Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2001 Resource Kit

On This Page

About T-Nova Deutsche Telekom Innovationsgesellschaft mbH
Integration Determines Total Cost of Ownership
Reduction in Lost Information
Summary

Deutsche Telekom Innovationsgesellschaft's Technology Center is one of the first German companies to use Microsoft® SharePoint™ Portal Server 2001 for sophisticated document management. The Center expects significant optimization of project workflow from highly efficient retrieval capabilities and universal transparency throughout the complete document life cycle. Under the terms of an Enterprise Agreement, Microsoft supports the pioneering user with authorized consulting services.

About T-Nova Deutsche Telekom Innovationsgesellschaft mbH

T-Nova Deutsche Telekom Innovationsgesellschaft mbH can now draw on a unique Germany-wide pool of expertise: The Darmstadt Technology Center, with branches in Berlin and eleven other German cities, focuses on highly specialized expertise concerning all types of physical transfer of information. With an eye to customers' current and future needs in networks and related services, the Center offers practical, relevant research and development work that will soon convert the prospects and opportunities arising from the latest technological trends into integrated solutions appropriate for the market.

Innovative network products and top-quality service plans are presently being developed in about 150 company-wide projects simultaneously. These projects involve approximately 1,100 employees. For Dr. Frank Sporleder, the Technology Center's director, the flood of documents, which is rising at a terrific rate, embodies not only a valuable potential source of information, but also collected work—and as such—considerable company capital. About the documents, Dr. Sporleder says, "Their current relevance and availability, along with the related knowledge transfer, are largely responsible for determining the efficiency of our work."

Concerning Web-supported document management, Dr. Sporleder is optimistic of being able to optimize multilayered project work in the customers' interests also. "Performance features such as version and revision management, safeguarding, and archiving of data, controllable access, powerful search and retrieval functions and appropriate workflow capabilities will contribute to this."

Integration Determines Total Cost of Ownership

SharePoint Portal Server arrived on the market at the ideal time for the large-scale document management system (DMS) project. After a thorough examination of the market and detailed product analysis, a team of experts from the Technology Center's KOM (Communication) Department had at first favored a different DMS solution. However, it was determined that SharePoint Portal Server will better ensure the necessary future integration into Deutsche Telekom AG's Microsoft-dominated system. In concrete terms, it was the plans to change the Microsoft Office platform to Office 2000 that revealed, during preliminary stages, the future lack of integration of non-Microsoft products. KOM department head Wilfried Gerfen says, "Office applications are naturally closely connected to the DMS; after all, Word, Excel and PowerPoint® are the sources of the vast majority of the Technology Center's project-related documents."

"Economically speaking, everything pointed to Microsoft's DMS. Every third-party product must inevitably lag behind system and Office-platform upgrades—with a corresponding increase in administrative costs." This is how Uli Grün, who is responsible for KOM's DMS, explains the courageous decision to be the first in Germany to use Microsoft's SharePoint Portal Server. He explains that a favorable price can only be the beginning of an economic feasibility study; the determining factor, however, is the total cost of operating the system, also called the total cost of ownership (TCO). Based on experience, since administrative costs make up a large portion of the TCO, according to Rainer Mack, a Technology Center DMS expert, "The best TCO strategy for the medium and long term is always maximum integration into the system environment."

In the end, a product presentation at Microsoft in Munich convinced Uli Grün's team. The range of functions alone was impressive. However, the completely new, integrative concept of document management was the decisive factor. SharePoint Portal Server comes into play when customers first create documents. It provides complete transparency from a document's first moments of existence until final archiving or deletion at the end of its life cycle. During installation, SharePoint Portal Server also adds appropriate functions to Office applications, which enable check-in and publication of a newly created document in the super ordinate Web Storage System. In Microsoft Office XP, these functions will already be included.

In addition, SharePoint Portal Server uses the same storage technology as Microsoft Exchange Server 2000. For the user this means, among other things, that he can use the new tools and functions with a familiar interface. This reduces administrative costs and limits training expenses. So Rainer Mack need plan only a "basic training day" for users, who will subsequently also be offered an e-mail hotline and further support.

Reduction in Lost Information

With SharePoint Portal Server, every document will be stored together with a series of meaningful, individually definable metadata and profile data so that not only the content, relevant project, and search categories can be determined from the outset, but also the complete workflow for the document and a detailed release schedule. For example, the Technology Center archives documents after two or five years, depending on the project with which they are associated. In the future, this will be a completely automated process. Central safeguarding of all documents will also be automated in the future which, given the T-Nova Technology Center's network approach to project work, is an outstanding advantage that makes the life of IT specialists considerably easier and drastically reduces the loss of information.

In addition, frictional losses during project work, resulting from previously unavoidable inconsistencies between versions, no longer occur. SharePoint Portal Server's complete version and revision management capability allows transparent rollback to any stage of work. A detailed, role-based script determines who has read-only access or writing privileges at which stage of document production, all the way through final release and subsequent intranet publication. Additional collaborative features also offer significant potential for optimization: documents will mesh more closely than ever before with a project's team-oriented work sequence.

For users, another advantage may be even more obvious, namely, SharePoint Portal Server's universal search capabilities. Long searches for information and worries about whether the information found is current no longer deprive Technology Center employees of valuable work time. The highly developed retrieval features are easily available as intranet portals and in the tried and tested design of the digital dashboard. These features also extend to public files in Exchange, intranet, and Internet sites and to non-Microsoft products such as CorelDRAW and Adobe Acrobat.

SharePoint Portal Server is equipped with a complete Software Development Kit (SDK). With the SDK, you can customize SharePoint Portal Server to meet a company's current needs by using scripts. For the Technology Center, developers used these SDKs with Microsoft Visual Basic® 6 to construct a complete conversion tool that consolidates all documents and meta-information from existing systems in SharePoint Portal Server.

The Technology Center obtained the expertise needed for this directly from the source. Under the terms of an Enterprise Agreement, Microsoft Consulting Services is available to the Technology Center for planning and implementation of its sophisticated document management project through an Enterprise Strategy Consultant. This Microsoft consultant serves Deutsche Telekom companies exclusively.

Summary

Deutsche Telekom Innovationsgesellschaft's Technology Center is one of the first German companies to use SharePoint Portal Server for sophisticated document management. The Center expects significant optimization of project workflow from highly efficient retrieval capabilities and universal transparency throughout the complete document life cycle. Under the terms of an Enterprise Agreement, Microsoft is supporting the pioneering user with authorized consulting services.

Microsoft Products Used 

• SharePoint Portal Server 

• Microsoft Windows® 2000 Server 

• Microsoft Project 2000 

• Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional 

• Visual Basic 6 

• Office 2000 

Additional Information 

For more information about T-Nova Deutsche Telekom Innovationsgesellschaft mbH, see Appendix B, "For More Information."