I thought I might spend of a few minute with my answer to this question that seems to be coming up with managers more often with each passing day.  My response is complicated to explain to becuase the answer is always you are asking the wrong question and exposing yourself to risk by limiting your attention to the traditional focus.

First, lets start with the my opinion.  SharePoint is a platform similar to ASP.NET or Windows that you build applications and services on.  SharePoint respresents the first true class of products by Microsoft that completely blurs the line of Admin and Developer.  Thinks of it in these terms.  VBScript was the first technology Microsoft developed beyond bacth files that automated the administrators job.  Since then we have made the gigantic leap to .NET, C# and Powershell.  These technologies have changed the game and the sooner Engineers, Developers and Management understand this the better.  This is not to say that the traditional role of application developer or adminstrator is dead.  There will always be the need for specialist that focus at a deep level upon building applications and administratering them.  However, the future Star IT employee is the person that can engineer and write code across all parts of the solution.

So when asked, by my customers how and what should I be looking for in an finding an administrator for SharePoint, my response is always STOP looking for an adminstrator and start searching for the NEXT GENERATION IT STAR that can code and adminster your solution.  The simple fact is that when looking for that star you need someone who understands common adminstration skills (installing windows, patching, monitoring and configuring the server as well as managing the hardware, adminstering SQL, Networking and IIS) and then they need developer skills (.NET Coding, Powershell, WindowsServices Distributed Computing, XML,CAML, SQL Coding, AJAX, JavaScript, HTML, etc...).  This is the perfect solution but it will take time for the world to get to this point and not everybody in IT can accomplish this task.

The second point I make is that the distributed engineering strategy of managing an IT environment by organizing along traditional product responsabilities such as having a Core Windows Team, Client Team, SQL Team and SharePoint Team is not going to result in a cost effective succesful solution.  To be clear I am not saying that having a Core Windows Team doing tasks such as Building Servers and Installing the OS is wrong.  Nor is having a core Client, SQL or SharePoint Team is wrong.  What I see in the real world is the creation of the virtual team made up of members of each team.  In some environment this works fine, but in larger environments this approach will only result in less than agile and fragmented team that creates more problems and costs to the overall operation.  What needs to happen is the opposite approach and adoption of a service based approach.

My suggestion upon this matter is to look at the technologies from a service provided approach.  For example, SharePoint is a collaborative platform and demands in a larger environment that the entire scope of technologies be managed as a distinct unit with a solidified plan under a unified direct management structure.  Large organizations are agoing to bulk at this statement, BUT THEY ARE THE ONES THAT SHOULD BE LISTENING THE MOST.  This trend started with Exchange and has grown into far more by the evolution of the technology.  This is a pretty radical idea for many organizations and push back is always expected BUT it can be over come with strong leadrehship by the Project Manager.  Regardless, this approach has to happen at some point.  So an appropriate team would include an organization model based upon service rather than product.  Even more important is that finding that IT STAR will be hard at least for a while until the workforce adopts the approach that being an integration expert is where the real money and possibaility of sucess exists.  So until that occurs and even after that occurs organizations need to move from the virtual team based upon products to services where the priorities and goals are unfied.

The answer to these problems is simple and is determined by the politics, size and scope of your organization.  In the large organization there should be a collaboration team which includes Windows, SQL, SharePoint, and Developer Resources under a single manager combined with a traditional virtualied team of Network, SAN, and security engineers  with a unfied business strategy and goals driven by a strong SLA.  This means the organization needs to start doing the opposite of the product based virtual team but rather reorganize into the service based team where for example the Collaboration SQL expert is a vrtual member of the companies core SQL team.  This doesn't mean that the organization core SQL team drives the collaboration implementation of SQL but rather the Collaborative SQL team member communicates with the core team but the final decision is made by the collaboration SQL expert and project manager.  There might not be even a core product team in the organization, as a true service based model would allow for the SQL team made up of members from all thekey services model based team.

The answer is complicated and the solution is even more complicated requiring organizations to reorganize teams and develop IT STARS.  In short the traditional old school organization is going to flip with the initial idea and work required to implement what I am suggestion, but the end justifies the means and where this approach has been adopted the success is clearly obvious.  The strategy is also well documented and promoted as being the future of IT. 

The proof of this approach is not only well documented by IT Management organizations but also by history in general.  A simple look at hostory shows that the the most agile organization is the always the most sucessful.  For the sake of brevity, I will spare reader the countless examples I could provide from history proving this advice, but if you really want it send me an email and I will provide you the evidence.

What I will provide is a solid proven example of how the United States Marine Corps has taken this strategy to fact by being agile enough to build a services based unit called the Marine Air Ground Task Force (MAGTF).  MAGTFs are a balanced air-ground, combined arms task organization of Marine Corps forces under a single commander that is structured to accomplish a specific mission.which we would define in IT as a Service.  If the government can pull this off then it can certainly be implemented with even greater success by the private sector.

Some good links supporting this advice are:

Workforce Management by Microsoft

Gartner IT Strategy

HP IT Strategy Management

HP Services Mnagement Framework

Microsoft Services Management Framework

ITIL Service Level Management