enable indexing of documents indifferent formats. SharePoint out of the boxprovides support for indexing Office documents.iFilters can be developed / configured to allow theindexing engine to index content from other filetypes like PDFs. This capability allows search to havea broader index to service users better by providingthem the same search experience when managingdocuments in multiple file formats.

§ Protocol HandlersProtocol Handlers are components that are built toidentify and access information from systems thatuse protocols other than http, https, file, notes etc.For e.g., if you have installed IBM filenet which usesa proprietary protocol for communication, then aprotocol handler must be configured that canunderstand the protocol and allow access forinformation from the IBM filenet system.

The protocol handlers will open content sources intheir native protocols and expose documents andother information to the SharePoint search andindexing engine.

§ The Business Data CatalogThe Business Data Catalog is MOSS 2007 sharedservice that provides an easy way to integratebusiness data from backend LOB systems, such asSAP or Siebel, within SharePoint Server, withoutwriting any code.

The BDC is a light way to define entities present inthe backend systems, and describe the properties of the system and define the schema in an applicationdefinition file, all in an easy light weight manner,without the need of a steep learning curve.

One of the advantages of the BDC is that theentities that you define and pull into the SharePointsystem carry off their identities across theapplication, allowing for the same entity to beplugged into different places. The BDC also allows

for the capability of performing actions on the data– All out of the box. The SharePoint object modeland SharePoint designer can be used to enhancethe functionalities or build BDC based customapplications in an easy and straight forwardmanner.




Bringing it All Together – Some Solutions for the Integrated Enterprise

The Vendor Collaboration Portal




The Product Collaboration Portal

Bringing it All Together – Some Solutions for the Integrated Enterprise




Get Started Now!

We have helped several of our customers to implement integrated business and collaboration portals withMicrosoft SharePoint. Our solution implementations range across different business functions includingproject management, quality and compliance, contract management, procurement, business intelligenceportals, CRM Extensions and self service portals, marketing and HR portals among others.

We provide end to end services including envisioning of your SharePoint solution infrastructure, design,architecture, implementation, pilot and enterprise wide roll out and continual support of your SharePointinfrastructure, administration and solutions.

For more information about our capabilities and offerings, contact us at (770) 569 1240 or send us an emailwith your requirements to [email protected]

Whitepaper - Share Point as Face of Your Enterprise Architecture - Sp_face_of_your_ea

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