How This Book Was Authored Many readers follow the Special Edition series by Que. If you have read the recent edition on Exchange 2000, you probably noticed that it was authored by a large team of distinguished consultants from companies such as Compaq, Lucent, and Software Spectrum. I was a co-author on this Exchange 2000 publication, and part of the core team under the leadership of the respected lead author of the messaging industry (Kent Joshi). Thanks to a referral from Kent, this co-authoring opportunity resulted in an chance for me to become the lead author of this Special Edition Using SharePoint Portal Server publication. As lead author for a new product in the Microsoft family, I wanted to start a new tradition. I wanted to continue to leverage real-world consulting expertise from the field. However, this time I wanted to keep the authoring team within Compaq Global Services, which was recently acquired by Hewlett Packard. Compaq Global Services is a world-class consulting organization with a core focus, and when it comes to Microsoft technology, it is obvious that Microsoft technology is a core competency. Senior consultants from Compaq Global Services have been hand- chosen to provide their collective experience to produce a world-class publication on SharePoint Portal Server. While reading this book, you may find the co-authors added specific input leveraged from their own experiences in implementing real-world solutions implementation experiences. These anecdotes have been added with various types of audiences in mind. The goal for each chapter is to discuss a feature or capability at a conceptual level, and then drill down into detail and provide instructions for how to perform specific planning, design, and implementation tasks . Compaq Global Services has been working with SharePoint Portal Server since the early beta versions. In addition, Compaq Global Services has implemented enterprise portals based on SharePoint Portal Server for many medium and large organizations across the globe. Using a standard methodology of Planning, Design, Implementation, and Support, Compaq has capabilities to assist at any stage of your portal project lifecycle. In addition, Compaq is using SharePoint internally within many business units across the organization. For example, Global Services is using SharePoint as a single portal for various types of intellectual capital. Consultants from around the world have access to the portal site and are encouraged to contribute and reciprocate knowledge. I personally have set up subscriptions to various types of information. Several times a day I get subscription notifications as an email within my Microsoft Exchange inbox. As of date of this publication, Compaq has also deployed more than eight million seats of Exchange 5.x, three million seats of Exchange 2000, and more than three million seats of Windows 2000. Compaq was recently selected as Microsoft's Global Services Partner of the year, and we are also the only Microsoft partner with the unique status of Prime Integrator for Windows 2000, Exchange 2000, and BizTalk 2000. We fully expect to lead the industry with SharePoint Portal Server as well. We currently do not have an accurate count of the number of deployed SharePoint Portal Server seats, but we fully expect to lead the industry for number of seats deployed and managed. To find out more information about Compaq services, visit http://www.compaq.com/services. Now that we have discussed how the book was authored, we can begin to discuss the details on features and real-world benefits of the product.  |
