Yesterday was a big day for me and my team as there was a scheduled launch of the new Vibrant Gujarat Web Portal aimed at the upcoming Vibrant Gujarat 2011 Summit. The web portal was successfully launched by Shri Saurabh Patel (Hon. Minister of State, Gujarat).

The fifth edition of biennial global investors’ summit slated for January 2011, which is being tagged as ‘Davos in Action’, will focus more on branding the state of Gujarat as a business hub where deals are done, rather than just an investment destination. In a gradual deviation from previous events, the upcoming summit has been renamed as ‘Vibrant Gujarat 2011: The Global Business Hub’ instead of ‘Vibrant Gujarat Global Investors’ Summit’.

Remote Infrastructure Management (RIM) services will be the next growth engine for the offshore service industry as reported by leading consulting agencies and media. In fact, the global RIM industry has grown at more than 80 per cent CAGR from US$2 billion in 2006 to US$6 billion to US$7 billion in 2008 where India has been a significant beneficiary. A common question that would come to our mind is – with the industry hit by recession in 2009 and with the dark clouds of recession still looming on the horizon of 2010, what potential does the RIM service market hold in the future?

If studied closely, RIM makes more sense not in terms of a measure to cut costs during recessions but more as a business sense. How? Let’s see.

Today enterprises leverage the power of IT to streamline their key business processes and gain a competitive advantage. Even with the investments already made, the key issues relating to application performance, scalability, security, management and effective utilization are mostly unresolved. Apart from helping to reduce the overall IT Infrastructure Management costs, a well structured and managed RIM relationship can bring significant benefits.

Flexibility of Service
Customers hiring service providers have an advantage here as they can align the business needs with the services provided by the Service Provider. Services can be flexed to meet peak times and loads, mission-critical and non-mission critical or a combination of both. This type of flexible pricing model and service delivery helps in apportioning the infrastructure management costs.

Domain Expertise
In this highly volatile IT industry it is hard to keep up with the latest technology trends and it is almost impossible to have on pay roll a staff that can match the ever demanding and changing face of IT technology across all segments. A RIM service provider can add value here as they have diverse IT staffs which are at a client’s disposal, working 24×7. Moreover, these specialists are constantly updated with the latest technology trends via internal training programs, technical training programs from vendors, etc.

This basically helps companies to gain a competitive advantage as it helps to reduce the time to market. Companies can take the bold steps of adopting and switching to new technologies to gain a competitive advantage. Serious service providers in the RIM industry would normally have alliances in place with leading technology suppliers and as a result clients can also enjoy a single window of service from them with an assurance that the team working on their projects would be capable of handling the technology and related needs.

Visibility and Control
Companies retain full control of its strategic components such as physical IT assets, technology refresh, policy and architecture which provides visibility into the availability, performance and utilization of each component. Many of the established RIM suppliers have embraced the ITIL framework which lends itself to RIM very effectively. Putting the collected data in to this type of best practices framework provides lot of insight and visibility. This visibility further enables companies to take control of the situation, make informed decisions on future investments in IT and improve current service levels.

Reduced Costs
Remote Infrastructure Management not only assists in reducing the manpower cost of managing the infrastructure, but also brings down the costs related to future infrastructure investments. It has been reported and endorsed by agencies like McKinsey and NASSCOM that outsourcing the infrastructure management services can save dramatically reduce the labour related costs by 30% to 40%. On the other hand, companies can also reduce costs associated with future infrastructure investments using expertise of the service provider by way of infrastructure optimization, standardization using industry best practises and consolidation using virtualization technologies.

Proactive Services
Most of the time RIM services engagements are driven and governed by SLA’s (Service Level Agreements). Service providers, in order to maintain the SLA, invest in to software and technology that enable them to gain an insight on failing components in the IT infrastructure, usage patterns, thresholds, etc. These tools enable a service provider to provide 24×7 proactive monitoring and management via a Remote NOC (Network Operations Centre). This helps to resolve issues in a faster and structured manner.

