INDUSA successfully conducts Webinar on ‘Unified Infrastructure with SharePoint 2010′

Oakbrook Terrace, IL, July 20, 2011: INDUSA Technical Corp. hosted a webinar on the topic, “Unified Infrastructure with SharePoint 2010” to describe how SharePoint 2010 is a versatile solution in fulfilling a variety of needs of an enterprise. The webinar focused on the capabilities of SharePoint solution to adapt to a plethora of technology environments consisting of disparate systems. An overwhelming number of people participated in the live webinar which started sharp at 11 AM CT.

The webinar focused on the SharePoint landscape wherein Sanjay Savkur, Director, Business Development, INDUSA recounted the highlights of Microsoft SharePoint’s growth over the past decade. Furthermore, he threw light on SharePoint’s ability to integrate with third party systems including horizontal solutions, industry solutions and LOB integration. SharePoint’s product features and versions were described at length. A poll was conducted midway through the webinar to gauge the highest priority of horizontal portal goals for the respondents. The results were as follows:

• 64% of the audience preferred to use SharePoint for Collaboration and Content Management.
• Nearly 26% of the respondents set Enterprise search as their goal
• The remaining 10% wanted to use SharePoint for Business processes, Workflows and Social networking.

The webinar also enlightened the participants on what one has to consider before implementing SharePoint in their organization: — the initial strategy, build/ testing, maintenance and support and roll out. Sanjay Savkur gave a detailed overview regarding SharePoint’s architecture and technology stack along with its modules.

The following segment of the webinar included SharePoint’s role in various business scenarios wherein it can play a pivotal part and help in boosting an organization’s bottom line. Emama Mistry, SharePoint Practice Manager, INDUSA, and Sanjay Savkur collaborated to give an overview about the scenarios and how INDUSA has gone about resolving the issues involved. Each scenario described through cases how INDUSA helped clients meet specific requirements of their organization in terms of Enterprise Content Management, Collaboration, Social Networking, Forms and Business Processes, Business Intelligence and Portals through SharePoint.

A detailed Q & A session followed where Emama Mistry addressed queries from participants. Some of the excerpts of the interaction are presented here:

• Participant: What is the effort to migrate from SharePoint 2007 to 2010?
  Emama Mistry: SharePoint 2010 allows users to control the upgrade timing and preview the site post upgrade. SharePoint where several customizations have been done will need substantially more effort in migrating.
• Participant: What Databases can SP pull out data from?
  Emama Mistry: From SQL server external databases, LOB systems i.e. ERP databases, Oracle etc. Data can be pulled and reports generated.
• Participant: What typical files can be uploaded into SharePoint?
  Emama Mistry: It allows various extensions. Ideally there is a list of allowed file types supported in SP and we can add or block files from administration.
• Participant: Can SharePoint be used for Project Management?
  Emama Mistry: Yes, it already supports the collaborative features and document management features that are so vital for Project Management. One can also set up tasks and track features through Forms. In fact Microsoft’s flagship product – MS Project offers a server version called Project Server 2010 that is built upon SharePoint 2010.
• Participant: Can SharePoint be used to distribute performance metrics to our home office staff, field staff and senior staff?
  Emama Mistry: Yes it can. We presume that these performance metrics are developed using data collected from other systems (these can be in any form). The results can be easily brought into a list into SharePoint and made available to different user groups.
• Participant: I thought I heard you say that each would need a license; is this true for all people, even if just view access.
  Emama Mistry: The license needs depend on the content that you want the user to view. If there is certain content that anonymous users just view then they do not need a license; however if you have specific content that users can see based on their roles in the organization then you definitely need a license for that user.