SharePoint Architecture Design Examples

Question

I am bit confused with entire SharePoint Process. I mean if there is a Company who never used SharePoint and they want to get one for there Organisation. They have there own team of C# developers but they never worked on SharePoint. So what General steps do these developer will have to follow to design and develop an awesome SharePoint Portal for the Company. e.g. First thing will be hardware they required depending on users and size of there company, Second Software they gonna use on that specific hardware, actual deployment of SharePoint, and then customization and branding of there portal.

Now I just given an example, I am working as SharePoint Developer for last 9 months, but I am confused with overall process of how things have been developed, because I want to be a SharePoint Architect not just developer so am curious to know about overall process.

It would be Nice If you can Share some Videos/Articles/Books that are just explaining/Illustrating planning to deployment of a real based portal or just an example for learning purposes.

Answer 1

The answer to your question is certainly not a straight forward one as there are multitude of things that implicates whatever is mentioned below. However the points mentioned below will get you a head start on seeing what you can call a "holistic view" of the sharepoint technology itself and how fits within any organization thereby you understand where does a sharepoint architect come into picture.

1.Business & SharePoint - SharePoint is a collaboration platform which is highly extensible and scalable to match "almost" every collaboration needs of an organization. Why an organization choses SharePoint is something that becomes a business decision and generally comes from right at the top line management. This is the baseline from which every subsequent events are driven. This is where you may need to look at the sharepoint capabilties as stated by Microsoft http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/en-us/product/capabilities/Pages/default.aspx

2.Being SharePoint Architect - You can find all relevant information on a similar thread over here. Knowledge areas of a SharePoint Architect

3.Corporate Portal Case Study - There are huge number of SharePoint case studies presented by Microsoft here :- http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/results.aspx?pocId=&freetext=case%20study%20sharepoint&DisplayLang=en

You may also find this interesting - Infosys corporate website case study http://www.infosys.com/microsoft/success-stories/Documents/content-management-system.pdf

Practical guides *updated
http://blogs.sharepoint911.com/blogs/jennifer/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=98
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/gg241215.aspx
https://bit.ly/aws-sharepoint
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc261995.aspx
http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2010/08/migrating-a-corporate-intranet-to-sharepoint-a-case-study.php
http://www.slideshare.net/markmorrell/examples-of-bt-using-sharepoint-2010
http://www.pinkpetrol.com/blog/2012/04/10-ideas-for-your-sharepoint-intranet/
http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/make-sharepoint-intranets-beautiful/

some general guidelines
http://ecm4.me/2011/01/02/building-an-intranet-portal-on-sharepoint-2010/

This should get you good insights on how to go about building a sound corporate portal for your organization.

4.Technical Architecture Documents - Microsoft has done a decent job of providing numerous architectural documents concerning SharePoint platform and its internal service applications. I would suggest please go through all of them if you wish to proceed on the broader aspects of SharePoint

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263199.aspx

5.Process related information SharePoint 2010 Operations Framework & Checklist http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/p/?LinkId=203288

SharePoint 2010 Governance Model http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=33a8c9e0-57c2-4ae5-99e3-8826ab9dd701

Sample Governance Plan http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=92333&clcid=0x409

Answer 2

There are the Microsoft documents online but you may find this 7 real life projects ebook by Microsoft for MOSS2007 usefull as most of the design approaches and concepts would apply to 2010. You can download the ebook from this blog I found: http://blog.krisvandermast.com/FreeSharepoint2007Book.aspx

Just click the "get your copy here" link, I have downloaded it to test and it is working, you get a pdf book with 7 real life projects.