SharePoint adoption kit for your organization

Ah… What to do now? I have SharePoint 2010 intranet implement but not many employees are adopting it. 

1. Did we waste Thousands / Millions of dollars moving to SharePoint 2010? 
2. How should I improve user adoptionrate in my organization and how to engage them using Intranet.

I think this the exact statement runs thru most of your minds. Keeping this in mind Microsoft released an Adoption Kit for SharePoint 2010 and can be downloaded from following location.

http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/iusesharepoint/Pages/get-the-kit.aspx

Cheers!

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Top SharePoint Sites

• Do you have an Intranet / Internet developed in SharePoint 2010?
• Do you want to know which SharePoint intranet site best in the world?
• Do you want to know what type of design trends other companies are following for SharePoint 2010 implementation?
• Do you want to compete with others to be best intranet?
• Then visit "www.topsharepoint.com" and http://www.wssdemo.com/livepivot. 

 Excellent site for understanding current SharePoint UI trends and how other companies are using SharePoint.

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SharePoint 2010 Guidance

I encourage all SharePoint consultants / developers to read thru and follow the guidance recommended by Microsoft in developing SharePoint 2010 Applications.

Download SharePoint 2010 Guidance

This Guidance document talks about (brief overview by Microsoft)

• Application and design patterns to address common development challenges.
• Architectural decisions that affect site topology and security.
• How to design and implement SharePoint applications that are scalable, manageable, and configurable.
• How to decide between design options, such as how to choose between a list and database.
• How to design a SharePoint application for testability, how to create unit tests, and how to run continuous integration tests.
• How to manage the application life cycle through the development, test, deployment, and upgrade stages
• How to implement a team-based development environment.

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SharePoint 2010 on Cloud

Many organizations want to spend very less on maintaining their infrastructure. So, many of them opt for Virtualization or Cloud. In this blog, I am going to discuss more on hosting options available on Cloud and best approaches your organization can take. Also I will provide pricing options…

1. Amazon EC2
2. Rackspace Cloud - Cloud Servers
3. Windows Azure - VM Roles

Case Studies:

• Amazon's Corporate IT Deploys SharePoint 2010 to the AWS Cloud

Amazon's Corporate IT deployed its highly mission-critical IT application - the company's intranet - to the AWS Cloud. The whitepaper discusses the deployment criteria, security requirements, architecture and implementation of the mission-critical application. It not only discusses how they were able to take advantage of security features of AWS and Microsoft SharePoint 2010 (and Microsoft SQL Server 2008) and deploy an application that involves highly sensitive data but also shares several lessons learned in a candid manner. Download Whitepaper (PDF).

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SharePoint 2010 Licensing Costs

*** The following information is gathered from publicly available Costs from Microsoft. This should be used only for reference to get ballpark costs for SharePoint licensing. If your company has Volume Licensing or Licensing Agreement with Microsoft, prices provided may vary. Costs are in US dollars. This information captured based on prices available over internet as on May 2011.

SharePoint 2010 Licensing Costs
Windows Server 2008 R2
Standard	$1,209.00	includes 10 CALs
Enterprise	$3,999.00	includes 25 CALs
For Extra Windows Server 2008 R2 CALs *** CALs 5 Pack - $199.00 ***CALs 20Pack - $799.00
SQL Server 2008 R2
Standard	$1,849.00	includes 5 CALs
Enterprise	$13,969.00	includes 25 CALs
For Extra SQL CAL *** CAL - $205 (approx. includes Software Assurance)
SharePoint 2010 Server - Internal Implementation (Intranet)
SharePoint 2010	$4,926.00	Each SharePoint Server should have SharePoint 2010 License. Each Person accessing SharePoint need a Standard CAL. To access enterprise features need to buy Enterprise
Standard CALs	$95.00
Enterprise CALs	$83.00
SharePoint 2010 Server - Internet Implementation
Standard	$11,793.00	Each SharePoint Server should have SharePoitn 2010 License. No need for extra CALs if it is accessible over Internet.
Enterprise	$41,392.00
References
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/pricing.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/R2-editions.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/pricing.aspx http://community.bamboosolutions.com/blogs/sharepoint-2010-price-calculator/default.aspx

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HTML 5 and SharePoint

For quite sometime, I am looking at how HTML 5 can be incorporated into SharePoint 2010. Based on the I am building HTML5 SharePoint Solution which can be used for any type of HTML 5 implementation as a webpart.

This solutions will allow to implement following HTML 5 options inside SharePoint Video Web Gallery Photo Transition Audio Announcements display thru transitions I hope to have this solution ready by next week.	Apple has excellent HTML 5 demos and source code, check out @ http://developer.apple.com/safaridemos/ Transitions example -- from Apple.com

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