Getting to Your Data ”Physical Challenges Another area underscoring the differences between department-wide and enterprise-wide deployments concerns the ability to actually access the data. Termed "physical challenges," these special considerations apply to the client side of the Portal implementation ”GUI and network access ”as well as to considerations related to where the data resides from a geographical perspective. In the next few sections, we will take a closer look at these considerations, and how an enterprise-wide deployment could seek to effectively mitigate or minimize the impact that physical challenges represent on the usability of the SharePoint Portal Server solution. Client and GUI Accessibility Requirements A larger number of end users implies a more diverse workforce. As such, the technical support organization tasked with delivering Portal services needs to be prepared to present accessibility services for the deaf or sight-impaired, moderately sight-impaired, those end users handicapped by the loss of an arm or hand, those with other mobility-related impairments, and so on. Accessibility starts with the ability to access and effectively use the Portal Client GUI, of course. The fastest network in the world, or speediest and most available disk subsystem for storing data, means nothing if an end user cannot get past the limitations of the desktop! And even beyond this, inability to access technical or customer support services regarding the client ”for example, Internet Explorer ”also exacerbates this quandary . To this end, Microsoft offers a host of services aimed at assisting the disabled. Microsoft Knowledge Base article Q165486 should be reviewed, explaining how to customize Windows-based operating systems for users with disabilities . Additionally, your hardware vendor can provide you with keyboards leveraging one of the three Dvorak layouts, thereby improving accessibility for two-handed, only- left-handed , or only-right-handed users. NOTE For more information on Microsoft's services for the disabled, refer to the Microsoft Accessibility and Disabilities Web site, at http://www.microsoft.com/enable.
As for customer support, the enterprise-wide technical support organization should be prepared to offer product and customer services support via text telephone (TTY/TDD) services. Microsoft does! Complete access to Microsoft's tech support organization is available for deaf and hard-of-hearing customers. The enterprise organization, like Global Corporation, should strive to provide the same level of commitment and service. Installing and Using the GUI Once basic accessibility to the desktop is achieved, users may access most SharePoint Portal Server features via the dashboard and a browser. There is actually no requirement to load SharePoint client components on every end user's desktop or laptop computer. The dashboard site allows all end users the ability to perform the functions commonly associated with any portal, facilitating search functions as well as document management. Only end users tasked with actually managing a workspace must install the client components ”in this case, on an OS like Microsoft Windows 2000 or later ”so as to enable complete workspace management functions. The client components allow specific end users to configure security, create and manage content sources, and so on. One important note, though ”any user wishing to access SharePoint Portal Server Help must install the client components , too. Physical Location of End Users Once physical access to the desktop client/browser is enabled, and the GUI or SharePoint client components are loaded, the next accessibility challenge is gaining access to the site(s) hosting the SharePoint Portal Server resources. Hard-wired network connections and dial-up services still tend to remain the most common method of providing this level of access; however, wireless devices and networks, including phones, Palms and iPAQs, BlackBerries, and more, continue to push the accessibility envelope. Regardless of client device, only the TCP/IP protocol is supported. Another key challenge particular to an enterprise-wide deployment of SharePoint Portal Server is (usually) the presence of slow wide-area -network (WAN) links connecting various physical sites together into a single network. Even worse , slower dial-up end users may still be connecting via modems at less than 28.8Kb/sec in many parts of the world, including much of the United States. VPN solutions leveraging DSL and a variety of cable modems are growing in popularity, but the number of end users behind these speedy network solutions will probably be minimal in an enterprise deployment. A sound SharePoint architecture and deployment model therefore seeks to minimize the amount of data and GUI-based traffic that must be moved back and forth over these slow TCP/IP-based network links. This idea is discussed further in the next section. The Physical Location of Data Data comes in all shapes and sizes ”half-megabyte Excel spreadsheets, 10MB PowerPoint presentations, 200MB personal SQL or access databases, multi-terabyte SQL2000 and Oracle databases, and so on. In a perfect world, all data would reside in one place, and that site would support a huge network pipe back to your desktop computer. Or perhaps all data would just sit on your computer (we all know users like that!) ”regardless, the classic battle struggle between data and physical location can be summed up as this: -
If the data sits out on the enterprise network, users are often constrained in terms of the time it takes to get to the data. This promulgates maintaining pointers or even multiple copies of this data at different "local" sites. -
If the data sits out on the local network, it is more quickly accessed and better safeguarded, but subsequently consumes much more disk space, administration time, and backup resources than otherwise required. If we turn back to Global Corporation's particular constraints, they are running three different sites with many different workspaces. Each site satisfies perhaps the majority of local end-user search and collaboration requirements. But each site also hosts documents that cross geographical boundaries yet represent similar functional interests. For example, the Enterprise Marketing groups in all three geographies share and collaborate in terms of creating marketing collateral . True, languages differ , but themes, ideas, and certainly financial models and products in most cases remain quite consistent. And each site facilitates cross-site corporate search mechanisms, too. So the trade-off becomes "What will minimize my user's frustrations in downloading or moving large quantities of data?" versus "What makes budgetary sense?" How do you keep your customers happy without breaking the bank? In Global's case, favorable economics surrounding the cost per gigabyte of disk space drove their initial decision to maintain a data "staging" drive array in each of the three data center locations. This staging array was designed to hold the very largest or most-often accessed documents, providing the fastest read and write access. All data was also compressed on this drive. But this was not enough. Global also created a custom Web Part for a number of cross-geography organizations, like Marketing, such that a directory of documents ”including properties and metadata related to each document or link ”was readily available to be reviewed. This served to minimize inadvertently moving large files across the "big ponds." And it also coincidentally aided in better version and revision control. Finally, Global reviewed the network links between major sites, and analyzed the Web/HTTP traffic that was expected to be generated between major functional groups and across geographies. Their findings suggested that upgrading a single trunk would add substantially to network response time between two large hubs of users. And by pushing VPN access within their internal network environments supporting home-based users, they facilitated the adoption of DSL and cable modems where available. Within a year, in fact, they expected that nearly half of their home-based or remote-office users would be in a position to leverage these newer technologies, allowing older dial-up modem farms to be retired faster than expected. The reduction in the latter hardware resources, support costs, and maintenance costs would more than offset the costs associated with providing VPN access for Global ”in essence, many of the users would benefit from greater network throughput capabilities without incremental cost to the IT organization or business groups! |
