SharePoint coming to GCC?

"If you build it they will come" ... that's kinda the mantra I used when I started our initial video streaming pet project ... and now it's a vital part of our website getting thousands of hits each week. 

Here's another pet project of mine (and others) ... we need a good intranet at GCC.  It needs to integrate seamlessly with the tools, like MS Office, our staff use daily.  It needs to have enough hooks that staff will want to use it and of course the cost needs to be low.  We've kicked around various ideas over the past 3 years, but it's never been a high priority on anyone's list to do anything about it.  Uber volunteer Dustin has been showing us the Sharepoint Services 3.0 beta lately ... and it's sweet!  We've been running it on site for a couple weeks to kick the tires and the more I play with it the more I'm sold.  We played with the prior version of Sharepoint and it was just lacking in areas that the new version seems to have filled.

"If you build it they will come" ... I think this same mantra will hold true for Sharepoint ... if we build a good proof of concept our staff will embrace it.  It's easy to learn, has sweet integration into MS office, and costs nothing ... yes, nothing ... if you have Server2003 you can install and use SharePoint Services.  Aside from our own IT needs, we're going to "beta test" with our Tech Arts team.  This should really flesh out the capabilities and limitations of Sharepoint since a key requirement for their site is external volunteer access.  Our connections dept said they are very interested as well ... go figure connections folks would be interested in collaboration software :-)

Of course my brain has immediately gone into support mode ... suppose this, like the video streaming, becomes a hit!  Who maintains it?  Adding/removing sites, users, permissions, training, customizations, etc?  Very important questions to ponder even at this very early stage.

So I'm kinda excited to see what happens with this new pet project as it has a ton of potential ... problem is as a pet project it doesn't get much of my time.  If you've not yet looked into the new version of SharePoint Services 3.0 I'd encourage you to do so ... the price is right and the new features (blogs, wikis, recycle bin, version control, RSS feeds, workflow, permissions) are sweet.

PS ... here's another new acronym to learn MOSS = Microsoft Office SharePoint Services.  I should update the subject of this post to read "MOSS is coming to GCC?" :-)

Comments

[Austin Spooner]

my church has also been concidering share point for our portal/intranet for the same reasons, but we would need a reason for our staff to frequently check it and use it daily. Also, the updating and adding of sites and users is the main reason we have stayed away from it. My coincidentally, I was going through files today and a White Paper from Microsoft came across my desk on Share Point, and well the idea is getting kicked back around again.

[Bob Brown]

We have SharePOint installed and I have a copy of SharePoint for Dummies on my desk while my boss has another SharePoint help book on his.

It would be nice to discuss sharepoint strategies with others learning it and using it in a church.