Friday, June 29, 2012

Understanding Windows Media Services

Windows Media Services is no longer a built-in component on the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system. As such, it will be necessary for those working with the Windows Server 2008 R2 family of operating systems to obtain Windows Media Services directly from the Microsoft website. It will also be necessary to install and configure the Windows Media Services role on a Windows Server 2008 R2 system. Windows Media Services enables the administrators of an organization to organize video and audio files to be published to other users. The publishing function sets the bandwidth that will be used during the file distribution, controls the number of users accessing audio and video files at the same time, and manages the overall bandwidth demands of the Windows Media Services functions.

By properly configuring and optimizing media services functions, an organization can minimize the excessive demands of media services distribution over the network. The decisions that need to be made include whether distribution will be:

. Real-time live broadcasts

. Single broadcasts at a time

. Multiple files combined to a single broadcast

. Multiple files in a single directory for selective broadcasting

The various publishing options are highlighted throughout this chapter as best practices, tips, and tricks on configuring and implementing the publishing services to meet various organizational needs.

Source of Information : Sams - Windows Server 2008 R2 Unleashed

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Windows Media Services

Digital content has taken society to fascinating new levels. It’s not surprising as today’s digital media solutions allow individuals and organizations alike to use various devices to capture, download, present, and stream digital content in a matter of minutes.

The move away from conventional forms of communication has placed a heavy demand on companies like Microsoft to introduce products that not only give people and organizations more efficient ways to communicate, but also provide a mechanism to publish digital content while also reducing costs.

As a result, Microsoft introduced Windows Media Services— a free, optional component for Windows Server 2008 R2 that takes full advantage of the Internet and intranet to stream live or on-demand digital content. Microsoft also provides two major tools, both of which are freely downloadable, that perform media conversion (Windows Media Encoder) as well as content customization for presentations.

Organizations, small and large, are seeing the impact the streaming media solution has on communication and their pockets. It has improved communication by ensuring information broadcast and rebroadcast is consistent. For example, employees in an organization’s most remote location can watch a presentation live. Equally important, the presentation remains available on demand for those who missed the live presentation or wanted to review it. As this example demonstrates, everyone receives the same information. Employee downtime has also significantly decreased. Employees are traveling less for company meetings, career development workshops, and other events. The benefits do not stop there as organizations are saving money by taking advantage of their existing networks. By building upon what they already have instead of investing in other products, including satellite or television, organizations are seeing financial benefits. Not to mention some organizations’ business models, such as YouTube, bring in millions every year by offering digital media publishing services to their consumers.

Source of Information : Sams - Windows Server 2008 R2 Unleashed

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Libraries in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

Many users wonder what the difference is between simply continuing to store their files in a file share on a network server, keeping them on their local hard drives to make sure they are close at hand, or emailing them to people when needed. Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 document libraries offer a variety of features that have proven to be useful to a wide range of users and projects and that empower the site administrators to customize the storage and collaborative features of the library and enhance user productivity. Some of the advantages provided by a SharePoint document library include the following:

. The administrator of a document library can customize who can add, modify, and delete documents in a document library, or just read them.

. Versioning can be turned on for a document library that keeps a complete copy of previous versions of the documents for reference or recovery purposes.

. Alerts can be set on a document within the library or for the entire library so the user receives an email notification if a document is modified, added, or deleted.

. Documents can be checked out, and the name of the person who has the document checked out can be listed in the library, so that other users can’t modify the document and know who has it reserved.

. A template can be stored in the document library that can be used to create a new document in the library.

. Metadata can be added to a document library that enables users to better describe what the document contains, by, for example, clarifying which client it belongs to, key words in the document, or pretty much any other kind of textual or numerical information.

. Views can be created that group documents by certain criteria, sort them by any of the columns in the library, or only display documents that meet certain criteria.

. The library can be searched for text contained within the document, a feature often not available on a corporate network. In addition, the metadata associated with a document can be searched.

. If the organization decides on certain standards for the customization of a document library, it can create a template that can be used in other sites.

In Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, the standard document libraries provided are as follows:
. Document library
. Form library
. Wiki page library
. Picture library

Source of Information : Sams - Windows Server 2008 R2 Unleashed

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Identifying the Need for Windows SharePoint Services

A number of organizational needs have spurred the adoption of SharePoint technologies. Many organizations see SharePoint technologies as the next evolution in document management and sharing, where the silo is more intelligent, controls access to, and use of, documents better, tracks usage information, and alerts users of certain conditions. The files stored in SharePoint can have data attached to them (metadata) to enhance management and categorization of the files. Workflows in lists and libraries can be kicked off automatically or started manually for a variety of business processes. The somewhat amorphous term collaboration can be enhanced with these tools, as can the ability to quickly create sites for smaller groups of users to share ideas, work on a document, or store data pertaining to a specific event. Some of the most common requirements include the following:

. A need for better document management than the file system can offer— This includes document versioning, checkout and check-in features, adding metadata to documents, and better control of document access (by using groups and granular security). The high-level need is simply to make it easier for users to find the latest version of the document or documents they need to do their jobs, and, ultimately, to make them more efficient in those jobs.

. Improved collaboration among users with a minimal learning curve— Although virtually everyone has a different definition of what collaboration is, a functional definition is a technology solution that allows users to interact efficiently with each other using software products to share documents and information in a user-friendly environment. In regard to SharePoint, this typically refers to document and meeting workspaces, site collections, discussion lists, integration of instant messaging and presence information, and integration with the Office suite of applications. Integration with Office applications is a key component: Most organizations do not want to force users to learn a new set of tools to collaborate more effectively because users generally resist such requirements.

. A better intranet—Although most companies have an intranet in place, common complaints are that it is too static, that it is not user friendly, and that every change has to go through IT or the “web guy.” These complaints generally comes from a departmental manager, team lead, or project manager frustrated with their inability to publish information to a select group of users and regularly update resources their team needs to do their jobs.

. A centralized way to search for information—Rather than using the “word-ofmouth” search engine, there should be an engine in place that allows the user to quickly and efficiently find particular documents. The user can search for documents that contain certain words; documents created or modified during a certain time frame; documents authored by a specific person; or documents that meet other criteria, such as file type.

. Creation of a portal—Many definitions exist for the term portal, but a general definition is that a portal is a web-enabled environment that allows internal and, potentially, external users to access company intellectual resources and software applications. A portal typically extends standard intranet functionality by providing features such as single sign-on, powerful search tools, and access to other core company applications, such as help desk, human resources software, educational resources, and other corporate information and applications.

Source of Information : Sams - Windows Server 2008 R2 Unleashed

Sunday, June 17, 2012

What Is Not Included in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 but Is Included in SharePoint Server 2007

The Server product includes Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 as part of the installation and so includes all of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 features and adds a host of additional features on top of these. Many IT administrators, departmental managers, and power users are curious about what is not included in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 as they need to justify the cost of SharePoint Server 2007 and want to better understand what the more complete product includes. Bear in mind that there are two possible installations of SharePoint Server 2007: the Standard installation and the Enterprise installation.

An overview of the main features that require the purchase of SharePoint Server 2007 is
provided in the following list:

. My Sites is only available in SharePoint Server 2007. If enabled, My Sites allows users to create their own site and customize personal information that can be shared with the organization.

. The Site Directory feature is only available in the SharePoint Server 2007 product and can be very helpful if a large number of sites will be created. Each time a site is created, it can be included in the Site Directory and categories can be applied to each site for grouping and sorting purposes.

. User profiles are included in the SharePoint Server 2007 product. SharePoint Server 2007 connects to Active Directory (AD) and pulls in user information on a regular basis, which is then stored in the profiles database. Additional SharePoint-specific fields are added to this database creating a new database of user information that can be leveraged and customized in SharePoint Server 2007.

. Content sources outside of the SharePoint content databases can be searched and indexed with SharePoint Server 2007. SharePoint Server 2007 can index file shares, websites, Exchange public folders, and other sources out of the box.

. Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 is very limited in out-of-the-box workflows, offering only the Three-state workflow, whereas SharePoint Server 2007 offers more flexibility with Approval, Collect Feedback, Collect Signatures, and Disposition Approval workflows.

. If integration with Microsoft Information Rights Management (IRM) is needed, the SharePoint Server 2007 product is required.

. SharePoint Server 2007 is required for retention and auditing policies, and for logging all actions on sites, content, and workflows.

. If policies, auditing, and compliance features are needed, SharePoint Server 2007 allows for the creation of document retention and expiration policies, workflow processes to define expiration, tracking and auditing, and other tools.

