Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides a wide range of capabilities. In deploying it, you also need to evaluate your capabilities.

Depending on the expertise and resources of your IT department, you may be able to save money and build a more effective solution if you bring in a partner.

Here are some questions to consider.

1. Does my organization understand its needs?

Understanding your needs is essential to developing an effective solution. If you don’t understand the issues facing your organization, you cannot develop a solution to address them.

Read the topic about identifying pain points within your organization.

You can also use a partner. Partners can evaluate your organization with a fresh set of eyes, identifying opportunities that you may not be able to see. You should consider using a partner if you need help in this area.

2. Do you understand the difference between collaboration and a publishing portal?

There’s a huge difference between a collaboration portal and a publishing portal. A publishing portal is a place to store documents and files. Collaboration is more than that. It’s about helping end users find and share information, communicate with each other, and improve business processes within and between departments.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 can allow you to build a thriving collaboration portal. To do that, however, you need to understand what a collaboration portal truly is and what the possibilities are. If you need some help seeing the potential, you may want to use a partner to help design your Office SharePoint Server 2007 deployment.

For more information about site design and architecture, see the topic under Engineer.

3. Do you have the resources to host SharePoint Server 2007 internally?

Do you have the hardware and software to meet the minimum system requirements for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007?

Depending on the resources of your IT department, you may want to consider bringing in a partner to host SharePoint Server 2007 for you. Your organization gets the benefit of the process improvements that come from Office SharePoint Server 2007, and you are freed from some of the day-to-day responsibilities of managing it.

4. Do you have the staff and experience you need to deploy Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007?

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 can do a lot right out of the box. If you don’t have experience with it, though, you can waste time building custom solutions that you may not need.

Ask these questions to help quantify your experience with SharePoint Server 2007. If the questions indicate you’re at a beginning or intermediate level, you may want to bring in a partner to cover the gaps.

• Has your IT department ever deployed Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server?
• Has your IT department ever managed a Windows SharePoint Services or Microsoft Office SharePoint Services deployment?
• How familiar are you with the capabilities of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server?
• Are you trying to consolidate several systems? How comfortable are you in doing that?
• Are you interested in using the business analytics and metrics capabilities of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007? How familiar are you with them?

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 can help increase communication and productivity in your organization. Getting help from a partner can help you put those improvements to work more quickly.