With DocAve Connector, our end users can collaborate on documents through SharePoint without knowing that their content is actually stored outside of the system in file shares.
After years of relying upon file shares to access content, CMC investigated several options to improve collaboration across the business and build its corporate intranet site. CMC ultimately chose to implement Microsoft SharePoint 2010 due to its integration with other Microsoft software used throughout the company. “At the end of the day, we are a Microsoft shop,” said Rob Rees, Associate Director of IT at CMC.
CMC administrators worked with a consultant to implement SharePoint and anticipate any challenges that might arise. Due to the fact that CMC had approximately 300 GB of data stored within file shares, the consultant informed Rees that recovering files mistakenly deleted by end users might pose a challenge for the business. “Due to the sheer volume of data in our system, recovering individual files would require us to restore the entire content database, which, based on past experience, can take as long as eight hours,” Rees said.
With the need to provide data recovery for the company in a timelier manner and eliminate potential business disruption, CMC sought a third-party solution.
At the consultant’s suggestion, Rees and his team investigated AvePoint’s DocAve Connector. DocAve Connector allows end users to collaborate upon network file shares directly through SharePoint without the need to migrate data into SharePoint’s content database. “By accessing our file share content without migrating the data into SharePoint, we could utilize the granular restore functionality in our file system to avoid any potential data recovery challenges,” Rees said. “After viewing a demo and seeing the product’s capabilities, we implemented DocAve Connector into our environment.”
With DocAve Connector, CMC administrators were able to centralize all file share assets in SharePoint and make them available to end users through customizable SharePoint libraries. End users, meanwhile, remained unaware that content they accessed through SharePoint team sites, department sites, and document libraries actually resided outside of the system. “With DocAve Connector, our end users can collaborate on documents through SharePoint without knowing that their content is actually stored outside of the system in file shares,” Rees said. “We are able to set up customized libraries for them in order to ease the transition to the new system and help with adoption. So far we have set up 20 libraries by request of our end users.”
Most importantly, accessing file share content through SharePoint solved any potential data recovery challenges the company might have encountered. “Using our file system’s granular restore abilities, we are able to recover files for end users within 15 minutes and return the file within the day the request is made,” Rees said. “Thanks to DocAve Connector, this process is much less cumbersome than restoring an entire database to retrieve one file, which would have required more than one business day to return.”
In order to implement SharePoint properly for the business, CMC administrators worked closely with experts to anticipate any challenges that might come along with the platform. With DocAve Connector, CMC was able to access all 300 GB of its file share content through SharePoint without migrating it to the platform’s content database, eliminating potential business disruption data recovery might have caused and helping end user adoption.
In the future, CMC administrators will roll out SharePoint to the company’s office in Copenhagen, Denmark and dive deeper into the platform’s robust collaboration capabilities, such as workflows. “Our power users love SharePoint and already want to do more with it,” Rees said.
CMC Biologics is a results-oriented contract biopharmaceutical manufacturing and development organization. CMC focuses solely on contract work and is experienced in all phases of development, manufacturing, and quality. CMC has the ability to provide complete, full-service manufacturing – from DNA to active pharmaceutical ingredient – as well as extensive process, analytical, and formulation development capabilities.
With DocAve Connector, our end users can collaborate on documents through SharePoint without knowing that their content is actually stored outside of the system in file shares.