Computerworld -
"Like the Wild West" -- that's how Dave Rettig, a senior manager in the strategy and technology alignment group at Raymond James Financial Inc., describes the firm's first implementation of SharePoint 2003. "It was a free-for-all. Everyone just sort of jumped in," Rettig says.
SharePoint is Microsoft Corp.'s software for collaboration, file sharing and Web publishing. "People saw it as just another file server," Rettig says, "and it ended up like someone's garage or attic."
So when SharePoint 2007 came out, a steering group that included Rettig decided to take some control. Instead of automatically upgrading, the group did so manually, porting just 10% of the earlier version's content to the new platform. It also required a "steward" and a backup person for each team's content site.
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Computerworld - "Like the Wild West" -- that's how Dave Rettig, a senior manager in the strategy and technology alignment group at Raymond James Financial Inc., describes the firm's first implementation of SharePoint 2003. "It was a free-for-all. Everyone just sort of jumped in," Rettig says.
SharePoint is Microsoft Corp.'s software for collaboration, file sharing and Web publishing. "People saw it as just another file server," Rettig says, "and it ended up like someone's garage or attic."
So when SharePoint 2007 came out, a steering group that included Rettig decided to take some control. Instead of automatically upgrading, the group did so manually, porting just 10% of the earlier version's content to the new platform. It also required a "steward" and a backup person for each team's content site.
Security was another concern. Rettig categorized the financial services firm's 14,000 to 15,000 SharePoint subsites into three groups -- team sites, project sites and community sites -- each with different levels of security controls. In addition, the steering group created a specific site to lock down any content containing personally identifiable information, with oversight by the data security staff. "No one can get into that area without security knowing about it," Rettig says. If personally identifiable information is found outside of that boundary, either through an automated scanner or human detection, it's immediately flagged, deleted or moved.
Moreover, forms that enter the SharePoint system from the retail sales force are archived in an optical storage system, with built-in rules for regulatory compliance and security enforcement.
In terms of centralized control, "we keep an eye on storage capacity, and we have tools to see how activity is going on the site," Rettig says. "[But] we don't really have total command and control, and I don't think there are a lot of companies out there who do."
That's for sure, agrees Doug Miles, director of market intelligence at AIIM, an association focused on enterprise content management. In a June survey of 624 organizations, AIIM found that 55% were establishing SharePoint policies for team sites, but other forms of governance were lacking. Just 22% said they provided staff with guidance on content type and classification, and only 15% had formal document-retention policies and legal-discovery procedures. Despite this, nearly a quarter (23%) had rolled out SharePoint to their entire staffs.
"It's kind of 'throw it against the wall and see what sticks,' in terms of what they'll use it for, which seems to fly in the face of a lot of good IT practice," Miles says. "I'm not saying I'm a control freak, but I do err on the side of decently written policies." Miles also urges companies to define which types of content can show up on SharePoint and which types should be reserved for other places, such as human resources and document management systems.
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