So, in today’s fast paced and ever changing IT world, RIMs makes more business sense and CIOs have to step back and ask themselves what they’re trying to accomplish with infrastructure outsourcing. Cost savings, optimization, transformation or efficiency? CIO’s decisions on outsourcing infrastructure management are going to be driven by more than just cost savings and as a result it is also going to create a challenge for the service providers to tweak their service models to show more benefits and not only cost savings.

Microsoft has developed forty Application Templates to provide out-of-the-box solutions to address the needs of specific business processes such as coordinating a Help Desk or tracking marketing campaigns. If you are reading this post, then I assume that you have downloaded all of the 40 Application Templates for SharePoint or at least one of them.

This Application Templates for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 are separated into two groups, “Site Admin Templates” and “Server Admin Templates”.

Site Admin Templates are custom templates that have an *.stp extension and are easy for site administrators to install in a template gallery without requiring server administration access.

Server Admin Templates have a *.wsp extension and are created as site definitions, providing tighter integration and enhanced functionality within the Windows SharePoint Services platform. They require a server administrator to install.

Where they differ is how each type is structured and deployed on a SharePoint site. Site definitions consist of multiple files on a front-end Web server that are located within folders under the template directory. Custom templates are created through the user interface or through the object model and are stored in the database, providing a means for reusing customized lists and sites.

Note: Templates with the STP extensions can be uploaded directly in SharePoint’s ‘Site Templates’ page in Site Settings. Templates with WSP extensions must be added to the server side via stsadm command.

Here is how you should go about installing them on your SharePoint Site. For the rest of this post, we shall assume that you have already downloaded the necessary template files and you are the Administrator for the SharePoint Site and/or the server on which the site is running.

Installing STP Templates

This is very easy compared to the installation of WSP Templates. To install a *.stp template, perform the following steps:

• Login to your SharePoint Site after downloading the template package
• Select Site Settings from Site Actions
• Click Site Templates from Galleries

• Click Upload and browse for the template file which was downloaded

• Click OK once done

Installing WSP Templates

This is a bit complicated when compared to adding *.stp templates. Moreover, adding *.wsp templates also requires you to be the administrator of the SharePoint Site as well as the Administrator for the server.

• Login to the SharePoint server using Remote Desktop (RDP) or the console. Depends on how you are working – in front of the server or remotely
• Download the template package to the server
• To make things easier and to avoid typing the full path of the directory, I prefer to move the templates to C:/Program Files/Common Files/Microsoft Shared/Web Server Extensions/12/Bin folder including the ApplicationTemplateCore.wsp
• From the Start menu, select Run and open the Command Prompt by typing CMD or Command in the dialog box
• Go to the C:/Program Files/Common Files/Microsoft Shared/Web Server Extensions/12/Bin
  Run the following command:

stsadm –o addsolution –filename ApplicationTemplateCore.wsp

• This will add the Application Template Core to the solutions management where it will need to be deployed. Since we had already moved the files to the BIN folder earlier, we can skip giving the full path to the ApplicationTemplateCore.wsp. If you ignored that, you can provide the full path by enclosing it in quotes.
• To deploy the Application Template Core, run the following command:

stsadm-o deploysolution –name ApplicationTemplateCore.wsp –allowgacdeployment –immediate

• After successfully deploying the Application Template Core, it is time to add the solution files. Type the following command:

stsadm -o addsolution -filename <template_name>.wsp

Note: replace the template_name.wsp with the actual template name.

• Next type the following command to deploy the solution:

stsadm -o deploysolution -name <template_name>.wsp –allowgacdeployment

Note: additional commands may need to be given, for example, - local if on a standalone machine and – immediate if installation being carried out in a SharePoint Farm

• To check deployment status by, click the Operations tab in the SharePoint Central Administration Site and then click Solution Management under Global Configuration
• After the solution is marked Globally deployed you may need to reset IIS. To do that quickly, open command prompt and type iisreset /noforce

This year, I’m starting a new section on my blog on Microsoft SharePoint and to start with I’m posting about the two main flavours that Microsoft offers – SharePoint Portal Server and SharePoint Services.

