Situation
Founded in 1985, Portal Software has offices around the globe and provides software-based billing and revenue management solutions for use by communications, media, and content service providers. Its convergent revenue management platform enables its customers to manage the generation, capture, collection, and analysis of revenue across a variety of networks, payment models, pricing plans, and value chains.

The company delivers the only platform for the end-to-end management of customer revenue across offerings, channels, and geographies. Its solutions enable companies to dramatically accelerate the launch of innovative, profit-rich services while significantly reducing the costs associated with legacy billing systems

Portal had been using an intranet solution that it had designed using the Microsoft® FrontPage® 2000 Web site creation and management tool. Although that information-sharing solution worked for the company at the time, Portal Software had grown to the point where team members needed an easy way to control content. Microsoft Windows® SharePoint® Services allows Portal's staff to utilize team sites. This has changed the practice of individuals funneling that information through department coordinators, who oversaw and posted the material. The old process was time consuming and risked the loss of critical information. Implementing Windows SharePoint Services and changing the process gave Portal Solutions true document collaboration capabilities.

The lack of a document collaboration solution caused Portal Software to experience issues typical to companies that do not have efficient and effective information management systems. For example, e-mail was used as the primary means of document collaboration. With this approach, documents remained within the Microsoft Exchange Server database, on local personal computer hard disks, and on shared file storage, which created the possibility of multiple documents and conflicting versions. Although this situation served employees' rudimentary needs, it certainly was not the most efficient.

To take advantage of innovative technology that would help staff members share corporate intelligence effectively and work more efficiently, Portal began to investigate solutions that could connect users and teams throughout the organization with relevant knowledge so that everyone could have access to up-to-date information across all business processes. Portal also wanted a solution that had document management capabilities beyond those of the current solution, which consisted of a series of links to documents that were stored in file folders. In addition, the right solution would have to provide a mechanism that could improve collaboration among Portal's field sales personnel, the field consulting organization, and the internal Engineering department. Because Portal is also considering exposing collaborative capabilities to its customers, the solution it chose would have to support that functionality. However, that was not one of the initial system requirements.

Solution
After reviewing the available technologies, Portal Software selected Microsoft Office SharePoint® Portal Server 2003 and Windows® SharePoint Services, a component of the Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 operating system. "Overall, we were very impressed with the strength of SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and Windows SharePoint Services and felt that this solution would give us the information sharing and end-to-end collaboration that we were looking for," says Doug Harr, Vice President, Information Technology, Portal Software.

The decision to implement Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies was based on several factors. First, SharePoint Portal Server could provide an intelligent portal that would seamlessly connect users, teams, and knowledge—capability that was critical to Portal. Second, centralized access to Microsoft Office System programs, business intelligence, and work processes would put users in touch with the information that could help them work more efficiently. Third, the majority of Portal's IT infrastructure is built on Microsoft technologies. Therefore, the company felt that incorporating the portal solution with the existing infrastructure would be simplified and that the portal solution would present a minimal cost of ownership compared to the other solutions available.

To migrate the current intranet to the new SharePoint Portal Server solution, Portal engaged the services of Allin Consulting, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. Working with managers and IT personnel at Portal, Allin defined the requirements of the portal's taxonomy as well as the requirements of team sites, document libraries, document control permissions, search sources and scopes, Web parts, and custom metadata. Allin then implemented and configured SharePoint Portal Server to meet Portal's business requirements, which included setting up document libraries and minimal custom integration with back-end systems. "We brought Allin on to help us rapidly deliver the SharePoint Portal Server solution because we wanted to economically construct the solution on a tight budget and within a short time frame—which is exactly what Allin did," says Kevin Wickliffe, Database Administrator and Project Manager for Portal Software.