. If browser-based forms are required, the Enterprise Edition of SharePoint Server 2007 provides the tools needed to publish browser-based forms. More important, InfoPath is not required on the end users’ desktops to fill out forms.

. Excel Services are only available in SharePoint Server 2007, Enterprise Edition. Through Excel Services, a Microsoft Excel 2007 user can publish a spreadsheet, or portions of it, to a SharePoint Server 2007 document library so that it can be accessed via the Excel Web Access web part.

. Microsoft offers the Business Data Catalog (BDC) only in SharePoint Server 2007, Enterprise Edition. The BDC enables SharePoint Server 2007 to mine data from external databases via application definition files. A number of dedicated web parts then enable SharePoint Server 2007 to display this data to form advanced dashboards.

. Microsoft single sign-on integration is only available with SharePoint Server 2007.

A common question revolves around size limitations of the databases that can be supported by WSS 3.0. If the Basic installation option is followed, there is no hard limit for the size of the databases. The only installation option that brings with it a size limit is if SharePoint Server 2007 is installed using the SQL Server Express Edition, where there is a 4GB limit. This is confusing to many new SharePoint users and worth clarifying. If either WSS 3.0 or SharePoint Server 2007 are connected to any full version of SQL Server 2005 or 2008 (such as SQL Server 2005 Standard or Enterprise, or SQL Server 2008 Standard or Enterprise), there are no hard limits for database sizes.

Microsoft does recommend as a best practice that the content databases that store the documents uploaded to document libraries and content stored in SharePoint lists not exceed 50GB–100GB in size, but this is for performance and maintenance reasons, and is not a hard limit.

An excellent document is available on the Microsoft website with additional information comparing the products: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointserver/HA101978031033.aspx.

Source of Information : Sams - Windows Server 2008 R2 Unleashed

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Basic Features of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

The following list provides an overview of the standard features included in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. This is a very basic list, and ignores a number of features, such as the administrative toolset, management features, search features, and others, but gives a basic summary:

. Document libraries—This basic component of a SharePoint site is designed to store and manage documents, and allows the administrator to add additional columns of data to the library (called metadata) as well as create custom views, track versions of the documents, and control access on a document level. Many other features are available in a document library, such as requiring checkout before a document can be edited or creating alerts that send email when certain conditions are met, such as a document changing. Other standard libraries include the form library, wiki page library, and picture library.

. Lists—Another basic component of a SharePoint site, a list can take many forms, but is essentially data arranged in spreadsheet format that can be used to meet a virtually limitless array of needs. For example, standard lists include announcements, contacts, discussion boards, events, tasks, and surveys.

. Web pages—Web pages include basic pages and web part pages, each of which organize navigational and design components and include web parts. These are the pages that users see and use when interacting with Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 sites. Web parts are modular components that can be placed on pages and perform functions such as displaying data that resides in a document library or list.

. Sites and workspaces—Sites and workspaces are essentially groupings of lists, libraries, and basic web part pages that provide a variety of features and functions to the users. For example, there might be a site for human resources or information technology, or a workspace that enables users to collaborate on a document or a workspace could be created for a specific event, such as a company quarterly meeting.

. Site management tools—These come in a variety of forms, including the browser based page editing tools, sub site management tools, and site collection management tools.

. Central Administration console tools—These tools allow a SharePoint farm administrator to configure the server or servers to perform properly and to perform backups and restores of data.

Source of Information : Sams - Windows Server 2008 R2 Unleashed

Saturday, June 9, 2012

Understanding the Need for SharePoint 2007 Products

Organizations have increasingly recognized the need for collaboration and document management products over the last decade, and most organizations have implemented one or more products to meet these needs. An overarching goal was to enhance productivity of the information workers in the organization, manage documents for legal and efficiency reasons, provide better search capabilities, and to expose information to Internet and external users.

Most organizations have solutions in place that provide intranet solutions, or portals that often overlap with intranet functionality and features, but typically provide access to software services and applications. As the SharePoint product line matured and provided enhanced feature sets, security, and performance, many clients decided to replace one or more other technologies with SharePoint-based technologies.

