Real-Time SharePoint Performance Analytics
Idera has released SharePoint diagnostic manager, which provides real-time, 24/7 performance and availability monitoring of SharePoint. Rick Pleczko, the president and CEO of Idera, says that “We’ve got great demand for the SharePoint diagnostic manager product because it’s the only product of its type on the market.” SharePoint diagnostic manager provides enterprise-class performance monitoring including real-time performance analytics of all SharePoint servers from a single console, so administrators can quickly identify, diagnose, and resolve performance and availability problems.
Here’s a list from Idera of what SharePoint diagnostic manager offers:
• Continuous, automated 24/7 monitoring from a central console
• Intuitive dashboard UI providing an “at-a-glance” view of the health and performance of the entire SharePoint environment
• Page-component-level performance analysis, enabling rapid identification of items affecting page performance
• Automated alerting of poorly performing pages and controls as well as server performance issues
• Repository of historical performance data enabling trend and forecast analyses
“Because of SharePoint’s importance in business operations, a healthy SharePoint environment is a must,” said Eric Shupps, Microsoft MVP and the Founder and President of BinaryWave, a premier SharePoint consultancy. “Idera’s SharePoint diagnostic manager provides as close to hands-free SharePoint monitoring as you can get, which eliminates the need for constant babysitting or writing custom applications.”
“Built on Idera’s market-leading SQL diagnostic manager architecture, SharePoint diagnostic manager uses battle-proven technology to deliver the first true enterprise-class performance monitoring solution for SharePoint," says Pleczko. "SharePoint administrators and users will see instant and significant benefits in the health and performance of their SharePoint environment.”
Idera’s SharePoint diagnostic manager is available at the introductory price of $995 per server. For more information go to www.idera.com.
Taking the Risk out of SharePoint Migration
“The majority of SharePoint migration projects fail because of lack of planning and inadequate resources,” says Christian Buckley, who directs product evangelism at Axceler. “But you don’t know until you try to migrate, then see a failure.” Axceler’s Davinci Migrator for SharePoint 2010 aims to change this by making your migration to SharePoint 2010 succeed from the start, analyzing your environment with an eye to reducing the number of failed migration attempts and shortening project schedules.
Prior to migration, Davinci Migrator runs what Buckley calls a “pre-flight check.” This pre-migration analysis offers color-coded results that let you identify issues at a glance during planning, rank them by severity, and get recommendations on actions before moving forward. You can then make changes or choose to override the analysis. Davinci Migrator also supports migrating in waves, based on user-defined timetables, priorities, and severity of issues found by the pre-migration analysis, letting organizations migrate clean sites first and focus resources where they’re needed. Typical issues the pre-migration analysis finds often involve permissions, third-party Web Parts, and broken URLs, Buckley says.
Many customers remember the pain of moving from SharePoint Portal Server 2003 to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, he says, and might be delaying 2010 or might be setting up a separate 2010 system for new projects and figuring out the rest later. Larger customers have mixed environments, running both 2003 and 2007. But that’s no longer necessary, he adds, “You can move both at the same time—Davinci Migrator offers support for both granular and entire-site migrations from SharePoint 2003 and SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint 2010."
When you first log in to Davinci Migrator, you see a UI with three tabs: Discover, Plan, and Migrate. The Discover tab reveals a query engine that walks you through building a query to find sites, and it offers canned as well as custom queries. The pre-migration analysis offers an at-a-glance visual of sites by URL with various issues, coded in red or yellow shading to denote severity. At the Plan tab, you can create a migration set of sites you want to move and indicate where you want to move them. The Migrate tab lets you create rules for specific migration sites you’ve set up and lets you map permissions for sites.
Buckley adds that Davinci Migrator is not a one-time migration tool: “In three to six months, the needs of your organization might change and you’ll be using it again.” Although the expected large enterprises have shown interest in the solution, he says, smaller companies are interested in it as well, particularly those with complex SharePoint implementations. To learn more, see www.axceler.com.
Optimizing SharePoint Storage
The Swiss technology company balesio announced FILEminimizer SharePoint, a plug-in for SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2007 that optimizes Microsoft PowerPoint, Word, Excel, and image files directly before saving and storing the files into SharePoint, reducing the file storage volume on SharePoint. FILEminimizer's technology, balesio says, reduces the size of images and Microsoft Office files by an average of 70 percent through its content-aware, native optimization processes. Using the native format optimization of FILEminimizer, the original file format and quality is preserved so no decompression is necessary. It keeps all file attributes compliant with data lifecycle management and archiving solutions and is scalable and extendable. See balesio’s website for more information, at www.balesio.com.
A Solution to Integrating Paper Documents into SharePoint
Digitech Systems announced it has optimized PaperVision Capture for use with SharePoint. PaperVision Capture allows businesses to scan paper documents, convert them to an electronic format, and index them for secure storage, management, and retrieval within their SharePoint installation.
"Historically, integrating paper documents with a SharePoint system has been difficult," says Rai Wasner, Managing Director at Kollabria, a leading ECM analyst firm. “PaperVision Capture is the first well-established scanning technology to make it easy to integrate paper documents with Microsoft SharePoint. It's a must for any organization looking to fully leverage ECM across all critical business information."
To learn more visit www.digitechsystems.com.
Social Computing Via SharePoint
Social Sites for SharePoint 2010 from NewsGator adds social computing features to SharePoint 2010. Besides supporting microblogging, activity streams, mobile, desktop, and community capabilities, it also supports nine languages, enabling organizations to “create inter-geographical and inter-cultural fusion,” according to the company.
Social Sites 2010 also includes mini profile cards—electronic cards that pop up when users hover over another user’s name and include contact information and images; rating and tagging on/off switches; a profile builder; a “take it back” feature that lets a user hide an update and delete comments; and a “terms and conditions” feature that presents users with corporate policies and terms of use that they must accept before being able to view or post to the activity stream.
“By integrating Social Sites directly into your SharePoint 2010 collaboration deployment, you can focus on delivering value to your users and unifying your technology infrastructure—instead of building custom applications or learning and supporting additional technologies,” the company says. To learn more, visit www.newsgator.com.