Phase one of the rollout took three months to complete. This phase involved establishing the intranet and putting the IT department data onto the intranet; creating the main page; and configuring all circuit links for marketing news and announcements, press releases, the employee directory, and the directory of the partners. Phase one also included the creation of team site capabilities for collaboration between Portal's finance and revenue groups to facilitate compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. The act requires an annual evaluation of a company's internal controls and procedures for financial reporting (including documentation of controls that have a bearing on financial reporting), tests of these controls for efficacy, and reports on any gaps or deficiencies. Portal is using the collaborative capabilities of its SharePoint site to collect, stage, and disseminate aspects of the information required for a Sarbanes-Oxley audit.

Portal's SharePoint Portal Server solution was implemented on a five-server Web farm with two load-balanced Web and search servers on the front end and a dedicated index and job management server. Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000 (which, like Windows Server 2003, is part of the Microsoft Windows Server System™ integrated server software) is used on an active-passive cluster on a storage area network (SAN) device. This configuration provides a fault-tolerant and scalable solution that can accommodate growth. To provide the data storage infrastructure that Portal needed for recoverable document management capabilities, Allin used existing EMC SAN storage, making the overall data storage solution scalable and fault tolerant.

"The performance of SharePoint Portal Server 2003, both in terms of functionality and in the way it interacts with the rest of the Microsoft Office System, is very compelling," notes Harr. He continues, "The success that our IT group has had with the SharePoint site strengthens our commitment to roll out the solution to other departments as soon as possible."

To that end, Portal has embarked on Phase two of the solution. Currently, Portal is bringing the Marketing, Finance, and Human Resources departments onto the intranet, and the IT department is working with the firm's professional services group to establish team sites that will deliver the solution to field personnel. "This will provide field consulting personnel with easy access to the structured methodology and solution documentation to use in the field as they deploy Portal's solutions," explains Harr.

Benefits
For Portal Software, Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and Windows SharePoint Services are providing an economical solution that is streamlining collaboration and enhancing internal communications. Improvements in workflow processes, together with information that is now within easy reach of employees, are dramatically reducing the time required to complete tasks and enabling Portal to make better use of its information resources.

Enhanced Information Sharing
Harr notes that project-based Web site collaboration is one of the greatest benefits of the new solution for Portal. "We moved from a process in which information was stored on personal devices and project collaboration consisted of e-mail and responses, to an environment where project information can be shared on a portal that connects users, teams, and knowledge," he says. Through a central SharePoint site, staff can post files, participate in threaded discussions, and access corporate data sources. Eliminating the requirement for a department administrator to be involved in posting materials has reduced the time it takes to post information on the SharePoint site by 70 percent.

Because SharePoint Portal Server is part of the Microsoft Office System, staff members can share information by employing the very programs that they use daily in performing their work. For example, users can share files created in Microsoft Office Word 2003, the Office PowerPoint® 2003 presentation graphics program, Office Excel 2003, or the Office Visio® Professional 2003 drawing and diagramming software without ever leaving those programs. They can also chat with other staff members from within those programs. In addition, document approval, check-in and checkout, profiling, and publishing tools simplify collaboration on documents while they ensure version control.

Lower Cost of Ownership
Because Portal leases Microsoft technology for its desktops, SharePoint Portal Server and end-user licenses are included with Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003. In addition, Portal uses SharePoint Products and Technologies with other Microsoft technologies that are already deployed. That has made the transition easy. "The net result is that SharePoint provides Portal with a much lower cost of ownership than any of the other solutions we considered," concludes Harr.

Effective and Efficient Information Management
Before Portal implemented its SharePoint Portal Server solution, the work of managing and maintaining the corporate intranet required the attention of numerous employees from various departments. This structure made it challenging for Portal to keep the site up-to-date, and difficult for employees to find needed information.

With SharePoint Portal Server and Windows SharePoint Services in place, Portal's IT department has been able to reduce and streamline intranet work. Now, one person spends only a portion of each day supporting the company's intranet. In addition, individual departments are now empowered to create their own teamsites and content pages. As a result, information is posted in a much timelier manner, and corporate data from numerous sources is now indexed and available through a single search engine, making it easy and efficient for staff to access it. "We are very pleased with the overall performance of our SharePoint site and see SharePoint as an integral part of Portal's strategy for the new year," concludes Harr.

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