Cost effectiveness was, and still is, a driving factor for SharePoint implementation. Windows SharePoint Services became known as the “free” version of SharePoint and was often implemented to test-drive the features. WSS isn’t technically free because the organization must still purchase the Windows Server operating system that houses the WSS sites and must purchase the SQL Server software and licenses if the full version of SQL Server is being used. WSS does not require the purchase of the SharePoint Portal Server 2003 or SharePoint Server 2007 software, nor does it require that the organization pay for the client access licenses (CALs). However, the implementation cost is lower than the full version of SharePoint Server and this was a key factor in the adoption of SharePoint software. With this less-expensive option, organizations were able to test-drive the features of the SharePoint family at very low software costs, test migrations from other collaboration/intranet/portal/document management solutions, and determine whether their needs would be met. In many cases, this resulted in savings of tens of thousands of dollars over competing products.

Another driving factor was the close integration of SharePoint products with the Office product line, which a large percentage of organizations use. Their knowledge workers could easily publish documents to their SharePoint sites from their familiar applications like Word and Excel, and could “connect” to calendar or task data in SharePoint lists and libraries from their Outlook clients. Many competitors’ products sought to offer the same level of integration, but were typically several steps behind in features and ease of use.

For organizations requiring the full set of features, they could upgrade to SharePoint Portal Server 2003 or SharePoint Server 2007, and then would need to purchase CALs for each user (internal or external) that would be accessing the SharePoint sites. Typically, “enterprise class” SharePoint implementations would use the full version of SQL Server and benefit from enhanced features, management tools, performance, and scalability.

Organizations that had been experimenting with SharePoint technologies gradually came to depend upon them for managing large amounts of data and enhancing existing business processes, and as SharePoint dabblers evolved into power users, requests came up for features that SharePoint 2003 didn’t provide out of the box. Fortunately, third-party companies quickly evolved to offer new, cutting-edge features, such as an undelete capability, workflow tools, enhanced navigation tools, roll-up web parts, and many more. FrontPage 2003 allowed customization of SharePoint pages and sites, and developers could also turn to the Visual Studio products for more advanced development.

Enter the SharePoint 2007 product line, which builds on the many strengths of the previous version, introduces features that end users have requested, and provides new features that many users might never have dreamed of.

Source of Information : Sams - Windows Server 2008 R2 Unleashed

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

SharePoint Origins

In 2001, Microsoft released SharePoint Portal Server 2001. The intent was to provide a customizable portal environment focused on collaboration, document management, and knowledge sharing. The product carried the “digital dashboard” web part technology a step further to provide an out-of-the-box solution. SharePoint Portal was the product that could link together the team-based websites that were springing up. SharePoint Team Services was a separate product that offered a subset of features of the “Portal” product.

Having two separate products with similar names confused many people. “SharePoint” was often discussed in a generic manner, and people weren’t sure whether the topic was SharePoint Portal or SharePoint Team Services, or the two technologies together. Then, in the 2003 version of the SharePoint products, Microsoft developed Windows SharePoint Services as the engine for the team collaboration environment. Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 replaced SharePoint Team Services, and it included many new and enhanced features, some of which were previously part of SharePoint Portal Server 2001. Windows SharePoint Services 2.0 was also included as an optional component to the Windows Server 2003 operating system at the same time.

SharePoint Portal Server 2003 remained a separate server-based product. It built upon the Windows SharePoint Services technology platform and was intended as an enterprise solution for connecting internal and external sources of information. SharePoint Portal Server 2003 allowed the creation of portal “areas,” searching across multiple sites, and enabled the integration of business applications into the portal.

These versions of SharePoint integrated more closely with Microsoft Office 2003 products, making it easier for users to leverage SharePoint 2003 features without leaving the comfort of the Office 2003 applications. For example, users could create meeting and document workspaces directly from Office 2003 products. Most Office 2003 applications also included the Shared Workspace Task Pane, which allowed users to see information stored on the site if the document they were editing was opened.

When the SharePoint 2007 products were released, many organizations already had experience with the first and second iterations of the products, and were eagerly awaiting the “v3” products, knowing that the product was even more mature and that many new features had been added. The SharePoint 2007 family includes SharePoint Server 2007, and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, and abandoned the often confusing term Portal from the product title. The “v3” SharePoint products also continued the trend of close integration with Office products, and although they work well with Office 2003 products, are optimized for use with Office 2007 products. Microsoft also broke out a key component from the server product, and made it available separately: SharePoint Server 2007 for Search. Microsoft also introduced a set of features that were only available when the Enterprise features were activated during or after the SharePoint Server 2007 installation process: primarily Excel Services, Business Data Catalog, and Web Based InfoPath forms.

