Today’s workplaces and work teams can cut across skill sets, international borders, time zones and organizational boundaries. While such fluidity has its advantages – easy access to information and more agility to respond to business opportunities, for example – it also creates coordination challenges.
Microsoft’s integrated approach to collaboration software and services is key to establishing a competitive business edge in the modern work world and helping ensure people can easily connect to each other and to the information they need, wherever they are.
Microsoft Gold Certified Partner The Henson Group, Inc., provides a practice dedicated to Microsoft’s Collaboration technologies that specifically address today’s collaboration challenges in four critical areas: integrated communications, collaborative workspaces, access to information and people, and people-driven processes.
This practice is staffed by Microsoft Certified consultants with extensive field experience (incl. many former Microsoft employees), including infrastructure and development experts that specialize in deploying and extending Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007), an integrated suite of server capabilities that can help improve organizational effectiveness by providing comprehensive content management and enterprise search, accelerating shared business processes, and facilitating information-sharing across boundaries for better business insight.
Office SharePoint Server 2007 supports all intranet, extranet, and Web applications across an enterprise within one integrated platform, instead of relying on separate fragmented systems. Additionally, this collaboration and content management server provides IT professionals and developers with the platform and tools they need for server administration, application extensibility, and interoperability.
The Henson Group, Inc. (THG) assists clients in leveraging MOSS 2007 to build comprehensive portal solutions for content aggregation and document management, creating end-to-end solutions that meet the complete information-sharing needs of business organizations. For example, users can quickly create and contribute to team or project-focused Web sites from a Web browser or Microsoft Office application. (See further down for service descriptions.)
WHAT WE CAN DO FOR YOU: MICROSOFT OFFICE SHAREPOINT SERVER 2007
MOSS 2007 ―Test Drives‖/Upgrade Planning: This one-day business/technical review includes discussions on key capabilities, critical features, enhancements, high-impact demos, and an architecture session to map out the upgrade/deployment scenario.
Systems Deployment Planning: THG details the info needed for a deployment, incl. capacity planning calculations to determine hardware and software requirements, anti-virus concerns, network configurations, scalability considerations, and supportability.
Knowledge Management Planning: THG reviews existing document management and workflow and existing content, user roles, indexing, search, and portal requirements. Upon completion of this analysis, THG will provide a Taxonomy and Workflow Design to structure and organize documents for access, searching, and workflow processes.
Site Design and Implementation: THG customizes the design to match your brand colors and logos, while also setting site topics, alerts, listings, surveys, audiences, document management, version controls, and more.
Custom Search Strategies: THG extends MOSS to integrate with existing portals, file shares, and email systems, so info is aggregated/ accessible through a single gateway.
Application Integration and Workflow: Custom web parts development to gather, present, and modify info from internal/external sources. THG migrates paper forms into InfoPath for electronic tracking, monitoring, and approval. THG implements workflow solutions using BizTalk Human Workflow Services and K2.net.
WHAT WE CAN DO FOR YOU: MICROSOFT EXCHANGE SERVER 2007
Logical & Physical Architecture: Exchange architecture based on routing topology, Inter-net e-mail, secure e-mail, server admin reqs, and backup/failover with geo-clustering.
Remote Access: THG will implement Outlook Web Access to provide easier use, speed, and greater security for remote users, via any browser-based computer.
Migration Services: For existing users, The Henson Group‘s consultants provide migra-tion strategies for achieving maximum functionality with minimum inconvenience.
High Availability Review: THG offers a unique review to provide practical advice for im-proving/protecting messaging infrastructures. This program is an advanced version of Microsoft‘s Exchange Health Check, developed and delivered by some of Microsoft‘s best Exchange architects, who now staff THG‘s Messaging Practice.
Upgrading and Coexistence: Migration planning from Lotus Notes/GroupWise. Consult-ants provide expertise on upgrading to Exchange 2007 from previous versions, including deployment of the AD Connector and other directory synchronization techniques.
WHAT WE CAN DO FOR YOU: OFFICE COMMUNICATIONS SERVER 2007
Design & Deployment Services: Custom enterprise IM solutions featuring log-ging, archiving, file transfer, audio/video conferencing, app sharing, and teleph-ony. Also: application integration; enhanced manageability and security con-figuration; infrastructure design enhancement; and more.
Advanced Custom Configurations: Services include Windows Messenger configu-ration and client distribution; DNS server configuration; expanding AD schema; LCS Server Console; and more. THG provides performance tuning, security con-siderations, capacity, federation, remote access, and archiving planning.
IM Strategic Review: THG will present recommendations for designing a Live Communications Server IM and presence infrastructure system, identifying net-work infrastructure, hardware, AD, and administrative considerations.