Upgrading an Existing SharePoint Installation

The Office of Communications and Education (OCEWorks) at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), needed its SharePoint 2007 environment to be moved to new servers and altered to meet security requirements. NCI approached the SharePoint team at TerpSys to lead them in this endeavor.

TerpSys assessed the current security level, the needed security level, and the various options for meeting these needs during a change in hosting servers and server location.

• Improved Business Capabilities - NCI’s security needs were not able to be supported on SharePoint 2007, so it was determined they would upgrade to a newer version of the product which also made more tools available to NCI to do their business.
• Meeting Individual Needs - TerpSys found that because of a third-party workflow tool NCI was using that wasn’t yet available for SharePoint 2013, SharePoint 2010 would allow them to continue using the tool and still meet their security needs.
• Custom Solution Upgrades - Externally developed custom modules were packaged for SharePoint and re-deployed successfully so they were more compatible with the platform and will be easier to work with in the future.
• User-friendly - Users at NCI were comfortable with the SharePoint 2007 interface, so the upgraded site collections were kept in a SharePoint 2007 visual mode to allow a more seamless transition of the upgrade for users.