Axceler, the leader in Microsoft SharePoint governance, administration and migration solutions, today introduced version 4.6 of its award-winning ControlPoint governance and administration solution.  The latest version includes the Governance Policy Manager that simplifies and centralizes global SharePoint governance policies through a wizard-like tool reducing the complexity of defining and implementing governance policies such as storage limit values, versioning settings for lists, permissions analysis and audit settings.  With these new features, standardizing policies across an organization are now accomplished more efficiently.

ControlPoint 4.6 also increases administrative mobility by enabling users to access ControlPoint on an iPad through Safari . In addition, the new version of ControlPoint includes the ability to manage Microsoft Project with the rest of a SharePoint environment, giving users the ability for real-time monitoring of permission changes within Project, and  allowing duplication of custom permission levels and permissions comparison.  ControlPoint 4.6 is available later this month.

Axceler will demonstrate ControlPoint 4.6, along with the newest version of its Davinci Migrator for SharePoint 2010, this week at Booth #1813 at Microsoft TechEd North America 2012, from June 11-14 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, FL.

“Without a governance plan in place, our SharePoint implementation was becoming difficult to manage and inconsistent for our end users in terms of their expectations and experiences while using the platform. We quickly realized we needed both improved administrative capabilities and a well-defined governance plan to regain control, and realize the inherent potential we saw in SharePoint,” said Jay Nebben,  
SharePoint Architect at Starkey Labs. “ControlPoint helped us regain control of our environment and bring it back into order. The new features in release 4.6 will further increase our capability to maintain and quickly adjust the alignment between our environment configuration and our governance plan.”

“The initial results of our SharePoint governance research indicate that even with the best-laid plans, most organizations have limited implementations of governance across their SharePoint environments,” said Michael Alden, president and CEO of Axceler.  “We are continuing our strategy to reduce the complexity and increase the usability of SharePoint governance and administration.”  

Addressing challenges identified in Axceler’s recent SharePoint governance survey and continuing discussions with customers, ControlPoint 4.6:
• Allows senior IT management to align IT objectives with overall enterprise goals and mandates.  A singular view into all SharePoint policies and how they are implemented or managed across the organization gives senior management the ability to make better business decisions and leverage SharePoint to make those decisions more effective.
• Enables customers and consultants to define control at a more global level, with a Governance Policy Manager that simplifies implementation of governance policies.  The Governance Policy Manager streamlines the creation of broad governance policies and the application of instances of those policies across appropriate objects in a SharePoint environment.  For example, quota limit policies can be created, applied and enforced against different sets of sites, since the sites for one team may have a different quota than the sites for another.
• Increases access to ControlPoint for mobile device users – such as business administrators – with iPad support via Safari.
• Expands management of dynamic and ongoing change requirements, with real-time monitoring of permission changes; (needs a verb here) rollout configurations to multiple objects giving administrators the ability to define once and use everywhere; and the addition of Duplicate Site and List properties to assist in SharePoint configuration.
• Management of Microsoft Project Server including the ability to easily identify all MS Project sites and analyze activity in those sites.
• Extends SharePoint’s usability, by making it easy to create custom permission levels and manage them across any set of Site Collections, and providing the ability to easily inspect permissions settings over a period of time to quickly isolate or pinpoint changes that may not have been planned.