Are you going to the SharePoint Conference this year?
We are once again offering a limited number of dedicated solution-design sessions for individual customers who are not currently engaged with Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS).
These Design Time sessions are intended to help IT professionals, and in some cases developers, envision and plan a solution based on SharePoint 2013 products.
Sessions will last 60-90 minutes. If you are selected, you will meet with one or more product experts (Microsoft product team members, consultants, or certified subject-matter experts) to discuss your solution goals, get advice on current challenges, and envision how to enhance your solution using SharePoint 2013 products. SharePoint documentation team members (who publish content on TechNet and MSDN) will facilitate the sessions.
We are currently recruiting customers who will be attending the SharePoint Conference for the proposed categories listed in the table below.
Proposed Focus Areas
Description
Business Intelligence
Are you excited about how to implement the new Business Intelligence capabilities into your enterprise environment? Do you want to integrate PowerPivot data models and Power View sheets in your Excel & SharePoint dashboards? Is big data (Hadoop) analysis part of your plan? Do you want to integrate all BI reports and data into a central portal? Come and discuss your plans and challenges for implementing BI solutions in your environment.
Enterprise-scale architectures
Are you planning a SharePoint 2013 solution for an enterprise-scale environment? Are you considering an extra-large farm or a multi-farm environment? We’re looking for enterprise-scale customers who are prepared to discuss architecture, manageability, and design issues for their environments.
Hybrid environments
Come and discuss plans and strategy for your hybrid SharePoint 2013 solution that integrates an on-premises farm with a farm in Office 365. Possible areas of discussion include identity management requirements (Active Directory synchronization, server-to-server [S2S] authentication), search, and Business Connectivity Services (BCS).
Identity management
Come and discuss plans and strategy for an identity management infrastructure for SharePoint 2013. Possible areas of discussion include authentication methods (Windows, FBA, SAML), authentication types (user, app, server-to-server [S2S]), permissions (site, web app, app), and user profile synchronization.
Mobility
Do you have a mobile workforce? How are you planning to take advantage of SharePoint 2013 mobile features such as the new browser-based experiences? Come discuss your organization’s mobile architecture for SharePoint 2013, including deployment goals, features you plan to enable, and any other related questions. Also, tell us what mobile experience your users prefer (mobile app vs. mobile-optimized browser view) and what mobile form factors are prevalent in your organization (phone vs. slate and iOS/Android/Windows Phone/Windows 8).
Office Web Apps server
Do you have a need for browser-based viewing and editing of Office documents from anywhere that you have a connection to your organization’s SharePoint site? Come to this session to review your plans for deploying Office Web Apps Server to enable Office Web Apps on SharePoint 2013.
SharePoint Apps (developer and IT Pro)
The new cloud app model for SharePoint allows organizations to quickly add functionality to the SharePoint sites in their environment. Come talk with us about how you are planning to develop, provide, manage, and govern SharePoint apps in your organization’s environment.
Social computing
Are you planning or already implementing the enterprise social computing features and functionality of SharePoint Server 2013? Not sure how best to plan for the integration of these, such as My Sites, feeds, Community Sites, and the Community Portal? Come share and discuss your plans for your infrastructure and challenges to implementing and adopting enterprise social computing in your environment.
Upgrade
Are you preparing for or in the process of upgrading to SharePoint Server 2013? Come share and discuss your strategy for upgrading your databases and sites, and how you plan to handle customizations in your environment during upgrade. This session is targeted to customers upgrading from SharePoint Server 2010.
Workflow
Come and discuss your plans for workflow in SharePoint Server 2013. Workflow in SharePoint Server 2013 is provided by a product called Windows Azure Workflow. New tasks and actions have been developed for SharePoint Designer 2013 that leverage this new Windows Azure Workflow-based platform. Bring your design ideas and plans for implementing workflow in SharePoint Server 2013 and interact with the product teams for both SharePoint 2013 workflow and SharePoint Designer 2013.
We are also considering adding focus areas for Virtualization and Business Connectivity Services, separate from our Enterprise-scale architectures and Hybrid focus areas. If you would be interested in discussing one of these areas, be sure to list them when you nominate your organization.
If you are selected for a focus area, you will meet with product experts who specialize in your focus area and your session will focus on your design and implementation choices.
To be eligible to participate, you must meet the following criteria:
- The person(s) you are nominating from your organization must be attending SharePoint Conference 2012 in Las Vegas.
- Your organization must be planning or maintaining a solution that fits at least one focus area.
- Your organization must not be currently working with Microsoft Consulting Services.
- You must bring either a draft of your intended solution or a representation of your existing SharePoint solution. For example, your draft can include the proposed physical topology, logical farm architecture, hierarchy of sites, plan for database sizing and settings, search settings, plan for security and isolation, etc.
To nominate your company or organization for a design session, send e-mail to spcdesign at microsoft dot com by October 5, 2012, and include the following information:
- Name of your company or organization.
- Contact information: name and title or role in your organization.
- One or two focus area(s) you are interested in and any specific questions you have about that area now.
- Brief description of your solution goals and the challenges you’d like to discuss in the Design Time session.
Due to a limited number of available sessions for each focus area, likely not every nomination will be accepted. We will review nominations and select those that best fit the focus area and that look like they will lead to a meaningful discussion for both the organization and Microsoft.
Information that you share with the product experts and documentation team either in email or during a design session will be treated confidentially. If you are selected, a member of the SharePoint conference team will contact you with the day and time of your session by October 19, 2012.
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