Site Collection strategy

Question

At a recent SharePoint conference (SharePoint Fest in Seattle) there were at least two speakers who advocated in limiting the number of subsites used. Rather, they suggested creating Site Collections for any logical separation of business (e.g. Unit, Department, Project) and then deal with the navigation of the flat hierarchy elsewhere. My question is twofold:

1. Is this actually a widely recommended approach?
2. If yes, what have you done to handle navigation around and between Site Collections?

Answer 1

FWIW....

SharePoint 2013

1. We employ a similar approach in which we deploy more site collections versus a narrow stove pipe like structure.

2. We use a term store for two of our top level sites to allow ease of navigation to subsites (GPO sets homepage to one of two top level sites). The subsites (site collections) then can employ their own navigation using OOB Navigation.