SharePoint is being pushed by Microsoft and also with the announcement that SharePoint would be replacing the Public Folders that were available in Exchange, it certainly requires some understanding. I’ve heard people talk at length about SharePoint, met IT Managers who wish to implement SharePoint in their organization, planned SharePoint with some small and medium business segment owners and had a common observation after the meetings. Most of them do not know what are the basic differences between the two flavours. And trust me, if you do not know the basic difference, the end results would not be the same that you expected. I’ll start with explaining the two flavours so that we can get a basic understanding of the differences.

Windows SharePoint Services (WSS)

Windows SharePoint Services are a part of Microsoft Windows Server feature pack and come absolutely FREE. It can be downloaded from the Microsoft website and has a no-fuss installation.

Windows SharePoint Services or WSS is primarily focused on workgroup level collaboration. No, this does not mean that it cannot be made operational in an Active Directory environment. It can be easily integrated with your current AD environment and can be quickly setup to support basic collaborative items like team sites, document workspaces, blogs, wiki and meeting workspaces. These are some of the frameworks that come out-of-the-box with WSS and more such Application Templates for Windows SharePoint Services can be downloaded from the Microsoft Web Site. Moreover, once you have gathered enough understanding on how WSS works and how it stores and retrieves data, you can scale it up further to connect with MS Access, MS Excel, MS Word, MS PowerPoint and even your Exchange Server. Document version control, RSS feeds, Task Notifications, Basic Workflows and Email Alerts – all come along with WSS.

The main focus area when thinking about SharePoint implementation in your organization would surely be the cost factor. Yes, SharePoint Portal Server does have high costs and that’s why you should always start playing around with WSS to being with. This will help you to decide what you need next in terms of what WSS cannot offer. Also, once you put WSS to use in the company, it would also become easier for you to convince the management in moving up to SharePoint Portal Server.

In short, WSS should be the starting place for you if you are looking at using SharePoint for your organization.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS)

The first portal product introduced by Microsoft was termed Digital Dashboard which introduced the concept of WebParts. However, this technology never picked up and did not even manage to get out of the Beta release stage. On the other hand, the MS Office group team at Microsoft came out with another product towards collaboration by the name of SharePoint Team Services (STS). This is what lead to the birth of SharePoint Portal Server somewhere in the year 2001. Today, SharePoint Portal Server (MOSS) has been upgraded to work on the .NET Framework with least amount of development oriented architecture.

The major benefit of using MOSS is the way it provides the feature of using Business Intelligence (BI). MOSS offers simple ways to provide key performance data using the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) WebParts and build BI reports to be published on dashboards. BI and KPI can assemble and display business information using Excel Spreadsheets, MS SQL or any other 3^rd party line of business application.

MOSS also offers “My Sites” which are individual mini-sites meant for employees. Each employee can create his or her personal site thorough a self-service request. The site can be classified to show Private as well as Public content, skill sets, contact information and more. It can even be integrated with Active Directory to pull information from AD like the manager, colleague, contact information, etc. And can be scheduled through the Central Administration to update the SharePoint data as and when changes are made in Active Directory.

The buck does not stop here. MOSS has more or better functionalities/options like Single-Sign On, Portal Sites, Enhanced Search (not only text and documents but also people). The Enterprise version of MOSS provides Excel Services, Business Intelligence Dashboards, Internet Publishing and Content Management, Web based InfoPath Forms and more.

Summary

As you can see, there are lot of similarities between the two products. Mainly where the functionality differs is that MOSS allows more aggressive and targeted indexing for search, offers BI and KPI and Web Based Services for Excel and InfoPath. I’m sure to start with, these would not have much importance in the company which mainly requires a collaboration platform for their employees so that they cut down on the transfer of collaborative files and documents via email, can keep a track of the documents and maintain versions. Go ahead and start polishing your understanding on Windows SharePoint Services. The more you use it, the better it will become and then you can think of scaling it further by switching to Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server.

For those who would like a detailed comparison, Microsoft has published this in an Excel sheet and can be downloaded from here.