Source of Information : Sams - Windows Server 2008 R2 Unleashed

Friday, June 1, 2012

THE EVOLUTION OF SaaS

SaaS paradigm is on fast track due to its innate powers and potentials. Executives, entrepreneurs, and end-users are ecstatic about the tactic as well as strategic success of the emerging and evolving SaaS paradigm. A number of positive and progressive developments started to grip this model. Newer resources and activities are being consistently readied to be delivered as a service. Experts and evangelists are in unison that cloud is to rock the total IT community as the best possible infrastructural solution for effective service delivery. There are several ways clouds can be leveraged inspiringly and incredibly for diverse IT problems. Today there is a small list of services being delivered via the clouds and in future, many more critical applications will be deployed and consumed. In short, clouds are set to decimate all kinds of IT inflexibility and dawn a growing array of innovations to prepare the present day IT for sustainable prosperity.

IT as a Service (ITaaS) is the most recent and efficient delivery method in the decisive IT landscape. With the meteoric and mesmerizing rise of the service orientation principles, every single IT resource, activity and infrastructure is being viewed and visualized as a service that sets the tone for the grand unfolding of the dreamt service era. These days, systems are designed and engineered as elegant collections of enterprising and evolving services. Infrastructures are service-enabled to be actively participative and collaborative. In the same tenor, the much-maligned delivery aspect too has gone through several transformations and today the whole world has solidly settled for the green paradigm ‘IT as a service (ITaaS)’. This is accentuated due to the pervasive Internet. Also we are bombarded with innumerable implementation technologies and methodologies. Clouds, as indicated above, is the most visible and viable infrastructure for realizing ITaaS. Another influential and impressive factor is the maturity obtained in the consumption-based metering and billing capability. HP even proclaims this evolving trend as ‘everything as a service’.

Integration as a service (IaaS) is the budding and distinctive capability of clouds in fulfilling the business integration requirements. Increasingly business applications are deployed in clouds to reap the business and technical benefits. On the other hand, there are still innumerable applications and data sources locally stationed and sustained primarily due to the security reason. The question here is how to create a seamless connectivity between those hosted and on-premise applications to empower them to work together. IaaS overcomes these challenges by smartly utilizing the time-tested business-to-business (B2B) integration technology as the value-added bridge between SaaS solutions and in-house business applications.

B2B systems are capable of driving this new on-demand integration model because they are traditionally employed to automate business processes between manufacturers and their trading partners. That means they provide application-to-application connectivity along with the functionality that is very crucial for linking internal and external software securely. Unlike the conventional EAI solutions designed only for internal data sharing, B2B platforms have the ability to encrypt files for safe passage across the public network, manage large data volumes, transfer batch files, convert disparate file formats, and guarantee data delivery across multiple enterprises. IaaS just imitates this established communication and collaboration model to create reliable and durable linkage for ensuring smooth data passage between traditional and cloud systems over the Web infrastructure.

The use of hub & spoke (H&S) architecture further simplifies the implementation and avoids placing an excessive processing burden on the customer sides. The hub is installed at the SaaS provider’s cloud center to do the heavy lifting such as reformatting files. A spoke unit at each user site typically acts as basic data transfer utility. With these pieces in place, SaaS providers can offer integration services under the same subscription / usage-based pricing model as their core offerings. This trend of moving all kinds of common and centralised services to clouds is gaining momentum these days. As resources are getting distributed and decentralised, linking and leveraging them for multiple purposes need a multifaceted infrastructure. Clouds, being the Web-based infrastructures are the best fit for hosting scores of unified and utility-like platforms to take care of all sorts of brokering needs among connected and distributed ICT systems.

1. The Web is the largest digital information superhighway

2. The Web is the largest repository of all kinds of resources such as web pages, applications comprising enterprise components, business services, beans, POJOs, blogs, corporate data, etc.

3. The Web is turning out to be the open, cost-effective and generic business execution platform (E-commerce, business, auction, etc. happen in the web for global users) comprising a wider variety of containers, adaptors, drivers, connectors, etc.

4. The Web is the global-scale communication infrastructure (VoIP, Video conferencing, IP TV etc,)

5. The Web is the next-generation discovery, Connectivity, and integration middleware

Thus the unprecedented absorption and adoption of the Internet is the key driver for the continued success of the cloud computing.

Source of Information : Wiley - Cloud Computing Principles and Paradigms 2011