Invitation to review and provide feedback for the Microsoft Collaborative Workspace Architecture Guide 1.0
[Update 05/30/2007: The feedback window is now closed. The team will evaluate the feedback that has been provided thus far and will update the content as appropriate.]
You are invited to review and provide feedback for a pre-release draft of the Microsoft Collaborative Workspace Architecture Guide 1.0, which is being developed to address the multitude of frequent asked questions about how to design and implement collaborative workspaces based on various deployment models (centralized, departmental, branch, etc.).
Here’s more info about the document:
Overview
The Collaborative Workspace Architecture Guide is an architectural level guide that provides best practice considerations for designing an effective, IT collaboration environment for your organization. This guide can be used to integrate a collection of technologies and services that delivers a virtual workspace that allows people to effectively and efficiently share information and work together in a common IT environment.
This guide:
· Describes the business problems that the collaborative workspace solution solves.
· Explains the contribution of each of the products in order to determine if some or all of the products are needed.
· Helps architects determine which administrative (management) model best fits their organizational needs.
· Describes best practice physical topology reference models to help architects design an architecture that is adapted to their organization.
Intended Audience
This guide is intended for IT architects and others who are interested in, or who are involved with, architecting and designing a highly integrated collaborative workspace solution within a common IT infrastructure. Architects will need experience designing Microsoft technology solutions in complex enterprise environments and a solid understanding of the following products to complete a design based on the guidance:
· Microsoft Windows Server 2003
· Microsoft Windows Active Directory
· Microsoft SQL Server 2005
· Microsoft Office 2007
Scope
This guide discusses key concepts, as well as logical and physical design considerations for integrating the various Microsoft products that form this collaborative workspace solution.
Although this guide contains recommendations based on known best practices and Microsoft IT experiences, it provides referential guidance only. This guide is not intended to serve as procedural documentation. The reader should adapt the best practices approach described in this guide to meet the specific needs of their organization.
Design Goals
The architecture designs described in this guide address the fundamental design goals of integration, scalability, accessibility, and availability, as follows:
· Integration. The design's overall goal is to describe an integrated implementation of four primary Microsoft technologies and services.
· Scalability. The architecture envisions an enterprise scale solution that is flexible and can be scaled to support an organization’s unique requirements. The design supports a highly scalable and extensible infrastructure that can be modified and extended in the future.
· Accessibility. The design provides for maximum user accessibility from within, across, and outside of an organization. The design allows for multiple access types with minimal infrastructure change.
This collaborative workspace solution consists of:
· Microsoft SharePoint Services 3.0. Provides virtual workspaces for enterprise environments, along with delegated administration, check-in/check-out capabilities, workflow and rights management for collaborative workspaces. It provides a centralized system within the enterprise where work gets published, broadly shared and searched, and integrated with structured business.
· Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. Provides enterprise-wide functionality for records management, search, workflows, portals, and personalized sites within collaborative workspace scenarios. SharePoint Server builds upon SharePoint Services.
· Microsoft Office Groove 2007. Provides decentralized collaboration and communications through direct connectivity (peer-to-peer). The Groove client sits directly on the user's PC and allows all content and activities made online or offline by any member of the shared workspace to be immediately synchronized across all team desktops.
· Microsoft Live Communications Server 2005. Delivers instant messaging (IM) and presence to the collaborative workspace scenarios. Presence information is integrated with the Office Suite of products including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Groove, and SharePoint Server. The preferred client is Microsoft Office Communicator 2005.
To download the guide, go to Solution Accelerators web site on Microsoft Connect: https://connect.microsoft.com/site/sitehome.aspx?SiteID=14. [Update: Use this link instead: https://connect.microsoft.com/programdetails.aspx?ProgramDetailsID=1387.] If you have not previously registered with Microsoft Connect, you will be required to register before you can proceed into the web site.
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