Identifying Services

The services to be implemented in a SharePoint portal will fall into one of three categories. The first and most common type of service is inherent in the SharePoint product line, such as Publishing or PerformancePoint Services. (We will discuss some of these later in this chapter.)

A service can also be built around a third-party product that provides features on top of SharePoint. Common examples of this are data archiving, workflow, and image/document management systems. These products require separate licensing and configuration beyond that of the SharePoint server itself. When implementing this type of service, be sure to evaluate the vendor's upgrade practices. If the vendor publishes patches and interim versions (point releases) between major releases, these release schedules will need to be integrated with the portal's maintenance schedule. Some commercial add-ons also require special hardware such as storage or networking infrastructure.