Today’s lunch at SPTechCon was sponsored AvePoint and, consequently, AvePoint’s Tony Lanni provided a short lunchtime session on “The SharePoint Journey.”  Tony began  addressing the oft-pondered question of “What is SharePoint?” and said that he’d come up with an answer that he believes amounts to “twelve words to change your life: SharePoint is a platform.  What you deliver with SharePoint is an application.”

Tony then described the four typical categories for with SharePoint is put to use: SharePoint is a content repository; SharePoint is a collaboration tool; Line of Business applications (“where SharePoint gets the most exciting”); and SharePoint for more structured data systems.

>Tony suggested that with a SharePoint deployment, a “platform-first” approach is the best method use to achieve a successful deployment.  The first thing to do is to pick a starting point, and do your application lifecycle management (requirements, development, testing, etc.).  Once that’s complete, Tony suggests that most organizations go on to plan for SharePoint as an application and not as a journey, but that “successful organizations plan for the journey,” which is to say that they’re building for a platform from the outset as opposed to an application.

Sharing his ten steps to a successful SharePoint deployment using the platform-first methodology, Tony named them as:

1. Decide what SharePoint capabilities you want to enable with your business, and when.
2. Decide who you want to enable within your business, and when.
3. Architect the platform.
4. Plan for infrastructure.
5. Pick partners who can grow with you.
6. Design and plan for an initial application. (“This is your chance to wow the business.”)
7. Deploy the platform.
8. Make sure the first application runs well.
9. Support, monitor, and grow.
10. Ask “What next?” (“This is where the real ROI comes in.”)

Of SharePoint, Tony said that “There is no better integrated platform for utilizing content and information across an organization” before wrapping up his presentation with a short plug for AvePoint, a company that “takes the platform-first approach to SharePoint very seriously.”

Read our complete coverage of SPTechCon San Francisco 2011:

• Document Management from A to Z, with Paul Swider
• The SharePoint Journey, with Tony Lanni
• Jared Spataro’s Keynote on ‘Your SharePoint Journey: Maximizing Your Investment’
• Robert Bogue Declares ‘SharePoint Workflow is Evil’ & Asks SPTechCon Attendees to Help Get Him in Trouble with Microsoft
• Robert Bogue Demonstrates ‘How Workflow Works… and How it Breaks’
• Owen Allen Makes the Case for ‘SharePoint as a Platform for Business Applications’
• Michael Noel on ‘Building the Perfect SharePoint 2010 Farm: Real World Best Practices from the Field’
• Joel Oleson’s ‘SharePoint 2010 Service Architecture Drilldown’
• ‘Customizing the Social Aspects of SharePoint’ with Michael Doyle
• Scott Jamison on ‘Social Computing Best Practices in SharePoint 2010’