Axceler, the leader in Microsoft SharePoint governance software, today launched a program to help the SharePoint community develop a set of best practices for SharePoint governance. Axceler will kick off this initiative by conducting a survey of SharePoint managers starting in Q4. The survey, which will be administered to organizations of all sizes and in a wide range of industries, will help determine existing levels of SharePoint governance planning, as well as the challenges of preventing exploitation of governance policies.

“Microsoft SharePoint is evolving to become a strategic, enterprise-wide platform,” said Michael Alden, president and CEO of Axceler. “As a result, the management of SharePoint, particularly governance policies, is becoming a top priority for CIOs and IT managers who are increasingly relying on SharePoint to work smarter and gain competitive advantage.”

Axceler’s long history of developing products that govern enterprise collaboration platforms helps SharePoint managers expand their insight into their SharePoint environments. Axceler removes SharePoint’s administrative obstacles, facilitates its growth in enterprises, and increases end user adoption.

Axceler’s SharePoint governance survey will be delivered and analyzed online with a target of 1,000 participants. The company will conduct the survey twice per year in order to capture trend data. The results of the survey will be released on the Axceler blog, http://info.axceler.com/blog.

“A robust and reliable information management infrastructure is essential for market success and corporate wellbeing,” said Richard Edwards, principal analyst, Ovum. “SharePoint is now a strategic component of many information management strategies, and so a poorly managed deployment could expose organizations to serious information governance, risk and compliance issues. Identifying these issues, and actively securing SharePoint environments, must be part of the critical path if this technology is going to be used to successfully support business processes and operations.”

SharePoint governance is a guideline on how SharePoint will be used in an organization. It consists of a set of all rules and procedures that will be applied to SharePoint in that organization. Proper SharePoint governance assigns responsibilities and access levels to various members of an organization to ensure SharePoint runs smoothly. It also addresses individual and group roles and responsibilities, equipment, storage, operations, locations, application use, branding, configuration, navigation, training and support.

“Governance planning and enforcement is critical to the successful deployment of SharePoint 2010, making the Axceler survey an important guideline for SharePoint users, vendors and their partners,” said Mike Gilronan, Partner at Waltham, MA-based Knowledge Management Associates. “Visibility into the planning process, the primary challenges, the key success factors, policies and their benefits, stakeholders and their priorities, will be really valuable to everyone interested in the state of SharePoint governance in 2011.”