Windows Server

Evan · Guest

Hey everyone...

Some of you might remember me telling everyone about my science fair
project a few months ago. Well, the science fair date is coming up this
week, and I'm close to done, but I was wondering if I could get some of
the experts' opinions on a few details. I'll make sure to include your
names in my acknowledgements if you help :-P.

I've been doing a comparison between a SharePoint-based site vs. a
HTML/JavaScript-based site and at what point SharePoint's benifits
outweigh the price difference. I decided to use my school's site as my
comparison site. So, I constructed a replica of
'http://k-12.pisd.edu/Schools/Shepton/home.htm' using SharePoint. I
added the features I could and left out features that I couldn't
recreate (which were rare). I included different roles (Parents,
Teachers, Students) and different capabilities for each (Teachers can
create their own classes' subsites and students can add their
classroom's information onto their My Page).

The comparison categories and their weights I used were:
Ease of Use (5)
Potential of Growth (4)
Capabilities (5)
Maintenance (4)
Ease of Administration/Design (5)
Cost of Ownership (4)

For each of the categories, I have different subcategories. For
example, for Ease of Use, I used these:
*Navigation (7)
*Student- Finding HW Assignments (5)
*Student- Communicating with Teachers (4)
*Teacher- Adding HW Assignments (5)
*Teacher to Teacher Communication (5)
*Document Library Function (6)
*Parent to Teacher Commucation (4)
*Club Information (5)
*School Events (4)
*School Information (3)
*Parent Student Communication (3)
*Complexity:Navigation Ratio (4)
*User Satisfaction (8)

The highest score is 5, and the weighted averages of each of the groups
are SPS: 4.63 and Reg: 2.75. That is the format I used.

I don't know much about the Cost of Ownership and Maintenance because I
haven't had to experience them really. Does anyone have any suggestions
of what sub-categories I could use and what SPS2003 would rate compared
to HTML/JavaScript?

If anyone has any suggestions at all about what I should do, I would
really appreciate it.

Thank you,
Evan Halikias

PS: Something I thought was pretty clever... My partner and I are going
to do the entire backboard in the theme of web-parts and a SharePoint
Site. For example, the "Procedure" will be in the form of a Text Box
within a SharePoint site. It'll look pretty spiffy.

Shane · Guest

Sounds like you have spent a lot of time on this. Very cool!

Hosting should cost you about the same for the two sites. So not much to
compare there. You could compare software cost though. With SharePoint you
need W2k3 and SharePoint CALS. What licenses do you need with the homegrown
solution? Then you could price out a new addition. Something that
SharePoint can do with built in web parts (maybe the stock ticker?) vs.
having to pay someone to create that functionality in a home grown site.
Cost also is creating subsites. A teacher can do it herself with 10 minutes
of training. In the homegrown site you have to pay a programmer/web
administrator to create a new site. You could come up with a business for
Microsoft Office integration. SharePoint supports it out of the box, what
about your homegrown solution???

Hope this helps point in you in the right direction.

Shane

"Evan" <spikdboy@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1106017797.365249.211450@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...

Guest · Posted: Tue Jan 18, 2005 11:26 pm Post subject: Re: My Science Fair Project

Excellent work, Evan.

There are several other things to keep in mind when doing TCO and ROI
calculations:

a. The true cost of ownership must be calculated not only in terms of
software and hardware costs, but in the expense of maintaining the hardware
and software. That expense must include the time-value (as in $'s/hour) of
the employees who maintain both the site and the underlying Operating System
and Hardware. With Sharepoint, of course, you need someone who is capable
of managing both Windows 2003 as well as SQL Server. While you can run
everything off of one box, for optimal usage, and depending on how many
users you have, you will need at least 3, or 5 if you want full redundancy
with 24x7 up-time.

b. When calculating ROI, you need to consider the time-value of efficiencies
gained by a more usable/manageable system, both for end-users as well as for
IT personnel. To do this, you need to consider the blended rate of all
users (or of various categories of users if the overall pay differential is
too great). In otherwords, if you guess that teachers can save, on average,
30 min./day by using a more efficient portal to communicate with students,
then use that along with the blended rate for teachers to calculate savings.
Note that this is not bottom-line savings, that is, the school district will
not be able to cut the budget, however, teachers will be freed for more
important, creative, or hands-on work. That is why some people do not like
to calculate ROI in terms of money, but only in terms of time. You could
choose either way.

c. You should contact your local Microsoft Academic Sales Rep. There are
significant discounts for academic use, and perhaps s/he could give you some
ball-park figures. Don't simply use the costs from the MS web-site, since
you would never pay those.

d. You might have a look at the Microsoft Solutions Accelerator for
Intranets, at
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/itsolutions/cits/iwp/intranets/intov1.mspx
to get some more information.

Microsoft used to have TCO and ROI calculators, but I cannot now find them.
I did find a link to similar calculators on the website of CIO magazine, but
that requires registration.

Good luck, and let us know how you did.

John C. Willard
Sr. IT Architect
VA Department of Transportation

"Evan" <spikdboy@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1106017797.365249.211450@c13g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...

Evan · Guest

Thanks for the suggestions, guys. I was thinking about what you were
saying, Shane, when I was creating the site. My ideal outcome was that
everybody at school uses it to communicate with eachother, the teachers
create their own elaborate sites, and the school becomes very dependent
on the site. Thank you, John, for all the information on how to
calculate all that. I especially like having the 'time saved' as a
factor in my costs.

I'm going to add an extra spreadsheet showing the costs of each vs. the
costs of each after another school adapts the same program. My dad even
suggested that I create my own business and sell the same templates to
all the different local schools. I've already arranged a meeting with
the head of technologies for the school district to discuss it. I
thought that it would be pretty impressive if I added to my backboard
that I'm currently discussing with the school district whether or not
they'd like to adapt SharePoint for their entire web of sites.

BTW, I posted this twice, and didn't realize it. I've been waiting for
responses on the other one (hehe). I have a "Maintanence" and "Cost of
Ownership" on another thread. The URL for that is
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/microsoft.public.sharepoint.portalserver/browse_thread/thread/01ba7c174fd84938/c0f5bf1ea84e3662?_done=%2Fgroup%2Fmicrosoft.public.sharepoint.portalserver%2F%3F&_doneTitle=Back+to+topics&_doneTitle=Back&&d#c0f5bf1ea84e3662
..

Thanks again for the help. I'll make sure to add your names to my
Acknoweledgements.

Evan

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