SharePoint: A Versatile Development Platform

SharePoint is a robust platform which helps developers to develop various useful applications as per their business requirements. It is a known fact that SharePoint applications are highly scalable, collaborative and content driven.

SharePoint 2013 is a strong SharePoint application development platform for building solutions and apps addressing different requirements and needs. Microsoft has put all the information on MSDN and TechNet website to help build apps and understand how to consume the different capabilities of the platform.

SharePoint 2013 is used for developing apps for SharePoint and farm solutions. There are three types of SharePoint hosting:

• SharePoint hosted
• Auto hosted
• Provider hosted

Windows SharePoint Service (WSS) is a free add-on to Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and 2008, realizing a full-featured Web-based platform supports the following features:

• Content Management System
• Tools for Collaboration
• Shared calendars and contact lists
• Notice (including e-mail notification)
• Forums for discussion
• Blogs and wikis -sections
• Management of documents by creating a central repository for shared documents
• Interaction-based Web technologies, collaborative editing shared documents, as well as working space for documents
• Publishing content , including the publication of changes and workflow
• Access control and version control for documents in the library
• Browser-based management and administration.
• technical support and bug tracking
• Management of redundant facilities and equipment (Room and Equipment Reservations)
• Management of material goods (Physical Asset Tracking)
• Sales Management (Sales Pipeline)
• Customizable Web page using special settings panel, web-based tools (web parts), as well as the mechanisms of navigation
• Network load balancing and support of web space (web farms)
• Support for firewalls and demilitarized zones (DMZ)

Save Time and Money Using SharePoint workflows

Do you want to save time for your business processes and increase productivity at the same time?  Well, SharePoint workflows can provide your organization better control, more efficiency, and increased accountability over your processes. They can be customized according to the business requirements. SharePoint workflows also help businesses to streamline business processes more efficiently.

SharePoint Workflow helps in automating processes that route documents for various types of review of file/files. When you save a file to a document library on a SharePoint Server site, you have three workflows available to you:

• The Approval workflow- This workflow asks everyone to approve a file. For example, before giving a presentation, you might run this workflow so that influential people at your company can approve it.
• The Collect Feedback workflow- This workflow collects feedback. For example, if you are writing a new company policy, you might want feedback from people in various departments. Then later, you can integrate everyone’s feedback into a final version before it becomes official.
• The Collect Signatures workflow- This workflow collects digital signatures from people. You might use this if you want someone to sign an expense report, or a performance review.

Microsoft also developed SharePoint applications to continue with the best practices at workplaces and with the goal of empowering customers and other stakeholders to create their own applications. A number of features and capabilities are introduced in SharePoint 2013 which provides tools that IT professionals and solution creators need to develop SharePoint-based applications and workflow solutions that enhance organizational agility and business process automation.

SharePoint: Enabling Collaboration across the Enterprise

Enterprises today are seeking ‘collaboration’ among their workforce to tap the knowledge, expertise, experiences and skills to stay competitive and achieve desirable business results. To get that, organizations are using the power of social media technologies for their operations. SharePoint 2013 provides a robust enterprise collaboration platform that enables organizations to use social collaboration tools to channelize their business operations for desirable outcomes.

The enterprises consider SharePoint 2013 as a strategic platform for content management, record management, and business process management which fulfills their portal, content and collaboration need. Organizations are using SharePoint for five major purposes:

• Intranet
• Team collaboration
• Portal development
• Document management
• Public internet

Other popular uses of SharePoint involve process management, knowledge management, business intelligence, project management, and case management.

Organizations are adopting SharePoint 2013 platform especially because of SharePoint enterprise collaboration feature which benefits them with a reduced TCO (total cost of ownership) and increased ROI(return on investment).  In spite of its rich features and capabilities, organizations face 3 major challenges, outlined below:

• Need of experts in consulting and implementation- SharePoint consulting becomes indispensable when implementing SharePoint version for strategic planning, aligning with business goals, and a detailed implementation roadmap with budgets and schedules.
• Tools and processes for quicker roll out- despite the fact that SharePoint has undergone significant improvement, there still remains a need for customization to meet specific business requirements. Using out-of-the-box features or using third party tools and processes are the most recommended approaches according to the business requirement. 
• Ongoing support and maintenance cost- With the implementation of SharePoint, it is seen that the end-user adoption and usage grows phenomenally, and because of this the support and maintenance of SharePoint environment becomes the major key challenge for IT department of the organization.

Why Public Sector need SharePoint consulting

Public sector, as we all know is always under tremendous pressure, with acute requirement of delivering best services, productivity using minimal resources, and budget constraints at the same time. This sector is also accountable to other important organizations and agencies, and moreover, they constantly face the pressures of cost reduction and revenue generation.

Considering these challenges, Microsoft has made lot of changes in SharePoint and enhanced its capabilities to meet the needs of public sector organizations.  The new advanced features and solutions give SharePoint Public Sector organizations the ability to meet their requirements and create highly scalable SharePoint environments.

But one cannot ignore the fact that SharePoint has a vast and complex structure, and to make the most of its capabilities, public sector needs a proper SharePoint consulting. SharePoint proves to be helpful for Public Sector organizations in following ways:

• Cyber Security-  provides and maintains security for sensitive information these Public sector organizations deal with. With SharePoint, the enterprise has the ability to collaborate and share information in a real-time and secured manner.
• SharePoint High Availability- ensures that SharePoint content is always available for all users around the world collaborating on the same documents.
• Cloud Computing- Considering the sensitivity of Public Sector data and records, these organizations are taking full advantage of securing and storing data through Cloud storage.
• Data Center Consolidation-Public Sector organizations have been mandated to consolidate data centers to reduce costs and increase its infrastructure ROI. With the help of SharePoint, these organizations are consolidating and centralizing their data into an enterprise SharePoint environment while ensuring performance and scalability. 
• Optimize SharePoint Storage- Now the Public sectors organizations can expand SharePoint storage by shrinking databases/ SQL Server by 95%, thus increasing SharePoint performance and reducing costs. It helps to take back-up of your SharePoint content in no time, and recover documents and site collections with ease.