While some may think that the United States Government is pretty slow to react to technology trends, there is a recent site launch that indicates otherwise.  The U.S. Department of the Treasury site is Microsoft SharePoint 2010 hosted in the cloud on Amazon Web Services (AWS).  Check out http://Treasury.gov

Is SharePoint a good fit for an association?  What about a charity?  Should a non profit be using SharePoint?  The typical consultant answer is “it depends.”

First, let’s oversimplify SharePoint.  SharePoint is software used to build websites.  That’s it.

However, SharePoint is more than just a single-purpose web site tool.  It’s a platform that you can use build your Intranet, extranet, private social network, professional network, search engine, and public-facing website.  It’s more than just a web content management system, blogging system, wikie, or document sharing interface.  Once you and your team knows a little bit about SharePoint, you can focus on doing your job and less on learning and supporting niche applications and tools.

That’s right.  You can use the free version of SharePoint 2010 to run your public facing website.  SharePoint Foundation 2010 is free.  SharePoint Foundation 2010 may be a good fit to run your public facing website.  In order to look at this in a completely scientific manner, realize that there are literally hundreds of web content management systems out there (see CMS Matrix).  In reality, I see about 10 CMS platforms in use.  There are the commercial platforms (SharePoint, SiteCore, Ektron are the most frequently used ones) and there are a couple of free options (WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Plone are pretty common).    I would be very surprised if anyone was able to find a single CMS platform that is all things to all people, but I wanted to present SharePoint Foundation as an option for running a FREE CMS platform.  Even if you knew that there is a free version of SharePoint, what most people don’t realize is that SharePoint Foundation is a great option for running web sites of all kinds – not just team sites.  It is a great option for many reasons, but in reality it is supported by Microsoft (not just a community or a small fly-by-night company), it is FREE, and it is extremely easy to get started.  SharePoint is also quite large.  The ecosystem of users, authors, conferences, blogs, communities, and so much more.  From a functionality perspective – it’s hard to beat SharePoint.  Even the free version, SharePoint Foundation, offers simple data connectivity (through BCS), cross browser support, accessibility, support for Office Web Apps, blogs, wikis, templates, document support, health analyzer, support for presence, and MUCH more.

In order to show some of the completely of what comes with this free version of SharePoint 2010, I thought it would make sense to use Wikipedia.  Doesn’t everyone use Wikipedia as a credible source?  It is WIKIPEDIA, after all.

Wikipedia shows that a web content management system typically has the following components:

Copyright 2010. John Stover

Microsoft has some pretty good information posted about the hardware and software requirements necessary for SharePoint 2010.  I still get asked for real world, or ‘best practices’, recommendations all the time.  Like everyone else, I want to get the best performance for the best price.  It’s difficult to strike the balance between ‘good enough’ and ‘optimized’.

A large majority of the SharePoint projects that I work on end up being small-ish SharePoint farms (between 2 and 8 servers).  Due to the licensing required for Windows, SQL Servers, and SharePoint servers, most organizations do try to get by with as few servers as possible, yet still want the best possible performance.  The most common configuration that I see in the SharePoint world involves a single dedicated SharePoint server and a single dedicated SQL Server.  From there, organizations usually first add another SharePoint server, then a 3rd SharePoint server, then a second SQL Server, and then the sky is literally the limit.

Yes, virtualization is fully supported by Microsoft.  Virtualization is not at all new but is one of the biggest IT advancements, maybe ever.  I’m pretty sure that IBM was one of the earliest pioneers of this ‘pseudo machine’ concept in the mid 1960’s.  How’s that for a ‘new technology’ that is nearly 50 years old?  Virtualization for SharePoint isn’t new either, but it is still gaining a comparatively slower adoption than other systems.  Once you do decide that virtualization is the way for you, the next logical question should be ‘What virtualization platforms are supported for SharePoint 2010?’ 

Of course, Microsoft’s own virtualization platform is supported (Hyper-V).  Most people don’t realize that Microsoft will also provide support if you are running an approved virtualized environment.  The current vendors that have approved virtualized environments for running Windows 2008 Server R2 are (in no particular order):

• VMWare (ESX and vSphere)
• Cisco (WAAS Virtual Blades)
• HITACHI (Virtualization Manager / Virtage)
• Citrix Systems (XEN Server)
• Red Hat (Virtualization Hypervisor)
• Novell (SuSE)
• Riverbed Technology (Steelhead Appliance)
• Stratus Technologies (Stratus Avance)

Of course, you can also run Oracle VirtualBox (which is FREE), though this is not an officially supported virtualization vendor registered with Microsoft’s Windows Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP).