The British Council stop SharePoint 2003 roll-out
and call for an immediate upgrade to Microsoft Office SharePoint
Server 2007
Half way through a SharePoint Portal Server 2003 roll-out, The
British Council decided to stop everything and immediately upgrade
to a Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 platform.
The British Council needed a highly extensible platform for
global collaboration and regional intranets and opted for Content
and Code to build them on a MOSS 2007 platform. They assessed that
the following risks would be likely to be mitigated by implementing
MOSS 2007 rather than SharePoint Portal Server 2003.
- The risk that further 3rd party software and hardware would be
required to customise SharePoint 2003 into a more suitable platform
for global collaboration and regional intranets and possibly also
meet their Corporate Intranet, Global Records Management and shared
drives in the future. MOSS 2007 would require minimal development,
if any, thus lowering costs.
- The risk that significant development work would need to be
undertaken to improve the 'user experience' of SharePoint 2003 to
increase user uptake and reduce central support calls - a risk that
would not exist (or at least significantly reduced) with MOSS
2007.
- The risk that the current SharePoint 2003 platform would not be
suitable for Staffroom Lounge (a SharePoint site based on an
extensively developed SharePoint 2003 platform) potentially causing
confusion for a third of global staff having to use two separate
SharePoint based platforms. Staff Room has been extensively
developed to such a degree that The British Council currently feel
that only a move to MOSS 2007 would allow convergence.
- The risk that initial project assumptions around support
requirements provided by regions would prove to be inadequate due
to the inferior-intuitiveness of SharePoint 2003 as compared to
MOSS 2007.
"Switching to a SharePoint 2007 platform will allow for
significant cost savings by providing a single platform to meet the
collaboration needs (plus blogs, wikis, My Site, workflow
functionalities which would otherwise be procured separately) of
our staff globally, as well as an increase in our staff efficiency.
We opted for Content and Code due to their experience of MOSS 2007
as well as prior knowledge and experience of the British Council
technical infrastructure."
Simon Pearson, Global IS Project Manager, British Council
"We feel that The British Council made the right decision in
upgrading to MOSS 2007, many of our customers are doing the same
and the benefits are significant. It is a pleasure to continue
working with The British Council, they are wonderful people to work
with and we are proud to be delivering them a great solution."
Tim Wallis, CEO, Content and Code